The Changing Face of Hong Kong: A former manufacturing mogul

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‍By CGTN's Laura Schmitt and Fan Lu

With “The Changing Face of Hong Kong”, Rediscovering China takes a look at the different facets of Hong Kong, from its famous port to its influential banking sector, from the remnants of its manufacturing sector to the emergence of an ambitious start-up field.

Hidden away on the third floor of a factory in Kowloon Bay, there’s a memento of Hong Kong’s past. It’s a porcelain painting factory with an almost 90-year history.

Yuet Tung China Works, a family business that has been handed down for three generations, is the only big manufacturer of hand-painted porcelain left in Hong Kong today. Its current owner is Joseph Cho, who took over from his father in 1968.

The factory is filled to overflowing with figurines, tea sets and bowls. Most are in the Guangcai style, a traditional painting form that also uses Western motifs. But Yuet Tung has also kept up with the times and also uses modern twists and cartoon figures on cups and plates.

A complex Qing style bowl takes about two weeks to paint by hand. / CGTN Photo

Hand-painting porcelain is intricate and time-consuming work. Some of the complex Qing-style bowls to be found here take around two weeks to paint. It is a skill that is less and less valued in a fast-paced world of automation and 3D printers.

The factory has witnessed the drastic changes of Hong Kong’s manufacturing landscape over almost a century.

Before “Made in China” became the household name it is today, there was a time when toys, watches and electronics shipped across the world came with a “Made in Hong Kong” tag.

It was in the 1960s that an influx of people from the Chinese mainland, who were facing famine and harsh living conditions, became the backbone of this strong manufacturing sector.

However, Hong Kong’s success as a manufacturing hub was not to last. By the end of the 1970s, the Chinese mainland began its process of opening-up and reform, and thereby irrevocably altered the manufacturing landscape of the area.

“Between the 1980s to 1990s the porcelain business was very prosperous in Hong Kong,” remembers Joseph Tso. “That time there were over one hundred factories in Hong Kong, only after 1990, when they moved away to the Chinese mainland, we are the only factory that stayed here.”

Now, Hong Kong’s manufacturing sector employs only 2.5% of the workforce. With factories favoring the much cheaper labors on the Chinese mainland, many jobs have been lost and companies have had to shut down.

Not so Yuet Tung China Works, for the time being. However, the company’s professional painters are well into their 70s, and Joseph Tso has to face the fact that they will not be around forever.

“I have been working in this factory over 45 years, since I graduated from high school. But now my son is a dentist, the son of my brother is a lawyer. They have no interest to step into our shoes,” he says.

The tradition of hand-painting porcelain is on the brink of extinction in Hong Kong. /CGTN Photo

“I hope that the painters can still work for a few more years. Once the painters retire, we can only stay here to sell the stocks. Maybe in ten years, there’s no more porcelain decoration factory in Hong Kong.”

While the factories might be dying out, there are a handful of young people interested in learning porcelain painting as a hobby.

Yuet Tung’s Master Tam is training three young students how to create the delicate paintings on crockery, in an effort to keep at least some of the long-standing tradition of porcelain painting alive.

Rediscovering China is a 30-minute features program offering in-depth reports on the major issues facing China today. It airs Sunday at 10.30 a.m. BJT (0230GMT), with a rebroadcast at 11.30 p.m. (1530GMT), as well as Monday 8.30 a.m. (0030GMT) and Friday 1.30 p.m. (0530GMT).

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