As a now-local of the neighbourhood, Erica began taking pictures of Fei Zai and other cats in the area, posting them to the Instagram account she created, Sheung Wan Cats. On her feed, which also features shop cats from the nearby Sai Ying Pun, there’s ginger tabbies lying on counters, kittens peering round doorways, and tabbies watching over dried squid and eels. “Sheung Wan is one of the oldest areas in Hong Kong, there have been lots of Chinese merchants there since the 19th century,” Erica says. “It’s where merchants trade all sorts of things, like dried seafood or Chinese herbal medicines.”
In recent years, as the Central business district has begun to sprawl out to Sheung Wan, new artisan coffee shops and gleaming food joints have popped up in the area, but minus the cats. Erica points to health and safety regulations as to why cats are the preserve of more traditional shops, but historically there has been good reason for shop owners to keep them.
“You might think that there are hygiene problems with having animals in shops, but they really have a function,” she explains. “Dried seafood is really attractive to rats, but the dried seafood is actually a delicacy [in Hong Kong] – they’re very expensive. So if rats are all over them, it’s big losses for the shops, so the cats come out at night to catch them – one shop owner found a cat abandoned on a street in a box, so he took him back to his shop and all the rats disappeared.”
