Reclamation Street Marks the Boundary of Kowloon’s Pre-1860 Coast

If you could travel back in time to the mid-nineteenth century, you would be hard-pressed to recognise the shoreline of the Kowloon Peninsula. Since it was ceded to the British Empire in 1860, numerous reclamation projects have dramatically increased Kowloon's land area.

However, if you look closely, you can still see hints of Kowloon’s past all over the territory. Boundary Street, for instance—situated between the Yau Tsim Mong District and the districts of Sham Shui Po and Kowloon City—marks the original boundary between British Kowloon and Chinese Kowloon.

Likewise, whenever you walk along the appropriately named Reclamation Street, which runs from Nanking Street near Jordan MTR station to Prince Edward Road West in Mong Kok, you are walking along what was once the shoreline of the peninsula. This was the land the Qing Dynasty ceded to the British following the signing of the Convention of Peking.

Since then, some of the most important land reclamation projects in Hong Kong’s history—the largest of which increased the size of the Kowloon Peninsula by one third—have pushed the coast some 900 metres (nearly 3,000 feet) further west from its original position.