The name Yuen Long Kau Hui translates roughly as the old market quarter of Yuen Long — kau meaning old, hui meaning market gathering. In 1669 it was a coastal trading post; over the centuries, as the Pearl River Delta continued to silt up and land formed to the north, the shoreline receded and left the market stranded inland. Farmers, boat people, and traders came from as far as the coastal districts of Guangdong Province to buy and sell agricultural produce and daily necessities. The market was administered by the Kwong Yu Tong, a trust run by a branch of the Tang clan from Kam Tin — a formal institutional arrangement that gave the Tangs both commercial and social authority over western New Territories trade for generations.

Yuen Long Kau Hui is not a single settlement but a constellation of villages, most of them walled, arranged in a rough east-west line north of present-day Yuen Long MTR station. From west to east: Sai Pin Wai, Nam Pin Wai, Tung Tau Tsuen, Tsoi Uk Tsuen, Ying Lung Wai, Tai Wai Tsuen, and Wong Uk Tsuen. Each has its own clan history. Ying Lung Wai was founded by a Tang clan branch that relocated from Nam Pin Wai for feng shui reasons. Tai Wai Tsuen was established by the Wong and Choi clans around the early 16th century. Tai Kiu Tsuen, named for a stone bridge that once stood to its west, was settled some 400 years ago by four clans — the Chan, the Tang, the Tse, and the Leung — with the Chans reportedly originating from Bao'an in Guangdong. Seven of these villages later formed the Tung Tau Alliance, a formal grouping for shared governance and collective worship.

Religious and civic life in Yuen Long Kau Hui converged at the Yuen Kwan Yi Tai Temple on Cheung Shing Street, built probably between 1662 and 1722 and dedicated to the deities Hung Shing and Yeung Hau. It served as the main temple for Nam Pin Wai as well as the broader Kau Hui area. Beyond religious ceremonies, the temple functioned as a venue where merchants and villagers resolved disputes, discussed market affairs, and collectively governed trade. At one point it even served as a yamen — a local government office — with officials living on the premises. The temple occupied, in other words, the roles that courts, chambers of commerce, and community halls would separately fill in a later era.

Chun Yuen Ngat, a former pawnshop at No. 72 Cheung Shing Street, was founded by Tang Lim-ming of the Tang clan. Originally located on Lee Yick Street, it moved to its present site in the 1910s and continued operating until World War II, when the market's decline brought business to a halt. After the war, the building found a second life as a school for village children, serving that purpose from the 1930s to the 1960s, before briefly hosting a kindergarten in 1967 and 1968. The structure stands today as a listed historic building. Nearby, early 20th-century shophouses — tong-lau in Cantonese, the distinctive column-fronted terrace buildings of southern Chinese cities — survive at Nam Mun Hau. In a neighbourhood where decades of redevelopment have erased much of the streetscape, their presence is worth pausing over.

On the northern edge of the Kau Hui cluster sits Shan Pui Tsuen, founded by Lam Siu-yuen, a 13th-generation member of the Lam clan who moved from Tai Wai Tsuen roughly 200 years ago. Near the village entrance, a small boat serves as a ferry across the Shan Pui River to Nam Sang Wai on the northern bank — a wetland area that floods seasonally and hosts migratory birds. It is one of the few places in Yuen Long where the old relationship between settlement and waterway persists in something close to its original form: a boat, a river, and the sound of birds on the far bank.