Peng Chau’s Renowned Watering Hole Where Local Community Protects Cultural Identity: The Old China Hand

By: Stark Yang and Andy Liu

Han Yang laughed as she served two glasses of local craft beer with heavy heads of foam, sharing her life in Peng Chau. Crow’s-feet creased at the corners of her eyes, and a pair of old-fashioned reading glasses hung on her chest. She is the one and only person running one of the island’s best-known bars: The Old China Hand.

As a Hong Konger of Chinese-Japanese heritage who also holds a British passport, Han moved to Peng Chau 13 years ago. She took over after the bar relocated from its renowned Wan Chai location, turning it into her retirement project. She said she loves the slower pace of island life; with tourism still relatively limited, Peng Chau feels calm—far from urban noise despite its closeness to the city.

Han’s Old China Hand isn’t the only one in Hong Kong — another, completely separate spin-off is located in Sheung Wan — but the Peng Chau pub seems to serve as a kind of social beacon for the island. Han showed a visitor a video on her phone of the bar packed with people of all ages dancing on a recent weekend night. She mentioned that customers would not only come out from the local community but would even trek over from Lantau and other islands.

Historically, Peng Chau was known for a handful of specific industries. Quicklime — once used in everything from paper making to dyes to ship repair — made from oyster shells and dead coral reigned on the island from the 19th century to the 1950s. Later, the leather-making industry, along with matchstick making, took over: The island became home to Southeast Asia’s largest matchstick factory, constructed in 1939, which, at its height employed over 1,000 workers. But over the next several decades, factors such as competition from mainland Chinese and increased environmental protection regulations in Hong Kong converged to drive nearly all of these industries out of business by the late 20th century. Today, something like “The Leather Factory” on the island is best known for its scenes of public art.

More recently, the pandemic hit the local economy again, making things even tougher, Han said. Some residents have returned to traditional fishing to make a living; others have opened small cultural and creative shops. Many more native islanders have left for better opportunities in the city—or emigrated for good.

“The older generations have passed away, so it’s changing,” Han said, a note of resignation in her voice. “Also younger people, the original villagers went to university to study, and like (to stay) over there…Then they went to UK to study and got married there, they don’t come back.”

Unlike the more commercialized Cheung Chau and Lamma Island, Peng Chau’s community is tightly knit, and has long pushed to protect the local environment and culture, Han said. Han recalled that a 7-Eleven once tried to open a location on the island, but residents organized a demonstration, championing local businesses over chain stores. Islanders resisting big corporate stores have largely been successful: To date, Peng Chau remains 7-11 free, and only one Wellcome supermarket is left for daily essentials.

With the government’s 2018 Lantau Tomorrow Vision proposal, in which three artificial islands were to be built off the coast of Lantau and turned into centers of business and housing, speculators anticipated a real estate boom. Developers, betting on its close proximity to the proposed reclaimed islands, flocked also to Peng Chau and started buying up coastal green space and launching property projects. But as the plan later lost momentum, Peng Chau was left with a number of abandoned, half-finished buildings. Even now, some residents stay active in the “Peng Chau Reclamation Concern Group,” pressing the public to remain vigilant on potential environmental damage linked to development plans.

Changes in the kind of residents living on the island have started to appear in recent years, as Peng Chau has begun to attract a different crowd: city employees drawn by its location “only 25 minutes” to Central—along with cheaper rents and a quieter way of life. More and more office workers have moved in, helping to fill some of the gaps left by depopulation.

But for Han, the demographic shift is a bit of a concern.

“This is one of Hong Kong’s hidden gems,” Han said with a smile. “We have to keep the secret… Otherwise the developers will come and it’s going to change.”

The original Old China Hand in its Wan Chai location was founded by Barry Lovegrove in 1977, a well-known law lecturer at the University of Hong Kong at the time. Han recalled that Lovegrove often complained there was nowhere he could properly unwind after work, so he opened the bar, which became famous for its British pub vibe.

In its early days, the bar was famous for its chicken wings, British beer and in-house darts. It quickly turned into a popular spot for after-work activities among expats.

In late April of 2026, the Peng Chau Old China Hand is about to shut down too — but only temporarily: Han is set to go to Japan for a few months, to care for her elderly Chinese father, where he still lives on his own after the passing of Han’s Japanese mother.

But she tells a group of young journalists writing assignments in the cool confines of the pub’s wooden booths not to worry — that she will return later in the summer to open the establishment again, and that they are always welcome. As the group bids farewell and heads for the ferry home after a long day of reporting, Han stands quietly behind the bar, waving farewell.

Additional research, reporting, writing, and editing:

John H. Noonan