Years of university studies in the UK is not likely to lure you back into a fishing village in Hong Kong to run the family business of making and selling shrimp paste and salted fish. But that’s exactly what Joan Chui did.

“I spent four years in the UK, and after my graduation, I started to think about returning to Yick Cheong to help out my family business,” Joan tells Girl City, a weekly video show of China Daily Hong Kong. It’s a path unheard of among her generation.

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A third-generation custodian of legacy brand Yick Cheong Ho, Joan says she is aware many are averse to the idea of settling back to the familiar pungent smells of salted fish and shrimp paste fermenting in the fishing village of Tai O. “That's why not many people like to continue the business—the third generation, the second generation.”

But it’s worth preserving, she says of the family business founded by her grandfather in 1938. “I think these traditional techniques need to be promoted to let more Hong Kong people know about shrimp paste and salted fish,” she says, noting there are but a few licensed manufacturers producing these goods in the city. And besides, shrimp paste, shrimp sauce, and salted fish were recognized as Hong Kong’s intangible cultural heritage in 2014, Joan adds.

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“I am proud of my family selling this kind of traditional food,” she says. “I don't want to see one day the sign of Yick Cheong being taken off from the entrance. Yick Cheong would disappear, or the place I grew up would have disappeared. I feel sad about it. I want more people to know about the fishing culture in Hong Kong.”