North Point, the next waterfront community east of Wanchai, is the “Little Shanghai” that boomed after 1949, when refugee industrialists from Shanghai established factories there. It has a prospering night life zone along King’s Road, and introduced “key clubs” to the colony. These were semiprivate bar-and-girl flats to which the member gained admission by paying $50 to $100 for a key. The clubs spread to the Central District and Kowloon before police raids began to hit them. A number survive, drawing their clientele from open-handed tourists and tired but hopeful businessmen. In contrast to these nocturnal playpens, some of the best new housing projects line the North Point waterfront.
To the east of North Point, the towering cranes of the Tai Koo Dockyards jut up along the shore. Shau Kei Wan, at the end of the tram line, is a fishing and junk-building center.
Tram lines don’t serve the towns and resorts on the south side of the island; to reach these, the tourist must take buses, taxis or guided tours.
The south shore town of Aberdeen is important to the colony as a fishing and marketing center, but visitors will remember it for its floating sampan population and its floating seafood restaurants, the Sea Palace and the Tai Pak Fong. The latter, decorated with unsparing flamboyance, are dazzlingly outlined in lights after dark. Fish dinners are netted from large tanks at the rear of the restaurants. The service is as much a part of show business as it is of the food trade. Both branches are represented on the dinner check.
There are two ways for the visitor to reach the floating restaurants. The first is to take a taxi across the island to Aberdeen, then hail a girl-powered sampan for a short trip across the harbor. Another thoroughly luxurious way is to board the 110-foot luxury cruiser _Wan Fu_ any evening at Queen’s Pier or the Kowloon Public Pier, making the entire trip by sea around the west end of the island. The _Wan Fu_, a modern, Diesel-powered ship, is a fully rigged brigantine built along the lines of the early opium-trade escort vessels, with 18 simulated gun-ports on its sides. It makes the evening cruise to Aberdeen, stops for dinner at the Sea Palace, and returns to town about midnight. Cost of the meal and trip totals $10. Its skipper, Mike Morris, is a former Marine Police Inspector.