Aberdeen West Typhoon Shelter occupies the channel directly between Aberdeen town and the northern shore of Ap Lei Chau, incorporating the bay known as Shek Pai Wan or Aberdeen Bay. This is the shelter most closely associated with the floating village — the dense cluster of sampans, junks, and live-aboard boats that has defined the harbour's visual character for generations. Aberdeen South Typhoon Shelter spreads further east into Aberdeen Channel, running between Wong Chuk Hang on Hong Kong Island and the eastern shore of Ap Lei Chau. It is a larger, more open expanse, containing the bays of Sham Wan — where Aberdeen Marina is located — and Po Chong Wan. The Ap Lei Chau Bridge and Aberdeen Channel Bridge divide the two shelters roughly at their boundaries. Together, they enclose what would otherwise be an exposed coastal channel into something that boats can actually trust.

The Aberdeen floating village exists within the West Typhoon Shelter, and has for as long as living memory extends. The people who have lived aboard boats here — primarily the Tanka, a maritime community whose history in these waters predates the British colonial period — organised their lives around the harbour's rhythms rather than the city's. Boats served as homes, as workplaces, as the social fabric of a community that didn't need the shore for most of what daily life required. Neighbours were the boats moored alongside you. Paths between households were the gaps between hulls. Children grew up knowing the water's movements before they knew much about the land. Over the second half of the twentieth century, government housing programmes resettled most boat-dwelling families ashore. The floating village today is far smaller than it once was, but people still live on the water in the shelter, maintaining a way of life that simply hasn't fully dissolved into the surrounding city.

For forty-four years, the South Typhoon Shelter was also home to the Jumbo Kingdom, a floating restaurant designed as an elaborate replica of an imperial Chinese palace — layered roofs, gilded ornamentation, red and gold paint — moored in the channel between the residential towers of Ap Lei Chau and the hills of Wong Chuk Hang. The restaurant opened in 1976, attracting over 30 million visitors before closing in 2020 as pandemic restrictions took hold. In 2022, it was towed away from the shelter for the last time. While being moved through rough seas near the Paracel Islands, it capsized and sank. The closure ended an era: the South Typhoon Shelter is now without its most recognisable landmark, and the floating restaurants that once made Aberdeen Harbour famous have passed into history.