Waterfall Bay or Pok Po Wan () is a

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

Pok Fu Lam Pok Fu Lam or Pokfulam is a residential area on Hong Kong Island, at the western end of the Southern District. It is a valley between Victoria Peak and Mount Kellett, around Telegraph Bay. Pok Fu Lam can claim several ''firsts'' in the histo ...

Hong Kong Island Hong Kong Island is an Islands and peninsulas of Hong Kong, island in the southern part of Hong Kong. Known colloquially and on road signs simply as Hong Kong, the island has a population of 1,289,500 and its population density is 16,390/km ...

, Hong Kong. Located on the

East Lamma Channel The East Lamma Channel () is a sea channel in Hong Kong. It lies between the western shores of Hong Kong Island and Ap Lei Chau, and the east side of Lamma Island. To the north it leads into the Sulphur Channel and Victoria Harbour, to the s ...

off the coast of

Wah Fu Estate Wah Fu Estate () is a public housing estate located next to Waterfall Bay, Pok Fu Lam in Hong Kong's Southern District. It was built on a new town concept in 1967 and was renovated in 2003. Divided into Wah Fu (I) Estate () and Wah Fu (II) E ...

and

Cyberport Cyberport is a business park in Southern District, Hong Kong consisting of four office buildings, a hotel, and a retail entertainment complex. It describes itself as a digital technology community with over 1,800 (800 on-site and 1,0 ...

Telegraph Bay Telegraph Bay or Kong Sin Wan (), formerly known as Tai Hau Wan (), is a bay in the west shore near Pok Fu Lam, between Sandy Bay and Waterfall Bay on the Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong. It is where the Cyberport is located. History In the early ...

, it is named after the waterfall that flows into it. The fresh water from this waterfall is said to have given the city its name – the translation of Hong Kong's name in

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...

香港 means "fragrant harbour". An eponymous park is now situated around the area.

Location

Waterfall Bay is located in the

area, with the waterfall itself encompassed by

and the residential complex of Bel-Air on the Peak in

. Geographically, the bay forms part of the

. The park surrounding the bay can be accessed by a road by the same name (Waterfall Bay Road), which is connected to Wah Fu Road. A trail at Waterfall Bay Park leads from a series of stairs down to a rocky/sandy area where the falls can be viewed from below.

History

Pre-1841 British colonisation

It is not known when Waterfall Bay was first discovered. The first English-language mention of Hong Kong or the waterfall was in Dr. Clark Abel's "Narrative of a Journey to China," which recounted his 1816 travels with William Amherst on Amherst's failed mission to

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Lord Amherst used the bay as the rendezvous point for his ships before proceeding north. The visit produced the first engravings of the falls. Fishermen working in the southern part of

referred to

Aberdeen Harbour Aberdeen Harbour, rebranded as the Port of Aberdeen in 2022, is a sea port located in the city of Aberdeen on the east coast of Scotland. The port was first established in 1136 and has been continually redeveloped over the centuries to provide ...

as "''Hong Kong''", which translates to "fragrant harbour". This name is attributed to the fresh water that flowed into Waterfall Bay from its namesake natural feature. The waterfall became well known among British and European sailors, who would refill their fresh water supplies directly from the falls on their journey towards other ports in Asia, such as Galle, Ceylon, and

Malacca Malacca ( ms, Melaka) is a state in Malaysia located in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula, next to the Strait of Malacca. Its capital is Malacca City, dubbed the Historic City, which has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site si ...

Malaya Malaya refers to a number of historical and current political entities related to what is currently Peninsular Malaysia in Southeast Asia: Political entities * British Malaya (1826–1957), a loose collection of the British colony of the Straits ...

. This brought about the city's reputation for its abundant supply of drinking water, one of the few places on the coast of China to have such a resource. As a result, the name derived from the waterfall was later utilised to refer to the entire island and

Victoria Harbour Victoria Harbour is a natural landform harbour in Hong Kong separating Hong Kong Island in the south from the Kowloon Peninsula to the north. The harbour's deep, sheltered waters and strategic location on South China Sea were instrumental i ...

Post-1841

Construction of the nearby

Pok Fu Lam Reservoir Pok Fu Lam Reservoir, formerly known as the Pokefulum Reservoir, is the first reservoir in Hong Kong. It is located in a valley in Pok Fu Lam. History Before the completion of the reservoir in 1863, the people in the city got their water by ...

—the first key water storage facility in the colony—was finished in 1863. In order to accomplish this, the

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream ...

s flowing from the

mountains A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher th ...

that are the

source Source may refer to: Research * Historical document * Historical source * Source (intelligence) or sub source, typically a confidential provider of non open-source intelligence * Source (journalism), a person, publication, publishing institute o ...

of the waterfall were

dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, a ...

med. This greatly reduced the flow intensity of the waterfall.

Second World War

Due to the bay's strategic location overlooking the Lamma Channel, it was utilised by the British during the

Second World War 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 ...

to defend the colony from the Japanese. A

pillbox Pillbox may refer to: * Pill organizer, a container for medicine * Pillbox hat, a woman's hat with a flat crown, straight upright sides, and no brim * Pillbox (military), concrete dug-in guard posts * Pillbox affair The Pillbox affair, also known ...

and searchlight—known as a Lyon Light—was constructed; the former served as a

bunker A bunker is a defensive military fortification designed to protect people and valued materials from falling bombs, artillery, or other attacks. Bunkers are almost always underground, in contrast to blockhouses which are mostly above ground. ...

for

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

soldiers during the

Battle of Hong Kong The Battle of Hong Kong (8–25 December 1941), also known as the Defence of Hong Kong and the Fall of Hong Kong, was one of the first battles of the Pacific War in World War II. On the same morning as the attack on Pearl Harbor, forces of the ...

. Now in ruins, they can still be accessed at

low tide Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon (and to a much lesser extent, the Sun) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another. Tide tables can ...

References