History
On 20 January 1841, Charles Elliot of Britain and Qishan of the Qing Dynasty agreed to the Convention of Chuenpee. A navy official Edward Belcher led a fleet to land in Hong Kong. The surveyors of fleet found an elevated plain near the shore suitable for camping in the west side of the island. A road was built from the shore to the camp. The road became Possession Street later. The elevated plain is present-day Hollywood Road Garden, also known as Tai Tat Tei.
In 26 January 1841, the commander of Far East Fleet James John Gordon Bremer came to Hong Kong by HMS Calliope. A flag rise and gun ceremony marked the official possession of Hong Kong. And the landing venue was renamed as Possession Point.
At the end of the 19th century, the street was full of brothels, until 1903, when they were relocated to Shek Tong Tsui and the premises was replaced with housing. It resulted in the golden period of Shek Tong Tsui, tong sai fung yuet (塘西風月), where wealthy Chinese merchants gathered.
Read more about this topic: Possession Street
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)