Spring Garden Lane is a street in

Wan Chai Wan Chai is situated at the western part of the Wan Chai District on the northern shore of Hong Kong Island, in Hong Kong. Its other boundaries are Canal Road to the east, Arsenal Street to the west and Bowen Road to the south. The area n ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...

, connecting

Queen's Road East Queen's Road East is a street in Wan Chai, in the north of Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong, connecting Admiralty in the west to Happy Valley in the east. Queen's Road East is one of the four sections of Queen's Road, and historically ...

to its south, and

Johnston Road Johnston Road () is a major road in Wan Chai on the Hong Kong Island of Hong Kong. Location Johnston Road spans from the junction with Heard Street, Hennessy Road and Stewart Road on its east, towards another junction with Hennessy Road and ...

to the north. It was one of the first focal areas developed by the British in Hong Kong during the 1840s.

History

During the early development of Wan Chai, one of the focal area of development was Spring Gardens. The name was used by the British during the early

Colonial Hong Kong Hong Kong was a colony and later a dependent territory of the British Empire from 1841 to 1997, apart from a period of occupation under the Japanese Empire from 1941 to 1945 during the Pacific War. The colonial period began with the Britis ...

era in the 1840s. The word "spring" in "Spring Gardens" was supposed to be referring to a

water spring A spring is a point of exit at which groundwater from an aquifer flows out on top of Earth's crust (pedosphere) and becomes surface water. It is a component of the hydrosphere. Springs have long been important for humans as a source of fresh w ...

. However, when the name "Spring Garden Lane" was translated into Chinese, the resulting name became "", with the character "" meaning spring season. The water spring mentioned possibly refers to the mountain creek beside Hopewell Centre in

. In the early 1900s, Spring Garden Lane and Sam Pan Street () became a red-light district with western and eastern prostitutes. To attract attention,

brothel A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub p ...

s were displaying large street number plates, and the area became known as "Big Number Brothels". During the founding of the People's Republic of China around 1948 to 1949, many of the

Communist party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...

guerrilla forces found their way to Hong Kong after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. One of them was the ''East River Guerrilla Force'' (), which formed a pro-Communist underground group called the Hailiushe (). They were headquartered in the rooftop of a multi-story house on Spring Garden Lane. The area and group was raided by the Hong Kong police, while it was an operating network cell. Around Spring Garden Lane are Lee Tung Street,

Swatow Street Swatow Street () is a street in the Wan Chai area of Hong Kong island, Hong Kong. It intersects with Queen's Road East and Johnston Road Johnston Road () is a major road in Wan Chai on the Hong Kong Island of Hong Kong. Location Johnston Roa ...

and Amoy Street where warehouses abounded, storing cargoes to be shipped to Chinese coastline cities.

Intersections

References

External links

Picture of "Big Number Houses"
on gwulo.com {{coord, 22.275425, 114.172710, display=title Wan Chai Roads on Hong Kong Island

History

Intersections

See also

References

External links