History
Tai Wai Village, located in Tai Wai, next to Sha Tin, and the oldest and largest walled village in Sha Tin District, was built in 1574, during the Ming Dynasty.
Before British rule in Hong Kong, the area of Sha Tin and its vicinity was referred to as Lek Yuen (lit. "source of trickling" or "source of clear water"). Colonial officials allegedly mistook the name of the Sha Tin Wai village as the name of the area and it has been used ever since. Nowadays, the original name is used to refer to Lek Yuen Estate.
Sha Tin was formerly a market town at the present location of Sha Tin Centre Street and New Town Plaza shopping centre, near the Sha Tin Station of the MTR East Rail Line.
Sha Tin was the location of the first flight of a powered aircraft in Hong Kong in 1911. The aeroplane was named as the Spirit of Sha Tin (Chinese: 沙田精神號). A full size replica of this plane now hangs in Hong Kong International Airport.
The area was formerly agricultural farmland. Before Sha Tin's development into a new town, Hung Mui Kuk (紅梅谷), southwest of Sha Tin, was perennially the main site for school picnics. The valley remains a popular barbecue site.
Starting in the 1970s, the area became part of the Sha Tin New Town development. Since then, the economy in the area has greatly improved and living standards have also increased.
Read more about this topic: Sha Tin
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“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
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—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)