Happy Valley: charmed life in the valley of the graves
It's a cosy community away from the hubbub - and home to six cemeteries - but Happy Valley residents are struggling to hang on to the past
To outsiders, Happy Valley has not really changed much since the 1970s.
As billboards, buildings and businesses appear and vanish almost every season in Wan Chai and Causeway Bay a 10-minute tram ride away, (horse racing place) as it is known in Chinese, stands serene amid the clamour and chaos of urban Hong Kong.
Towering housing blocks may dominate the hills around it but low-rises still line the tram tracks on Wong Nai Chung Road, the throughway which leads into the quiet neighbourhood and then out on the other side, passing by the large Hong Kong cemetery.
But locals say much of the neighbourhood's charm has gone. While the old-style tenements stand frozen in time, residents complain that Happy Valley has, like other areas in the city, suffered from a "corrosion of communal life and culture".
Sallar Lam is among residents voicing their concerns about changes around them.
Born and raised in Happy Valley, Lam now manages her family's 43-year-old dry goods store on Yuk Sau Street. In the old days, she said, extended families would live on the same street to be close together and everyone knew one another.
