About Sai Kung & Clearwater Bay Magazine

Sai Kung & Clearwater Bay Magazine

Sai Kung & Clearwater Bay Magazine is a free-distributed English-language monthly lifestyle magazine based in Sai Kung, Hong Kong. It was founded by Tom Hilditch and first published on 1 October 2009 as simply Sai Kung Magazine, a 36-page issue published by Fast Media Ltd, before taking its longer title in January 2010; it is now published by Hong Kong Living Ltd. It is distributed free at around 100 venues including restaurants, bars, coffee shops, bookshops, country clubs, private residential complexes and international schools, and targets affluent professionals raising families in the Sai Kung and Clear Water Bay coastal suburbs.

The magazine was the founding title of the publishing company that became Hong Kong Living Ltd, and it remains the company's signature district magazine. Its formula — a monthly magazine about one well-defined corner of Hong Kong, written for the people who live there — was later replicated in sister titles for other districts. Sai Kung, a former fishing town in the eastern New Territories famed for its seafood restaurants, country parks, islands and beaches, gives the magazine an unusually strong sense of place.

Founding in 2009

Sai Kung & Clearwater Bay Magazine was founded by Tom Hilditch, a journalist and publisher who had previously been group editorial director of Asia City Publishing, producer of HK Magazine and the Where guides. After leaving Asia City, Hilditch founded Fast Media Ltd — the company that later became Hong Kong Living Ltd — and Sai Kung Magazine was its founding publication. The first issue appeared on 1 October 2009 and ran to 36 pages.

The choice of Sai Kung was strategic. The town and the neighbouring Clear Water Bay peninsula attracted a growing population of affluent professionals who worked in Hong Kong's business districts but chose to raise their families in the more spacious coastal suburbs, among village houses, marinas and country parks. No English-language magazine served that community specifically. Sai Kung Magazine set out to be that community's own title, and its success demonstrated the viability of hyper-local English-language publishing in Hong Kong's suburbs.

Renaming and growth

In January 2010, three months after launch, the title was changed to Sai Kung & Clearwater Bay Magazine, acknowledging the full catchment of its readership: the Sai Kung town area and the Clear Water Bay peninsula, whose residential developments, beaches and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology campus form a natural community with Sai Kung. By June 2010 the magazine had grown to 60 pages, a substantial expansion from the 36-page first issue within its first year.

New issues are distributed on the first day of each month. The magazine prints 10,000 copies per month and has claimed a readership of around 31,000 readers per month — a ratio of roughly three readers per copy, consistent with a free magazine picked up in shared spaces such as cafes, clubs and school common rooms. That circulation model, small in absolute terms but concentrated in one wealthy catchment, is the economic heart of the title.

A magazine for the coastal suburbs

The magazine targets highly affluent professionals who work in Hong Kong but raise their families in the territory's spacious coastal suburbs. According to a survey conducted by the magazine in 2010, 88% of its readers held at least one university degree and 80% earned more than HK$100,000 per month. Those figures describe one of Hong Kong's richest residential audiences, concentrated in a defined geography — exactly the proposition the magazine offers its advertisers.

Sai Kung's character shapes the readership. The district is known as Hong Kong's back garden: the Sai Kung Peninsula and its country parks, the beaches and islands of the Sai Kung archipelago, seafood restaurants along the town's waterfront promenade, and marinas and boating facilities at Hebe Haven and Clear Water Bay. Residents choose the area for space, greenery and the sea, and the magazine's identity is built on that choice: it is a lifestyle magazine for people whose lifestyle is defined by living on the coast at the edge of the city.

The free distribution model

The magazine is distributed free at around 100 venues, including restaurants, bars, coffee shops, bookshops, country clubs, private residential complexes and international schools. This venue list maps the daily geography of its readers: the places where Sai Kung and Clear Water Bay families eat, socialise, exercise, live and send their children to school. A copy encountered in a clubhouse or a cafe reaches readers in their own neighbourhood, in a context of trust that a newsstand purchase does not create.

