Sham Shui Po District 深水埗

Setting and areas

The Home Affairs Department sets the district's limits as the Lion Rock Country Park to the north, the East Rail line to the east, Boundary Street to the south and the waterfront, including Stonecutters Island (昂船洲), to the west. Within those lines it divides the district into seven areas: Central Sham Shui Po, Shek Kip Mei (石硤尾), Lai Chi Kok (荔枝角), the West Kowloon Reclamation, Mei Foo (美孚), Cheung Sha Wan (長沙灣) and the low-density Yau Yat Chuen (又一村).

History

Public housing in Hong Kong began here. After a fire in the district's squatter shanties in December 1953 left thousands homeless, the government built a resettlement estate on the burnt-out site; the district council records Shek Kip Mei Estate, from 1954, as Hong Kong's first public rental housing estate. Private housing has a local first too: Mei Foo Sun Chuen, built in 1968, is described by the council as Hong Kong's first large-scale private estate, with 99 blocks in eight phases. In the 1970s the district also held a camp for Vietnamese refugees.

What to see

The Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb (李鄭屋漢墓) in Cheung Sha Wan is a cross-shaped brick tomb believed to date from the Eastern Han dynasty. It came to light by chance in August 1955, when the government was levelling a slope for resettlement blocks; visitors now view it through glass, and an exhibition hall opened in 1988, the year it became a declared monument. Mei Ho House (美荷樓), Block H of the 1950s Shek Kip Mei Estate, is the last single-block example of the Mark I design and reopened in 2013 as a youth hostel and heritage museum. In Lai Chi Kok, a former prison built between 1921 and 1924, later Lai Chi Kok Hospital, now houses the Jao Tsung-I Academy (饒宗頤文化館), with Chinese landscaped gardens and heritage galleries.

The district council notes wholesale and retail businesses in textiles, clothing, piece goods and non-staple food concentrated in Cheung Sha Wan and Lai Chi Kok, and describes the district as a distribution centre for computer and electronic goods, known for its computer shopping centres.

Highlights

• Mei Ho House 美荷楼生活馆: Surviving 1950s Mark I block of Shek Kip Mei Estate, reopened in 2013 as a youth hostel and heritage museum.
• Jao Tsung-I Academy 饶宗颐文化馆: Former prison and infectious-diseases hospital in Lai Chi Kok, with Chinese gardens and galleries.
• Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb 李鄭屋漢墓: Eastern Han brick tomb found in 1955; declared a monument in 1988.