History
Historically, the street marked the boundary between the southern part of Kowloon, ceded by Qing China to the United Kingdom in 1860, and the northern part of Kowloon (New Kowloon), which remained part of China until it was leased as part of the New Territories to the United Kingdom in 1898 for 99 years. After the lease, the boundary was renamed from Boundary Line to Old Frontier Line.
The boundary was made visible by a long line of high bamboo fences which effectively blocked smuggling between Chinese Kowloon and British Kowloon at that time. It became obsolete when New Territories joined the colony.
Although the street is the historical mark on the boundary, the road did not come to exist until 1934, more than 30 years after the lease of boundary north. The road was built to accelerate the development of Kowloon Tong and identify the difference in calculation of rates between the boundary north and south.
Read more about this topic: Boundary Street
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“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.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
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—William Faulkner (1897–1962)