During the day this mass of shabby market stalls looks utterly dead. It seems impossible that these old market booths, alleyways and parking bays could be the hub of a thriving exercise in commercial efficiency.
But don't be fooled: the Yau Ma Tei wholesale fruit market is unlike any other market in the city. It comes alive only after midnight, and for one purpose: the sale and transfer of about 76,000 boxes per night of highly perishable imported fruit to Hong Kong's vast network of independent fruit stalls, juice shops and wet markets.
'Others may see it as a messy, humble-jumble and crowded area, but we have our own schedule, our own way of operating,' says Cheung Chi-cheung, vice-chairman of the Kowloon Fruit and Vegetable Merchant Association.
For almost a century, the market's 'own way of operating' has meant a chaotic-seeming whirl of movement and noise. It begins late in the evening, when most people are going to bed. Fleets of trucks bring in the fruit; crowds of labourers appear to unload it. Soon crates of fruit are rising in piles, crowding the stalls and laneways and spilling into nearby roads.
The action is incredible. Workers drag crates and boxes around on squealing push-carts, as buyers and sellers yell and gesture throughout the warren of alleys and stalls.
When it's all over at 6am, suddenly the market is neat, orderly and quiet again. There are no signs of waste. Once again, those tens of thousands of fruit boxes got to their destinations.