Bead Shopping in Hong Kong

     Hong Kong is a wonderful place for bead and gemstone shopping!  We had the opportunity to spend two weeks in Hong Kong in January, to visit our son's little family (he is stationed there for work for two years).  Here I am on the ultra-crowded Yu Chau Street in Kowloon, trying to locate the bead stores!  This shopping area was incredibly crowded and chaotic (it was a Sunday).

      It turned out to be the wrong area for the kind of beads we wanted.  Here we found stores like this one that had cheaper plastic and glass beads by the million...

 There were a few stores where you could buy natural stone and shell beads, hanging in hanks as shown here.  The guy in the photo is my husband, Marco.

      On another day, we visited the Hung Hom district in Kowloon, specifically Hok Yuen Street, where we found many gorgeous bead and gemstone showrooms.  These were mostly meant for wholesale only, and not really open to the public, but with a show of our business card we were welcomed in.  The salespeople spoke English and in my favorite store, shown below, the labels were in English.  This showroom was incredible, with the largest selection of natural stone beads I have ever seen.  Sorry, I am not going to give you the name!

Here are some of the beads bought at the above-not-mentioned gemstone company in Hong Kong.  You can see some of our creations with these beads under "Carved in Carnelian" and "Minerology".

Can't wait to go back again!

Susan Murphy, Style ARThouse