Cattle Depot (牛棚)

This is the entrance to the Cattle Depot, an artists’ colony on Ma Tau Kok Road. It is now called 牛棚.  It was used to be called 牛房.

The place was really a cattle depot, where cattle imported into Hong Kong were kept before they were butchered at the abattoir, or slaughterhouse. 

Inside the entrance is a row of one-story houses, which are mainly used as offices, or staff quarters.  There was a similar cattle depot in Kennedy Town on Hong Kong Island. My father used to work there as a technician, tending to the machinery, including the boiler and the burner - for carcasses of deceased cattle.  Our family lived in one of the houses there for several years when I was small.   The cattle depot in Kennedy Town had long been demolished. Coming to this cattle depot brings back a lot of memories.  

The cattle were brought to the depot on trucks.  They then walk down the slope into the sheds.  

The cattle would be tied to the rings on the ground, and then fed from the troughs.  

The Kennedy Town cattle depot was where we lived, and also our playground.  We used the grains of rice that we found among the straw to lure and catch sparrows.  We caught tadpoles from the water pond in the depot.  We rode the cows, of course.  But it wasn’t much fun because they were tied down and wouldn’t move.  Sometimes they were led down the street to go to the slaughterhouse, and occasionally one of them would get loose, …, and pandemonium.