Qualla: Tai A Chau

Tai A Chau: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scotted400, CC0. In 1937, Walter Schofield — then a Cadet Officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service — stopped at Tai A Chau and recorded a detail that tells you everything about the island as it once was: "There is a shrimp paste factory here which exports to Europe and America." A tiny island 4.5 kilometres south of Lantau, home to two small villages named Ha Tsuen and Sheung Tsuen, exporting fermented shrimp to distant continents. Tai A Chau was alive in a way that islands of 1.2 square kilometres rarely manage to be. Then came the 1980s, and an entirely different chapter — one that would leave two helicopter pads and a small jetty as the only modern traces remaining today.

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Image: Scotted400 | CC0

Tai A Chau: The Island Before

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scotted400, CC0. The Soko Islands form a small archipelago in the southwestern corner of Hong Kong's territorial waters, and Tai A Chau is by far the largest of them, covering 1.2 square kilometres. Its hills rise between 85 and 154 metres — modest summits, but enough to give the island presence ...

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Image: Scotted400 | CC0

Tai A Chau: A Camp at the Edge of the Territory

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scotted400, CC0. The villagers left in the 1980s when a detention camp for Vietnamese refugees was constructed on the island. Beginning in the late 1970s and accelerating through the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of people fled Vietnam by sea — on boats, through storms, across waters patrolled by ...

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Image: Scotted400 | CC0

Tai A Chau: September 1996: Ten Days of Ferries

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scotted400, CC0. The Tai A Chau facility closed by government announcement on 10 June 1996. The actual departure of the remaining residents took ten consecutive days, from 16 to 25 September 1996. Each day followed the same choreography: one ferry carrying luggage, two ferries carrying approximat...

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Image: Scotted400 | CC0

Tai A Chau: What Remains

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Underwaterbuffalo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today Tai A Chau is uninhabited. The two helicopter pads and the jetty from the detention centre era are the most visible man-made features left. The Tin Hau temple stands, as does the cluster of earth shrines. The island sits roughly 2 kilometres north of the Hong Kong territori...

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Image: Underwaterbuffalo | CC BY-SA 4.0