History
Siu Sai Wan was originally an intelligence gathering centre for the United Kingdom. In 1947, Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand signed an agreement to jointly pursue the gathering of intelligence. The British Armed Forces then set up an intelligence gathering centre in Siu Sai Wan, one of the largest in the Far East, to monitor wireless communications from the then Republic of China (ROC), present day People's Republic of China (PRC). In the 1980s, as the handover of Hong Kong to the PRC became inevitable, the centre was completely destroyed.
At the same time, along with the development of the Mass Transit Railway, the resettlement estates in Chai Wan were to be demolished. To accommodate residents from these estates and from the expanding urban population, the government decided to develop Siu Sai Wan. At that time the name Siu Sai Wan was deemed "indecent" by the Government, who suggested to name the area "Siu Chai Wan" instead. This didn't sit well with local residents, and as a result when the Siu Sai Wan Estate was built a few years later, the name Siu Sai Wan was returned to the area. Nevertheless, taxi drivers are known to use a similar-sounding profane term when they refer to the area.
Siu Sai Wan faces Tathong Channel, an entrance to the Victoria Harbour, and promotes beautiful scenery. The government has built Home Ownership Scheme housings such as Harmony Garden.
Read more about this topic: Siu Sai Wan
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“In all history no class has been enfranchised without some selfish motive underlying. If to-day we could prove to Republicans or Democrats that every woman would vote for their party, we should be enfranchised.”
—Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947)