The city’s tram service began in 1904. At the beginning the tramline ran only along Main Street West; a few years later it was extended eastward to Shau Kei Wan, although the route from Causeway Bay to Shau Kei Wan remained single-track. After a small-scale reclamation in the 1920s, an industrial district encompassing Aldrich Street, Factory Street, Kam Wa Street, Po Man Street and Mong Lung Street emerged, and the tram terminus was moved to Kam Wa Street as it is today. Shau Kei Wan in the pre-war era was therefore a suburban community that embraced in rapport the fishing village, factory, shipyard, market, quarry, and squatter settlement. It was only in the 1960s that the situation changed.

Towards the end of the Chinese Civil War, flocks of refugees appeared in Shau Kei Wan. This materially deprived population formed 13 large squatter settlements on the hillsides and numerous huts along the coast. In the late 1960s, the government started to clear up the squats all-out, and the area between Shau Kei Wan and today’s Island Eastern Corridor was leveled. The existing coastal stretch of Sai Wan Ho, too, was reclaimed at that time, with a dyke built to form the Aldrich Bay Typhoon Shelter.

The time also saw A Kung Ngam developed into a new industrial district, while its waterfront remained the base of small shipyards. Shau Kei Wan, by then, was turned into a modern community with residential area and public facilities, although most of the coastal huts were not bulldozed until the 1980s. Immediately after the coast was put to rights, the government constructed Island Eastern Corridor along it. You can therefore locate the old waterfront by looking at the viaduct today!

Following the decline of the fishing industry, the government put forward a voluntary “landing” scheme for the boat dwellers in the 1960s, which encouraged them to give up their boat life and move ashore. With the scheme, the fisherfolk population dropped significantly, from 130,000 in 1961 to less than 80,000 in 1971, down to about 5,000 in 2001. The fall of population implied falling demand for the typhoon shelter. In 1992, therefore, land was reclaimed at the Aldrich Bay Typhoon Shelter for residential use, and the filled ground was developed into today’s Aldrich Garden and Oi Tung Estate, while the typhoon shelter was relocated seawards, occupying 43 acres of waters.