Yau Ma Tei boat people

Yau Ma Tei boat people changed their careers from fishery to entertainment and catering services in the 1950s.

The typhoon shelter was popular with its featured cuisine and performance, and was conveniently located immediately west of Mong Kok.

The festival is to celebrate the Goddess's birthday and to pray for the spiritual protection and blessings, such as good weather and abundant harvest.

Apart from Tin Hau, they also worship and honour other deities, such as Hung Shing and Tam Kung, for their safety and blessings.

[2] Yau Ma Tei boat people possessed unique marriage traditions.

Yau Ma Tei boat people possessed several taboos in their daily lives.

Since the boat people treated female as inferior to male, boys had more opportunities to get education under the limited quotas.

The Yau Ma Tei boat people also faced threats from typhoons and poor hygiene conditions.

Boat people were regarded as competitors in job market by land dwellers, which could lead to discrimination.

Land dwellers could also identify the boat people by their appearances and names, such as Tai(娣), Kim(金), Mui(妹) etc.

There were many problems that came with the prosperity of the "Boat Shanghai Street", which forced the Government to take action and clamp down on it.

As the boat people tended to dispose of their waste to the sea, the offshore water quality was contaminated.

At the end of the 1970s, the number of "Home boats" grew to 2000, which worsened the living environment of the typhoon shelter.

The Yau Ma Tei boat people were usually assigned to New Territories as frontiersmen under the policies of new town development.

Before the predicament of Yau Ma Tei boat people had caught media's attention, Father Franco Mella was the first to get in touch with them.

He referred cases to volunteers or social workers, bringing more and more NGOs, such as the Society of Community Organization and Kwun Tong Inquiry Service,[4] into the issue.

Because of the low education level, boat people in Yau Ma Tei seldom knew their social welfare and citizen rights.

On 7 January 1979, social workers and Yau Ma Tei boat people proposed a protest next to the Government House.

76 boat dwellers and their supporters boarded two buses with the intention to hand a petition to Governor MacLehose unannounced.

In 1982, the Hong Kong government changed the requirements of applying public housing for the boat people.