The prosperity of Hong Kong is paralleled by the active and rapid development of its tourism industry. During the last decade, Hong Kong has been facing with a dual challenge: it needs to attract international tourists to stay longer, to shop more and to do more sightseeing, and it also has to provide local attractions for domestic excursionists so that they can enjoy weekend breaks and day-trips at home. Despite the dominant metropolitan image of Hong Kong, the government has devised different strategies to encourage cultural tourism, one of which is through the efficient utilization of cultural resources of the local community. In cities such as Berlin and Paris, tourists can enjoy the well-planned walking tours to explore the various landmarks. With our Knowledge Transfer Project, we would make use of a local neighborhood in Sheung Wan to demonstrate the possibility of transfer knowledge from community people to visitors for a better understanding of Hong Kong from an anthropological perspective.

Many neighborhoods in Hong Kong are full of histories and cultural aspects that are worthwhile for citizens and tourists to explore. The Sheung Wan neighborhood is the one that made Hong Kong a successful and important trading hub over the last century, in which the traditional trade characters are still visible today. Since the mid 19th century, through the network of overseas Chinese in Thailand, Nam Pak Hong was established to facilitate the importation of various dried products into Hong Kong for the purposes of trading throughout Chinese societies in Asia. Dated back to when Hong Kong was a fishing village, the geographic location of Sheung Wan made it a very active center in trading and its traditional businesses practices has somehow preserved and remained this way since. Nowadays, Sheung Wan is still seen as the place with clusters of streets full of dried marine products importers, wholesalers, retailers, and modern mini dried seafood supermarkets. This creates an exotic and unique image/impression for anyone who visits there for the first time. Again, these traders handle dried food commodities from all over the world, e.g., abalones from Japan, sea cucumbers from Indonesia, salty fish from Bangladesh, herbal medicines from mainland China, local harvested preserved shrimp paste, aged tangerine peels, fish maws, ginseng, bird's nests etc.. They also witness the evolution of the time machine and have stories to share as part of the oral history of the community. As these food items are a part of the Chinese cuisine, we consider this a unique experience for inbound tourists and excursionists looking for culture and history of Hong Kong. Even the younger generation of Chinese can gained from this type of experience to better appreciate their own culture.

香港今時今日的繁榮盛世，和旅遊業積極迅速的發展有密切關係。過去十年間，香港面臨雙重挑戰：既要吸引外地旅客在港逗留更長時間來觀光購物，又要增加本土旅遊景點，令喜愛短線旅遊的港人留港度周末及一日遊。雖然香港的大都會形象深入人心，政府卻有不同的策略鼓勵文化旅遊，其中包括有效利用本地社區的各種文化資源。在柏林、巴黎等城市，遊客可以參加規劃完善的步行導賞團，遊走並探索市內的各個地標。我們的「知識轉移項目」會以上環的街區為例，從人類學角度探討社區居民傳承知識予遊客的可行性，讓遊客更深入地了解香港。