Cross Hung Hom Road away from the tight streets and oddly named buildings of Hung Hom Estate - is Jumper Mansion really an appropriate name for a high-rise residential building? - and you're in Hutchison Whampoa's 'garden city'.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Whampoa Garden, where the shopping malls are bright and the housing stacks sound arboreal: the 'mansions' are Palm, Cherry, Oak, Banyan, Bamboo, Bauhinia. Of course, they contain much more concrete than plant life - this is a forest of middle-class housing. The development of 12 estates containing 88 remarkably similar towers was completed in 1991.
Home to about 40,000 people, Whampoa Garden was built on the site of the former Kowloon dockyard. Also known as Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock, after the company that ran it, the shipyard operated from 1870 to 1984. Whampoa Garden was one of the first mega-developments in Kowloon and it conforms to a template that has been laid down all around town.
The streetscape is a miasma of mid-market high-street brands with little in the way of the mom-and-pop stores found in nearby eastern Kowloon. But a stroll around Whampoa Garden is still pleasant enough, along wide streets that could be in suburban Seoul or Tokyo.
The resemblance to Tokyo is reinforced by the many Japanese families who call the area home. As in Taikoo Shing, the Japanese have been attracted by spacious surrounds and easy access to the city centre - and there's a branch of the Japanese Jusco department store down the road.
At the Hung Hom Ferry Pier, middle-aged men and women hopefully cast fishing lines into the grey-green harbour. The last ferry from here to Wan Chai and Central cast off on March 31 and the pier that served those destinations is shuttered. First Ferry runs a service every half-hour to North Point, but for how long? Another part of the area's maritime history looks ready to set sail.
