Sai Kung Market is an unqualified success, an asset to the community. Visitors find a vibrant scene: kids playing, a choir singing, puppies looking for homes, 82 exhibitors, local products showing high creativity and tempting aromas drifting in the air.
Sai Kung Market was founded by Greg Hunt, now skiing for two months in Montana. He persuaded Hong Kong Academy to provide the venue and the show began in 2014.
“I curate the market fiercely,” Greg said. To exhibit products you pay Greg’s company $800 a day if you are a local and $900 if you are a townie. “The over-arching thing is community. It’s a social thing, just as much as a commercial thing.” Greg said he allows only a few exhibitors of certain types, so the market has a mix of attractions. The place is full with 40 hopefuls on the waiting list.
A visitor walking into the Academy’s ground floor on the first Sunday of the month will find a bustle of booths lining the walls. The place is crammed — not uncomfortably so — with eager sellers and browsing, sampling crowds. Close to 1000 people show up on a typical open day.
The new Sai Kung Choir sings while a guitarist called Wazzer waits his turn. Kids are running round in Santa hats, filling in colouring books or gazing longingly at the puppies Catherine is hoping to home. The booth frying sausages and onions is swamped. Others offer French wine tastings, truffles on crackers and South African beef. The creativity of Sai Kung people beavering at home is everywhere you look: silver jewellery, China silk bed linen, teas that detox your system, cosmetics guaranteed to remove those age spots.
It’s not just the products it’s the people too. You want to see gorgeously toned specimens of thrusting athleticism, go watch the passing parade at Sai Kung Market.
But not until March. Greg is skiing from his home in the Montana mountains.
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