On Hong Kong’s Kat O island, 79-year-old Fong Sam-kiu chops wood to feed the outside stove on which she cooks her meals.
Nets and pots hang on the walls, reminders of the days when she fished the local waters for sea urchins.
“I will never move to the city,” says Fong, whose husband has died and whose five children moved off the island years ago. “I need peace and clean air.”
One of the largest islands in Hong Kong’s northeast New Territories, at 2.35 square kilometres (0.9 square miles), Kat O – nicknamed Crooked Island due to its twisted shape – has just 50 residents.
But it was not always so quiet.
The island’s population nudged 6,000 in the 1950s and ’60s, with its bustling fishing and farming community providing a vital rest stop for boats travelling between Hong Kong and mainland China.
