Nam Cheong Street
Nam Cheong Street was named after Mr. Chan Nam Cheong (1900-1971), local prominent businessmen.
It was one of the earliest streets in Sham Shui Po to take shape, also known as “Lace Street” due to the
many lace shops there. Chan’s ancestry was from Xinhui in the Guangdong Province. When he was a
teenager he left for Australia with his father, where he studied architecture.
Chan came back to Hong Kong
in the early 1930’s and worked as an assistant in a foreign-owned architecture firm. Around 1933, together
with other people in the neighbourhood, he bought land in Sham Shui Po for development, along the current
Nam Cheong Street. It was said that only Chan knew English in the whole district. He was at one time
appointed as a Justice of the Peace by the Hong Kong government. In 1940 Chan and Dr. Lo Kwee-seong
co-founded the Vitasoy Company.
