Month: January 2026

Diamond Hill

Creative Writing piece

The former Hollywood of Wong Tai Sin District

Diamond Hill, as to the contrary believe, it does not have any diamonds presents in its former mines. However, it did use to reside some of Hong Kong’s stars. So, today we will have a look at the history and landmarks of Diamond Hill.

Diamond Hill, there are several explanations circulating about why it got its name. The most widely accepted explanation is it is due to mistranslation from Cantonese to English the Chinese character “鑽” meaning to drill, “石” means rocks, combined means drilling rocks. However, the word “鑽石” has another meaning diamond, and originally had a stone quarry that was mined for decades, which is why this hill got its name. The another theory is that the crystals contained within the rocks mined from the area have a diamond-like luminance, which was reference in the Diamond Hill MTR station’s mosaic pattern. 

The story is all started back in the Southern Ming dynasty, when Tai Hom Village was founded by the descendants of the Ming imperial family. The family transitioned into landlords after Ren-feng Zhu purchased the land and built a village in the early 1800s. The village grew into a structured rural settlement in Kowloon. After World War II, a lot of refugees started building makeshift homes close to the village, turning the Diamond Hill area into a crowded squatter zone. Meanwhile, the film industry was booming, and Diamond Hill turned into a prime location for film studios. During its heyday, Tai Hom Village earned the title of the cradle of Hong Kong cinema, even picking up the nickname “Hollywood of Hong Kong.” Plus, the village was home to famous personalities like Nancy Sit Ka Yin, Sunny Dai Yiu Ming, and Andy Lau Tak Wah. However, by the late 1960s, local Cantonese cinema started to fade, leading to the shutdown of many film studios. In 1992, the Government began reclaiming land in Tai Hom Village, and the clearance was wrapped up by 2001. Despite, all that, the remains of the history of Tai Hom Village still exists. 

Time to talk about landmarks. 

Plaza Hollywood, it was located at the Northern part of Tai Hom Village. The name was chosen due to the place have historical influence to Hong Kong’s filming industry, subsequently the private residential estate Galaxia above the mall was named due to the exact reason. The mall was modelled after Hollywood’s aesthetics. At the large atrium, “Star Plaza,” is located in the very centre of the venue and displays 60 awards won by Hong Kong film stars at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

Hammer Hill Park, is a Chinese classical garden designed in Tang dynasty style architecture with hills, water features, trees, rocks, and wooden structures.

Diamond Hill Water Feature Park, it was located at the Southern part of Tai Hom Village. The three treasures of Tai Hom had been relocated and restored in this park, including the Stone House (a Grade III historic building), the machine gun bunker (a Grade II historic building), and the former Royal Air Force hangar (a Grade III historic building).

So, I hope you learn something from this. Tune in the others section to learn more about this district.

San Po Kong

Audio piece

The former industrial area of Wong Tai Sin District

Transcript

San Po Kong, the former industrial district of Hong Kong, but other than that you know next to nothing about this place, so today we will take a deeper loo k of this place.

It all started with the Japanese destroying the old Po Kong village in 1943 and turn it into an extension of the runway in the Kai Tak aerodrome.
(Alarm and plane sounds)

In 1958, the runway became useless as the aerodrome shifted southwards. And the government gave it a new purpose, an industrial area, where it manufacturers clothings, toys, red water buckets, just to name a few. However, in the 1980s, many factories in Hong Kong relocated to mainland China, and the industrial building were repurposed into offices and warehouses.

So what so special about San Po Kong, we have a library here that’s not unique, we have a Nullah that got repurposed into a river named Kai Tak River which people still fishes there for some reason. Other than that there’s nothing special about this place… Except

The eight streets of San Po Kong. The names are Tai Yau Street, Sheung Hei Street, Sam Chuk Street, Sze Mei Street, Ng Fong Street, Luk Hop Street, Tsat Po Street, Pat Tat Street. They are all named after simile of good luck and numbers, it was the first to be using such naming system in Hong Kong.