Sung Wong Toi is an important historic relic in Ma Tau Chung,

Kowloon Kowloon () is an urban area in Hong Kong comprising the Kowloon Peninsula and New Kowloon. With a population of 2,019,533 and a population density of in 2006, it is the most populous area in Hong Kong, compared with Hong Kong Island and t ...

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 city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. While its remaining portion is now located in the Sung Wong Toi Garden () at the junction of Ma Tau Chung Road and

Sung Wong Toi Road Sung may refer to: *Sung, Cambodia, commune in Samlout District, Battambang Province *Singing (past participle of the verb "to sing") Chinese history *Song (state) (宋) (11th century BC – 286 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, a ...

, it was originally a 45-metre-tall

boulder In geology, a boulder (or rarely bowlder) is a rock fragment with size greater than in diameter. Smaller pieces are called cobbles and pebbles. While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive. In c ...

standing on the top of

Sacred Hill Sacred Hill () is a disappeared hill in Kowloon, Hong Kong. It is where a historical boulder called Sung Wong Toi was previously located. Sacred Hill is also known as Hill of the King of Sung in some old maps. The name "Sacred Hill" is widely bel ...

() in Ma Tau Chung above Kowloon Bay.

Etymology

The name ''Sung Wong Toi'' literally means ''Terrace of the Sung kings''. The stone is believed to have been a memorial to the last two boy emperors of the

Southern Song dynasty The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...

, Zhao Shi and Zhao Bing, who temporarily lived in Hong Kong from 1277 to 1279. In historical maps and documents, Sung Wong Toi is also known as Hill of the King of the Sung and Song Wong Toi in some occasions.

History

Sung Wong Toi Hill, Kowloon City, Kowloon, c

Song dynasty

According to historical records, when the child emperors Zhao Shi and Zhao Bing of the

Song dynasty The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...

were fleeing south when the Song Empire was gradually being conquered by the

Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fifth ...

in the late 13th century, they took refuge at the Sacred Hill along the seashore. Zhao Shi died of illness in Hong Kong, while Zhao Bing died when the Song loyalist Lu Xiufu put him on his shoulders and jumped off a cliff following the defeat of Song by the Yuan at the naval Battle of Yamen.

Yuan dynasty

After the Song dynasty was overthrown by the Yuan dynasty in 1279, local residents inscribed the words "Sung Wong Toi" on this large rock that was on the Sacred Hill at that time. Note that the Chinese character

王 is a Chinese character encountered in East Asian languages. It was grouped with as Radical 96 in the ''Kangxi'' radicals. It may also refer to: * kings, in reference to non-Chinese states * the early Chinese sovereigns of the Xia, Shang, and ...

(

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

wáng, meaning ''king'') is carved in the stone instead of the conventional character 皇 (

huáng, meaning ''

emperor An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...

''). Both 王 and 皇 are pronounced as "Wong" in Cantonese. This may have been done by the locals to avoid angering the Yuan emperors. The Hong Kong government (while under British rule) in 1959 recognized the nature of this intentional word choice, preferred using the character for "emperor" (皇) to name the surrounding locations associated with Sung Wong Toi, namely the park built for settling the trimmed monolith, the nearby road and the metro station.

Qing dynasty

In 1807, seven smaller characters were added on the right side of the stone to record the renovation work during the reign of the

Jiaqing Emperor The Jiaqing Emperor (13 November 1760 – 2 September 1820), also known by his temple name Emperor Renzong of Qing, born Yongyan, was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and the fifth Qing emperor to rule over China proper, fro ...

Japanese occupation

During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in 1941–1945, the boulder was dislodged from its place when the Sacred Hill was levelled for an extension of the Kai Tak Airport. A portion of the rock inscribed with Chinese characters survived the blasting operation. That part of the boulder, about one-third of its original size, displays the Chinese name of the stone, "Sung Wong Toi".

Post-World War II

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 vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, this portion of the stone was shaped into a rectangular block and moved to the Sung Wong Toi Garden, a small park especially constructed for it. This park is located in the present-day Kowloon City District, at the junction of Sung Wong Toi Road and Ma Tau Chung Road, which is close to the stone's original site. The construction work of the park was completed in the winter of 1945. The park was planned be relocated to nearby

Kai Tak Development The Kai Tak Development (), abbreviated as "KTD" and formerly called South East Kowloon Development (), refers to the redevelopment of the former Kai Tak Airport site in Kai Tak, Kowloon, Hong Kong. After the airport relocated to Chek Lap Kok i ...

as Sung Wong Toi Park.

References

*''In search of the past: a guide to the antiquities of Hong Kong'' 香港文物志, The Urban Council of Hong Kong, 1988.

External links

An account about the boulderFilm Services OfficeMaps by Centamap
* ttp://www.greatarchaeology.com/Archa_monument_review.php?archaeological_monument=Sung_Wong_Toi Description and History {{Commons category, Sung Wong Toi History of Hong Kong Song dynasty Urban public parks and gardens in Hong Kong Monuments and memorials in Hong Kong Ma Tau Chung