As a child growing up in Hong Kong in the ’80s, Stephen Wong Chun Hei rarely left his neighborhood of densely packed buildings, Sham Shui Po. But some 15 years ago, not long after graduating from a fine arts program, he picked up a map at a local convenience store and started exploring Hong Kong’s trails. That is when his perspective on the city completely changed.
Hong Kong was not just a city of high-rises, he said. From the trails, he could see that Hong Kong was mostly mountains with buildings planted along its ridges, in the valleys and along the flattened coastline. Indeed, about 40 percent of the city’s land is blocked from development, in the form of country parks and other protected areas.
That perspective has shaped his work, which will be shown this week at Art Basel Hong Kong by Mother’s Tankstation, a gallery headquartered in Dublin. Among the nine landscape paintings on view will be seven new paintings of Hong Kong at dusk. Wong shuns predictable scenes, instead focusing on rendering lesser-known parts of the city.
His artistic practice is deeply rooted in exploring the outdoors. He hikes almost weekly with friends, pausing to sketch the scenery using a black brush-tipped felt pen.
“The friends who hike with me are usually very patient,” he said in a recent interview at his studio in an industrial building in Hong Kong, populated with shelves filled with art books, manga and many anime figurines.
Once he is back at his studio, he transposes his sketches and impressions onto large canvases using acrylic paints — blending realism and fantasy. Wong deploys unusual colors that he said were inspired by video games.
Several of his paintings heading to Art Basel were hanging on the wall of his studio that morning. In the corner of one canvas, a U.F.O. descends from the sky, casting a rainbow spotlight on the Big Buddha, a famous Hong Kong landmark. In another piece, a purple cloud floats against a turquoise sky. In a third painting, neon pink tree trunks are lit by yellow streetlamps. In each painting, there is tiny figure observing the scene — Wong himself.
Ahead of Art Basel, Wong sat down to discuss his favorite places to explore the outdoors around Hong Kong.
Tai O
For first-time visitors, Wong recommends going to Tai O, a fishing village on Lantau Island — the largest of Hong Kong’s outlying islands. Residents of Tai O live much like they did two centuries ago: in wooden houses built on stilts.
“It’s unlike anything else in Hong Kong,” Wong said. “There are no convenience stores or supermarkets. It’s all local shops.” Those shops specialize in salted fish and dried shrimp. Tai O is also a popular starting point for boat tours to see the so-called pink dolphins — Chinese white dolphins — an endangered species that is native to Hong Kong.
Wong recently completed a landscape painting featuring the rocky coastline near the old Tai O Police Station, which in 2012 was converted into a boutique hotel. The police station, which opened in 1902, served as a base for the British marine police who patrolled the area on sampans (traditional flat-bottomed boats), searching for pirates. The thoughtfully-restored hotel won a cultural heritage conservation award from UNESCO.
The MacLehose Trail
In the early days of the Covid pandemic, Wong quit his job teaching art at a local high school to focus on painting. In 2022, to prepare for a solo show, he decided to hike and paint the MacLehose Trail — a trail about 62 miles long that is among the most grueling hikes in the city. Wong brought along his sketchbook to record what he saw and painted one large canvas for each of the 10 sections of the trail.
Named for Murray MacLehose, the former governor of Hong Kong, the path was once used as part of the training for Nepalese Gurkha soldiers in the British Army. It begins among the mountains and bays of Sai Kung in the eastern part of Hong Kong and snakes along the hills above urban Kowloon, ending in Tuen Mun, a ’60s “new town” in northwest Hong Kong.
“I don’t recommend doing it all at once,” Wong said. Instead, for first-timers, he recommends tackling the second section of the trail, above the bays of Sai Kung. Or, for those who prefer mountainous views, he recommends sections six through eight, which take hikers past several reservoirs and up Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong’s highest peak.
Kadoorie Farm
Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden is a nature reserve in Tai Po, a residential district in the New Territories, filled with native plants and wildlife and laced with hiking trails.
“It feels like you’ve entered a large garden,” Wong said. “Suddenly, there are deer and birds. If you don’t look closely, you might miss it.”
In the farm, Wong recommends hiking up Kwun Yum Shan, a hill that is named after a Buddhist goddess of mercy, as well as taking in the views of Hong Kong’s countryside from the Kadoorie Brothers Memorial Pavilion, a Chinese-style pagoda.
The farm, which turns 70 this year, was founded by members of the Kadoorie family, an Iraqi-Jewish family that fled Baghdad and settled in Hong Kong in the 1880s. Their descendants still own the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Company, as well as a major stake in one of the main local power companies.
Lions Pavilion
Wong lives and works in Fo Tan, a neighborhood that developed as an industrial area, known for metal fabrication and textile manufacturing.
In the 2000s, as manufacturing businesses left the area, artists started moving in, setting up studios on a relatively modest budget. Despite the gritty character of the neighborhood, nature is never far away.
A set of stairs from Sui Wo Road leads visitors to a platform with a colorful pagoda called Lions Pavilion. The pavilion offers panoramic views of Hong Kong’s highest peaks and, depending on the season, chances to spot dragon boats and rowboats along the Shing Mun River, which cuts through Sha Tin, an area transformed into one of Hong Kong’s “new towns” in the 1970s.
“The best time to go is at night when you can see all the buildings lit up,” Wong said. For the more adventurous, Fo Tan is also the starting point for more challenging hikes to Shing Mun Reservoir and Tai Mo Shan.
Kowloon Peak
As part of his show at Art Basel Hong Kong this week, Wong will debut “The Night Is Young” (2026), a panoramic triptych of the trail leading up to Kowloon Peak or Fei Ngo Shan, a Cantonese name which means “Flying Goose Mountain.” The view from the trail is especially personal to Wong. On one side, there is the bustling Kowloon peninsula, where he grew up. On the other side, there is the New Territories where he lives and works.
In this painting, Wong documents the transition from day to night across the three canvases.
On the far right panel, Lion Rock, a rock formation shaped like a lion, is rendered in fluorescent pink above the city lights. “I usually paint night scenes of Hong Kong,” Wong said. “It’s as if the stars have fallen from the sky into buildings and are shining through the windows.”
Shek O
Shek O, a beach town on the south side of Hong Kong Island, is a popular place to swim and sunbathe. Wong’s painting of Shek O, “A Blue Night in Shek O” (2026), eschews the well-trodden beachfront, instead focusing on a quieter scene near Blue Bridge, a footbridge that connects the town to Tai Tau Chau, a small, uninhabited island with various nature trails.
“Shek O is a romantic place,” Wong said. “It’s a popular place to visit but it’s also very quiet and peaceful.”
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