Bowrington Wet Market

A 5 minute mini-bus drive down/10 min stroll to Causeway Bay leads me to Bowrington Market. A local Hong Kong wet market that has existed for years. I almost grew up going to this market many times a week.


Here, there are local fruits, vegetables, meat and fish street stalls being sold to the public. It's one of my favorite markets and so unique to Hong Kong in terms of how they operate, what they sell and the general atmosphere. Many people can't really stand the smell of the variety of produce or the amount of water on the floor but it's definitely an experience for the newcomer. 

Selling bean curd and everything tofu-related

Most Cantonese food uses light flavours and emphasise freshness (particularly in the seafood). You'll see live fish, crabs and shrimps sold here by the catty; on display they all flap and jump up, sometimes meters from the trays. Even after you're given your purchases, all the way home, you can feel them flap in the plastic bag. Vendors using a traditional weight scale using a weighting rod for the larger items.

As for the fish heads and meat, don't come if you're too squeamish as men with incredibly huge and sharp cleavers cut them off and then open the fish and display the bits to the customers. The gills of the head still beat in the fillets!

Just point and say how much you'd like and it's cut in front of you

If you enter the market a little more, you will also find some shops selling dried mushrooms and dried seafood such as mussels, clams, oysters and scallops. 

Finally, one of the best parts is buying ready cooked meat: this goes from soya sauce chicken, steamed chicken, roast pork, crispy pork, pig ears, pig intestine, etc...Just say if you want half or a whole and they chop it up for you, add some yummy sauce and ginger and scallion.

A typical Shanghainese store used to lie in the market as well but has for the last several years moved 300m up the street. Whatever Shanghainese item you're looking for, they'll have it. My mom loves coming here.

They serve a variety of items like air-dried cured pork belly, fish and sausages, sticky rice cake wrapped in zhong leaves (Zhongzi) and Shanghainese hairy crab when it's the season.

One of my favorite desserts: glutinous rice cakes (Ding Xing Gau in Shanghainese) with red bean inside - the pink one is usually served on Birthdays

And some eggs cooked in spices and soya sauce...

And finally, Shanghainese rice cakes (Cho Ni Go 炒年糕) in the blue buckets. You preserve them in water so they can become soft, cut them in slices and stiry fry them with cabbage and pork - YUM!