Spring Garden Lane

Spring Garden Lane (Chinese: 春園街) is a street in Wan Chai, Hong Kong, connecting Queen's Road East to its south, and Johnston Road to the north. It was one of the first focal areas developed by the British in Hong Kong during the 1840s.

Spring Garden Lane

Southern end of Spring Garden Lane, viewed from Queen's Road East
Native name	春園街 (Chinese)
Length	0.36 km (0.22 mi)[1]
Location	Wan Chai
South end	Kennedy Road
Major junctions	Queen's Road East
North end	Johnston Road
Construction
Completion	1840s

Spring Garden Lane
Traditional Chinese	春園街
Simplified Chinese	春园街
Jyutping	Ceon1 jyun4 gaai1
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Chūn Yuán Jiē Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Chēun yùhn gāai Jyutping Ceon1 jyun4 gaai1

Spring Gardens, 20 August 1846.

Northern end of Spring Garden Lane, viewed from Johnston Road.

History

During the early development of Wan Chai, one of the focal area of development was Spring Gardens. The name was used by the British during the early colonial Hong Kong era in the 1840s.^[2] The word "spring" in "Spring Gardens" was supposed to be referring to a water spring. However, when the name "Spring Garden Lane" was translated into Chinese, the resulting name became "春園街", with the character "春" meaning spring season.^[3] The water spring mentioned possibly refers to the mountain creek beside Hopewell Centre in Queen's Road East.

In the early 1900s, Spring Garden Lane and Sam Pan Street (三板街) became a red-light district with western and eastern prostitutes. To attract attention, brothels were displaying large street number plates, and the area became known as "Big Number Brothels".^[4][5]

During the founding of the People's Republic of China around 1948 to 1949, many of the Communist party guerrilla forces found their way to Hong Kong after World War II. One of them was the East River Guerrilla Force (東江縱隊), which formed a pro-Communist underground group called the Hailiushe (海流社). They were headquartered in the rooftop of a multi-story house on Spring Garden Lane. The area and group was raided by the Hong Kong police, while it was an operating network cell.^[6]

Around Spring Garden Lane are Lee Tung Street, Swatow Street and Amoy Street where warehouses abounded, storing cargoes to be shipped to Chinese coastline cities.

Intersections

The entire street is in Wan Chai, Wan Chai District.

km[1]	mi	Destinations	Notes
0.00	0.00	Kennedy Road	Pedestrianized
0.10	0.062	Cul-de-sac	Southern terminus for traffic
0.15	0.093	Queen's Road East
0.25	0.16	Cross Street	Closed to traffic
0.36	0.22	Johnston Road	Northern terminus
1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi       Closed/former

See also

• Queen's Road East, for a list of lanes connecting Johnston Road and Queen's Road East