Being born in Aberdeen and raised on Ap Lei Chau, I spent most of my formative years in the Southern District of Hong Kong. I remembered the times when I would eagerly sit on the left window seat on the way home, and stare at the majestic silhouettes of Jumbo and Tai Pak Seafood Kingdom, anchored in the harbour of Aberdeen. All I knew was that the Queen had had lunch there in 1975 - I had a burning curiosity for these aqua palaces, although I had never dared to set foot on them. That’s the realm of the divine and the blessed, I’d tell myself. What if the gods of the seas lived there?

I moved away with my family after I went to middle school. For many years I’d forgotten these behemoths on the harbour, until when I had to take the ferry weekly from Aberdeen to Po Toi Island, the southernmost land in Hong Kong. It was on the ferry when I saw Jumbo Kingdom again, having already ceased operation for two years by then. It still stood proudly amidst a crowd of small fishing boats, although the decades of saltwater erosion has now dilapidated the imperial facade with paint flaking on the ornate balustrades and rust patinas on the walls of the pagodas. As the ferry turned into a corner, I discovered a magnificent sight on the back side: several imposing kitchen boats rocking gently in the waters, the low hum of machines and pipes resonating within the blemished walls of corroded zinc sheets. Overgrown ivies have now softened its facades, standing in a stark contrast to its monumental front side.

Jumbo Kingdom was set to be towed away in June 2022 due to a lack of investors, after spending 46 years on Aberdeen Harbour. Days before the operation would start, the kitchen ship suddenly flipped over, water gushing into its air chambers - a desperate attempt to stay where it had belonged. The restaurant itself was then towed, without the kitchen boat, to an undisclosed foreign shipyard. The people of Hong Kong would be stunned a few days later, when they learned from the news that the floating restaurant was caught in rogue waves during the trip, and subsequently sank into the depths of the South China Sea.

A decadent child of a steampunk era that did not exist, Jumbo Kingdom gleamed in the distance like a mirage of gold. All the spectacles of hedonism and the long nights of indulgence, on a floating restaurant shaped like a Chinese palace - now sealed forever hundreds of metres underwater, like a strange foreboding for what is to come for the city itself.