Free distribution also shapes the magazine's relationship with its community. It is read as a local amenity — part of the district's furniture — and its advertisers are correspondingly local: property agents selling village houses and waterfront apartments, restaurants, marinas, schools, clubs and family services. The model pioneered here in 2009 became the template for the publisher's later district magazines elsewhere in Hong Kong.

Contents and regular features

Sai Kung Magazine usually contains lifestyle features about local events, dining, property, boating, hiking, parenting and local environment issues. Its regular sections have included Letters, through which readers address the magazine and the community. The mix is purposefully parochial: dining coverage means Sai Kung's seafood restaurants and Clear Water Bay's cafes; property coverage means the district's village houses and luxury developments; outdoors coverage means the hiking trails of the Sai Kung country parks and boating in its waters.

Parenting and education advice and local entertainment listings round out the service content. For a readership of professionals raising families far from the city centre, a magazine that answers neighbourhood questions — which school, which trail, which restaurant, what is on this month — performs a function that metropolitan titles cannot. The environmental coverage, meanwhile, reflects a community that lives inside a landscape of country parks and marine areas and has strong views about their protection.

Notable interviews

The magazine's interviews have reached well beyond the district. Past interviewees have included Sir David Tang, the Hong Kong businessman and social figure; Jill Robinson, the animal-welfare campaigner known for her work rescuing bears in Asia; film director Kenneth Bi; and Wayne Parfitt. The list suggests the magazine's ambitions for its feature well: figures of Hong Kong-wide and international standing, interviewed for a district readership.

Interviews of that kind serve a young local magazine in two ways. They signal to readers that their neighbourhood title is taken seriously by notable Hong Kong figures, and they signal to advertisers that the title punches above its geographic weight. For a 36-page free magazine launched in a fishing town, securing such interviewees within its early years was a mark of editorial confidence.

Publisher: from Fast Media to Hong Kong Living

The magazine's publisher was originally Fast Media Ltd, the private Hong Kong company Hilditch founded. In June 2017 Fast Media rebranded as Hong Kong Living Ltd, and the magazine is now published under that name, as a publication of Hong Kong Living Limited. Within the group it sits alongside the flagship Hong Kong Living magazine, Southside & The Peak Magazine and Expat Parent Magazine, as part of Hong Kong's leading independent media group, in the company's description, for high-net-worth residents.

The Sai Kung title was the seed of that group. The company it founded went on to publish district magazines for other parts of Hong Kong, annual guides including a Hong Kong Schools Guide and a Family Guide, and events such as the Hong Kong Dining Awards. The survival and growth of the parent company testify to the original insight of 2009: that Hong Kong's suburban communities could sustain English-language magazines of their own.

Digital life

The magazine's website is saikung.com, and its content also flows through the Hong Kong Living digital platform, where Sai Kung coverage includes practical guides such as how to get to Sai Kung by MTR, minibus, bus and car, and features on family-friendly beach walks such as Trio Beach. The digital presence extends the magazine's service role beyond the monthly print cycle, answering the questions visitors and new residents actually search for.

Adventure and outdoors writers contribute Sai Kung columns across the group's magazines, with monthly outdoor columns in the Sai Kung and Southside titles describing hikes such as the route over Sai Wan Shan taking in the best of Sai Kung's beaches. The district's landscape — trails, beaches, islands and sea — keeps generating the content on which the magazine was founded.

Place among Hong Kong community magazines

Sai Kung & Clearwater Bay Magazine occupies a distinctive place in Hong Kong media: an English-language magazine for a single suburban district, founded in 2009, that outlasted many metropolitan titles and seeded a publishing group. Its formula — free distribution at about 100 local venues, 10,000 copies a month, a claimed 31,000 readers, sharply local content spanning dining, property, boating, hiking, parenting and the environment — was a working proof that in Hong Kong, community could be a circulation strategy.

The magazine also documents a social geography. Its pages record the life of the affluent coastal suburbs that Hong Kong's professional class built for itself in the eastern New Territories — a community of families trading commuting time for space, sea air and country parks. For as long as that community exists, its magazine remains its mirror and its noticeboard.