Hong Kong Jade & Gold Areas

Hong Kong's Jade Market is a covered bazaar of around 400 stalls in Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon, dedicated to jade — jadeite above all — and backed by an adjacent "Jade Street." It is the city's window into the Chinese jade world, where a stone that carries deep cultural weight is bought, sold, and argued over.

The trade here began in the early 1950s, when jade dealers — many of them migrants from Guangzhou — set up street stalls in Kowloon. It boomed through the 1970s and 80s, helped along by a wave of global interest in jade after Nixon's 1972 visit to China. In 1984 the government moved the hawkers into the permanent covered market at the Kansu Street and Battery Street junction, organised into two zones of roughly 340 and 100 stalls.

Nearby, the stretch of Canton Road known as Jade Street holds higher-quality pieces and jade-identification services — which matter, because authenticity and quality vary enormously and treated or imitation jade is common. Alongside the jade you'll also find pearls, turquoise, amethyst, and amber.

It is a haggling, knowledge-rewards-you market rather than a fixed-price boutique — souvenirs at one end, serious jade at the other.