Hidden Hong Kong: A history of Hong Kong’s home-grown shrimp paste

Origins of shrimp paste

The oldest record of shrimp paste appeared in an ancient Malayo-Polynesian text from Java (present-day Indonesia). Known as trasi, Polynesian shrimp paste was a celebrated export that merchants delivered across the islands. Zheng He (鄭和; jeng6 wo4)—a celebrated Chinese mariner from the Ming dynasty—introduced the condiment to China, which inspired southeastern locals to formulate their own versions.

Long before krill oil gained popularity as a nutritional supplement, silver shrimp sold for little on the market and was regarded as a “poor man’s food.” Instead of sending the catches to waste, locals preserved it with salt to make into a paste. The paste not only provided villagers with calcium, phosphorus, and iodine, but it also became a staple ingredient often sautéed with rice or pork and, notably, water spinach.

A brief history of Hong Kong’s shrimp paste

Shrimp paste matured into a famed speciality found in Tai O, Ma Wan, and Lamma Island. Out of the three, Tai O and Ma Wan produced the highest quality and largest industrial output of shrimp paste due to their location near deep bays, which are free from mud particles and other sediments.

In the 1960s, Tai O was home to 10 shrimp paste factories run by local Tanka families who mastered the art of making shrimp paste with just two ingredients. Today, less than a handful of these factories remain. Further along the coastline of Lantau, villagers in Ma Wan followed the steps of their distant relatives in Tai O and produced more than 36,000 kilogrammes of shrimp paste every year. 

The rendition from Ma Wan was churned into large round boulders, from which parts were axed off and sold by the gram at tuck shops. While the tiny island was once home to dozens of artisans who produced Hong Kong’s best shrimp paste, every factory now lies derelict and abandoned.

Recollections from Tai O

In 1880, young Chinese immigrants settled along the tidal flats in Tai O. They built two-storey stilt houses, of which the ground floors were converted into a shop in the front and a factory in the back. It was from here that the villagers contributed to the birth of Hong Kong’s trademark shrimp paste, a condiment that would grow into an integral part of the city’s local cuisine.

At dusk, trawlers and their ships would head out to sea. Among various tasty sea treasures that the nets would catch—like groupers and prawns—there was also silver shrimp (銀蝦; ngan4 haa1), a type of planktonic krill the size of a fingertip. In the morning, trawlers loaded their hauls across town to factories, where workers would promptly get to work. As the trade blossomed—reaching its pinnacle in the 1980s—over 60 boats clustered within the Tai O Bay, so many that locals recalled that it was impossible to see the opposite shoreline.

How to make shrimp paste

Drying shrimp paste was often a fight against the sun. Humidity and sunlight were vital to the process and workers adjusted the salt level according to the weather; however, putting in the wrong amount could ruin an entire batch. Experienced workers had the ability to tell if the paste was under-fermented according to its aroma. Despite this rigorous process, there are no exact measurements and methods to making the paste, but the general steps are listed as follows:

1. A batch of silver shrimp is rinsed and drained.
2. It is then hand-grounded into smaller pieces using a stone grinder.
3. The shrimp is dumped into plastic barrels and covered in sea salt for fermentation.
4. For the next three to four days, salt is stirred in depending on the weather and humidity.
5. After fermentation, workers scoop and flatten the mixture onto flat baskets to be dried under the sun.
6. During the sun-drying process, the spreads are flipped every hour to ensure they dry thoroughly.
7. The paste is cut into chunks and compressed into smaller blocks to dry under the sun again. 
8. Each block has to be flipped several times during the day.
   
9. When the blocks mature into a dark-red or brown colour, they are packaged to be sold.
   

Shrimp paste vs shrimp sauce

Despite a wide misconception, shrimp paste and shrimp sauce are two very different condiments. While shrimp paste is sold dry, shrimp sauce takes on a liquid form and is sold in jars or bottles. Making shrimp sauce is a less labour-intensive process, as fresh silver shrimp is simply ground to bits and mixed with sea salt. It must then be fermented in a barrel for several months under the sun before it is poured into glass jars.

End of the shrimp paste boom

Shrimp paste was not only sold in Hong Kong—it was also exported to London and San Francisco for immigrants in the UK, the United States, and Canada. In the 1970s, the popularity of shrimp paste grew exponentially when Vietnamese refugees arrived in Hong Kong. By the millennia, local production dropped after nearby shorelines were replaced with residential estates and the Chek Lap Kok airport. Subsequently, the trawling ban in 2013 sent countless trawlers ashore when production lines shifted to Guangdong.

The last holdouts of the trade have survived in a small pocket in Hong Kong, but conceivably not for long. While several shrimp paste factories still occupy the shores of Tai O today, memories of the trade are slowly fading beneath the waves along with the glittery silver shrimp that once traversed the sea.

Authentic shrimp paste in Hong Kong