Yu Chau Street (Bead Street)

On Yu Chau Street, the ground floors of buildings are occupied by notions shops: boxes of beads stand behind the counters, and wooden, plastic, or pearl-like beads are measured directly from compartments by weight. The commercial nickname Bead Street appeared later than the official name, which is connected with the city of Ruzhou in Henan and its Cantonese pronunciation. In the postwar decades, this street worked as a shared stockroom for the garment factories and home workshops of Sham Shui Po: people came here for fabric and small parts for cheap clothing, and after production moved outside Hong Kong, they were replaced by sewing enthusiasts and design students.

At the end of the workday, fabric dealer Chan Yu-tung did not go home. Bales remained on Yu Chau Street—his entire working capital. He locked the stall with three or four locks, then lay down beside it: under an awning or in the stairwell of the nearest building. His family lived nearby, but for eight or ten years Chan spent his nights beside goods that could not be carried back to the apartment every evening.

He understood fabric even before arriving in Hong Kong: in Xinhui, Chan raised silkworms and reeled thread from cocoons. In nineteen fifty, he got a job selling leather in Sham Shui Po for twenty Hong Kong dollars a month. He then opened his own stall on Yu Chau Street and began visiting garment factories before their large orders were completed. Manufacturers sold their remnants at auction: several rolls of a single color, an unused length of fabric, a batch with unsuccessful dyeing. Chan sorted his purchases by use and resold them to small workshops that made shirts, windbreakers, jeans, and cheap children's clothing.

Fabric and notions sellers gathered around Yu Chau Street precisely for such customers. Factories and home workshops operated in Sham Shui Po, and on a single circuit a buyer could find material and small parts for a finished garment. Chan even bought beads from factories with defective coloring, glued them onto cotton and corduroy, and sold the resulting material to makers of export bags. Orders came from African countries as well: factory defects became a product in their own right.

In nineteen seventy-eight, the colonial administration cleared Yu Chau Street for new bus lanes and construction of the Tsuen Wan Line. Licensed fabric dealers were relocated to a temporary market by Yen Chow Street. Chan moved his stall there and continued selling factory remnants. As production gradually moved out of Hong Kong, his customers shifted from workshops to design students and sewing enthusiasts. The former batches, carried away in bales, gave way to lengths for one bag. Chan educated his four children in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and Australia; all chose other professions. He himself did not close the stall until the age of ninety.

The official name Yu Chau has nothing to do with beads. In nineteen twenty-seven, the street was named after the city of Ruzhou in Henan Province, rendering its Cantonese pronunciation in the English spelling of the time. “Bead Street” is a later commercial nickname: the fabric stalls disappeared from here, while beads and sewing notions became concentrated in ground-floor shops.

At number two hundred twenty-one, customers still scoop wooden, plastic, resin, and imitation-pearl beads from compartments themselves, then pay by weight. On the same street where Chan Yu-tung guarded fabric in whole bales, material is now carried away by the handful.