In a cramped handicraft shop in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po neighbourhood, 70-year-old Jen Kwong was sifting through reels of embroidered and sequinned ribbons while other shoppers around her were hunched over containers of tiny beads and trinkets.

Kwong, who had worked for four decades during the golden age of Hong Kong’s textile manufacturing industry, still tailors and alters clothing for her grandchildren with her sewing machine at home.

But she feared Yu Chau Street, also known as “Bead Street” for its enclave