Some of the earliest public beaches were surprisingly close to the city centre. A century ago, people living in the crowded tenements of Central and Sheung Wan took the tram out to North Point, where a long stretch of sand spilled into the azure waters of Victoria Harbour. A pair of thatched huts offered changing facilities.

The Kowloon equivalent was Lai Chi Kok, with a beach facing the hills of Stonecutter’s Island. Amusement parks were built next to both beaches in 1949. The shortlived Luna Park stood in North Point until 1954, while Lai Yuen amusement park overlooked Lai Chi Kok Bay until 1997.

People with cars preferred the beaches along the Rambler Channel or on the southside of Hong Kong Island. Friends and families pooled their money to rent a matshed, a waterside shack with a verandah and changing facilities, and would spend the day camped out.

‘Repulse Bay was the most popular beach [...] and crowded on a Sunday,’ wrote young English expat Betty Steel in a 1930 diary entry. ‘When walking on the beach we wore pretty floral beach pyjamas or shorts, made by our Chinese tailor. Behind the matsheds, lining the beach road, flame of the forest trees were in full bloom.’

Not long after Steel’s diary entry, a new entertainment pavilion on Repulse Bay called the Lido offered public changing facilities – a more affordable alternative to renting a matshed. Crowds swelled as Hong Kong’s population boomed after the Second World War, to the point where Repulse Bay’s strip of sand was thoroughly saturated with half-naked bodies – a literal twist on the Chinese expression yan san yan hoi (‘people mountain people sea’).