Tai A Chau
Tai A Chau, also known as South Soko Island, is the largest island in the Soko Islands south of Hong Kong. It lies about 4.5 km south of Lantau Island and near the edge of Hong Kong’s territorial waters. The island covers about 1.2 square kilometers and rises up to 154 meters. Its coastline is steep and rocky, and today the island is uninhabited.
Historically, two villages, Ha Tsuen and Sheung Tsuen, were on the island. The villagers left in the 1980s when a detention camp for Vietnamese refugees was built.
From 1991 to 1996, the Tai A Chau Detention Centre housed thousands of Vietnamese refugees, peaking at around 9,700 people in November 1991. The camp closed in June 1996, and the remaining refugees were moved to other places, including HMS Tamar on Stonecutters Island and the Whitehead Detention Centre in Wu Kai Sha, before resettling in the United States. The centre was demolished after Hong Kong’s handover in 1997.
In February 2023, police conducted a crowd-control training on the island, leaving spent tear gas grenades in the nearby South Lantau Marine Park area.
Today, Tai A Chau has a Tin Hau temple and seven earth shrines. Two helicopter landing pads and a small jetty remain from the old detention facility. The island is recognized as a village under Hong Kong’s New Territories Small House Policy and is sometimes referred to as South Soko Island in the media.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 09:03 (CET).