Spring Garden Lane ( Chinese: 春園街) is a street in

Wan Chai Wan Chai (Traditional Chinese characters, Chinese: 灣仔) is located in the western part of Wan Chai District on the northern shore of Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong. It is bounded by Canal Road, Hong Kong, Canal Road to the east, Arsenal St ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

, 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, Hong Kong, Admiralty in the west to Happy Valley, Hong Kong, Happy Valley in the east. Queen's Road East is one of the four section ...

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 under British rule from 1841 to 1997, except for a brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II from 1941 to 1945. It was a crown colony of the United Kingdom from 1841 to 1981, and a dependent territory from 1981 to ...

era in the 1840s. The word "spring" in "Spring Gardens" was supposed to be referring to a water spring. 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, strumpet house, bordello, bawdy house, ranch, house of ill repute, house of ill fame, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activity with prostitutes. For legal or cultural reasons, establis ...

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

guerrilla Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, Partisan (military), partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include Children in the military, recruite ...

forces found their way to Hong Kong after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. 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 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