Ngau Tau Kok
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ngau Tau Kok (牛頭角, Jyutping: ngau4 tau4 gok3, Pinyin: Niútóujiǎo) is an area of Kowloon, Hong Kong, located at the northern part of Kwun Tong District, next to Kowloon Bay. It covers Jordon Valley, Ngau Tau Kok and Upper Kwun Tong Town Central. More than 210,000 in population are living in Ngau Tau Kok. It is one of the major residential areas in Kwun Tong District.
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[edit] Geography
In Chinese, Ngau Tau Kok means ox horn. Before the reclamation of Kowloon Bay, the coastal line of Ngau Tau Kok looked like a cow horn shape, therefore there was namely Ox Horn (in Cantonese: Ngau Tau Kok). There are 2 main hills located in Ngau Tau Kok, Jordon Valley (Shum Wan Shan) and Crocodile Hill (Lok Yue Shan), around half of the resential blocks are built on the hills in Ngau Tau Kok.
[edit] Features
Ngau Tau Kok is a residential area as well as the by-town central of Kwun Tong District because it is just next to the Kwun Tong town central, and the development of Ngau Tau Kok is highly centralized. The areas around Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate is famous for its street food, including congee, noodles and many other traditional Cantonese cuisine. In summer, Ngau Tau Kok has many religious ceremonies to cerebrate the Yu-lan festival, a festival from Chinese ghost tales.
[edit] History
Ngau Tau Kok has a long history of Hakka habitants. In early colonial days of Hong Kong, it is one of the four hills of Kowloon (九龍四山) in eastern Kowloon where the hills are famous for their granite. The granite stones from Ngau Tau Kok were transported to Victoria City on the Hong Kong Island over the Victoria Harbour. Some stones were even exported to Canton City.
Before being a residential area, Ngau Tau Kok was an industrial area. Amoy Food manufacturing was sited in Ngau Tau Kok for manufacturing soy sauce.
A reservoir, located in Jordon Valley, provided fresh water to residents in Ngau Tau Kok. The reservoir has since then been disposed and is now used as a refuse reclamation area. A battery was also found in Jordon Valley but it was removed due to the urban development project.
Before the MTR Kowloon Bay Depot was built, the site was formerly the Ngau Tau Kok Industrial Estate.
[edit] SARS Outbreaks
During the spring of 2003, Ngau Tau Kok was one of the famous area in Hong Kong due to the SARS outbreaks. Amoy Garden (淘大花園), a high-density private housing estate, having a serious outbreaks of SARS. Most of the SARS sufferers were living in Block E of Amoy Garden. Ngau Tak Kok was also one of the highly suffered area with SARS in Hong Kong during this time.
[edit] Town Gas Explosion
On 11 April 2006, a fatal underground explosion was taken place in Ngau Tau Kok Road and Jordon Valley North Road, causing 2 deaths and 8 injuiries. Wai King Building (偉景樓) in Ngau Tau Kok was damaged serviously. The reason of the explosion was due to the leakage of the town gas, one of the major utility in Hong Kong, from the underground pipes.
[edit] Transport
Major roads in Ngau Tau Kok includes:
- Choi Ha Road
- Chun Wah Road
- Elegance Road
- Kung Lok Road
- Nagu Tau Kok Road
- Shun Lee Tsuen Road
An MTR station in the northern part of Ngau Tau Kok is named Kowloon Bay, the Ngau Tau Kok MTR station is located in the southern part of Ngau Tau Kok. Both MTR stations are on the Kwun Tong Line.
