Originally, British Kowloon Comprised only the Yau-Tsim-Mong District

Nowadays, Kowloon covers a vast area stretching from Mei Foo in the West to Yau Tong and Lei Yue Mun in the East, and Lion Rock Country Park in the North. However, if you had visited Kowloon in the second half of the 19th century, you would have been restricted to a much smaller part of Kowloon.

After the British defeated the Chinese Empire in the Second Opium War in 1860, the Qing Dynasty was compelled to sign the Convention of Peking, which included, among other provisions, the cession of the Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island to the British.

However, the Kowloon Peninsula as we know it today did not exist in the 19th century, as extensive land reclamation in the 20th century widened the peninsula eastward, westward, and southward. So much so that Stonecutters Island, for instance, is no longer an island.

Originally, and according to the Convention of Peking, British Kowloon was further restricted to District No. 1, which is now known as the Yau-Tsim-Mong district, encompassing Tsim Sha Tsui, Yau Ma Tei, and Mong Kok.

Today, one can still walk along the 19th-century border that separated British Kowloon from Chinese Kowloon, which has been turned into the very explicit Boundary Street.