Once, Peng Chau’s western shore was not the unbroken, elegant arc it is today. Homes and shops that now reside a step below the promenade were only a stone’s throw from the sea’s edge. With the tide’s ebb and flow, egrets, sea roaches, fishermen, and children at play in the shallows came and went with ease. Living so near to the shoreline, it was perhaps easier then to attune one’s daily rhythms with the tide.

Within the space of a few decades, that porous, dynamic shoreline became a hard edge—a cartographer’s dream. Concrete seawalls drew a new border between land and water, offering residents safety, comfort, and convenience in exchange for a new way of living slightly removed from the tide.

And yet, all around us, traces of the old shoreline remain—in ropes wrapped around boulders, in familiar paths, in photographs, and in the memories of those who remember a Peng Chau that once had a different shape.

Drawing on interviews with Peng Chau residents, archival photographs, and other collected materials, the Peng Chau Archive traces the island’s former western shoreline. At specific points along the way, hanging panels bring fragments of stories, images, and memories back to the places where they once belonged, while an unbroken line marked on the ground connects them into a single trail.

As you follow it, take a moment to look around: at the shore as it is, at the shore as it was, and at the possibilities of the shore yet to come.