Lee Chum Kee Darning Service
Ng Fuk Lane, Sai Ying Pun
Hong Kong’s back alleys have always revealed another face of the city.
No neon lights. No crowds.
Only weathered brick walls, damp moss, and narrow passages hidden between buildings.
Beside Eastern Street in Sai Ying Pun lies Ng Fuk Lane,
a quiet corner rarely noticed by outsiders.
There was once a wooden table, a few simple tools,
and a craft known as invisible mending.
That place was Lee Chum Kee Darning Service.
The Man Who Sat Here
Lee Chum Kee began operating in the 1940s,
working for decades from this narrow alley in Ng Fuk Lane.
Over the years, Hong Kong moved from post-war hardship
to economic prosperity,
and later through the many changes that followed the Handover.
The city transformed again and again,
yet Ng Fuk Lane seemed somehow forgotten by time.
Lee Ping Hong, the second-generation craftsman,
did not inherit the trade by choice.
As a teenager, he had originally trained in electrical repair.
But after his father died unexpectedly,
he became responsible for supporting his mother
and five younger siblings.
With little choice,
he picked up his father’s needles and thread
and walked into this narrow alley.
He was sixteen years old.
He remained there for sixty-three years.
A Table Left Behind
Lee Chum Kee had no storefront.
The stall operated entirely in the open alley,
exposed directly to the changing seasons.
In summer, three electric fans were needed to endure the heat.
In winter, resilience alone kept the cold away.
Lee Ping Hong and his wife never regarded this as hardship.
It simply became part of daily life.
Day after day, for decades,
he sat at the same wooden table,
stitching damaged garments back together by hand.
After cataract surgery in his eighties,
he once feared his eyesight would never recover.
Yet when the bandages were removed,
the world appeared clearer than before.
He returned to his needles and thread,
able to see even the smallest punctures clearly,
his hands still steady as ever.
Almost Restored to Its Original Form
Invisible mending required patience and precision.
It was not simply sewing,
but restoration.
After Lee’s repairs,
most damaged garments could recover nearly ninety percent of their original appearance,
often leaving almost no visible trace.
Even the late Cantonese opera legend Sun Ma Sze Tsang
was said to have been among his customers.
His prices were not cheap.
Repairing a small hole could cost seventy or eighty Hong Kong dollars.
Yet he held firmly to his own standards:
if a repair could not be done beautifully,
he would rather refuse the work.
For simple alterations such as shortening trousers,
he often smiled and told customers to visit the tailors at the wet market instead,
saying that was someone else’s livelihood.
People who came to him included young customers,
elderly neighbours,
and women carrying garments too precious to discard.
Sometimes those clothes were more than clothing.
They were memories people could not bear to let go of.
This Alley Is Called Ng Fuk Lane
Ng Fuk Lane is easy to miss.
Hidden between the buildings along Eastern Street,
it is narrow enough that people sometimes need to turn sideways to pass through.
Without deliberately searching for it,
most pedestrians would never notice what once existed there.
Yet within this small unnamed-looking alley,
Lee Chum Kee quietly survived for more than half a century,
tucked into a corner of the city.
Afterwards
On 1 April 2020,
Lee Ping Hong officially retired,
and Lee Chum Kee Darning Service closed after more than eighty years of operation.
I do not know what happened on its final day.
Whether anyone came to say goodbye,
or whether there was any kind of farewell,
I cannot say.
What remains
is only a date.
These photographs were taken on 13 April 2009.
At that time,
the worktable was still there,
the tools were still there,
and the signboard was still there.
There were still eleven years left before the closure.
Ng Fuk Lane remains.
But no one sits there anymore,
restoring damaged clothes,
stitch by stitch,
back to something close to their original form.
Where the Needle
Falls Silent
This work is not a retrospective of a shop that has already disappeared,
but a series of photographs taken while it was still quietly operating.
At the moment these images were made,
there was no awareness that the place would soon vanish.
Because of this,
the photographs preserve a state that had not yet been named —
something suspended between presence and disappearance.
What interests me is not only the individual or the trade itself,
but the spaces and unnoticed orders that exist for long periods at the margins of the city,
often without ever being formally recorded.
When such places disappear,
it usually happens without sound.
And very few traces are left behind.
This series attempts to capture precisely that kind of almost silent disappearance.
Location: Ng Fuk Lane, Eastern Street, Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong
Shop Name: Lee Chum Kee Darning Service
Established: Approx. 1940s
Closed: 1 April 2020
Subject: Lee Ping Hong (Second-generation craftsman), practised the trade for sixty-three years
Photographed on: 13 April 2009
