Kowloon City

English

Etymology

Calque of Chinese 九龍城／九龙城 (literally “Kowloon City”).

Proper noun

Kowloon City

1. An area in Kowloon City district, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
   • 1964 [1958], G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong‎^[1], Oxford University Press, page 267:

     The question of Kowloon City was discussed with Li Hung-chang, Viceroy of Kwantung^{[sic – meaning Kwangtung]} and Kwangsi Provinces, when he passed through the colony in July 1900. A Colonial Office official minuted on this, 'We have definitely decided not to allow the City to fall under Chinese jurisdiction, and have told the Chinese government so, and have passed an order in council including it in the New Territory, and the matter is at an end.' The Foreign Office arrangement of leaving Kowloon City as it was, was dropped, but Chinese opinion in Kwangtung Province continued to regard it as not forming part of the lease.

   • 1989 January 15, Martin Booth, “HONG KONG SKYSCRAPERS AND SEA DRAGONS”, in The Washington Post‎^[2], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on April 07, 2024‎^[3]:

     Her research is, given her circumstances as a visitor, impeccable, although there are inevitably tiny mistakes. These will irk the Hong Kong cognoscenti (Kowloon City, for example, is not at the southern tip of Kowloon Peninsula but to the northeast) yet detract little from the tour de force this book surely is; for it is much more than a travel book, much more than a historical or social study.

   • 1994, Bruce Thomas, Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit: A Biography by Bruce Thomas‎^[4], Frog, Ltd., page 4:

     The flight path into Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport is one of the trickiest in the world; planes approach between steep hills and over the rooftops of Kowloon City to swoop onto a strip of land that juts out into the harbor.

   • 2010, Andrew Stone, Piera Chan, Chung Wah Chow, “Neighbourhoods & Islands”, in Hong Kong & Macau City Guide (Lonely Planet)‎^[5], 14th edition, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 114, column 1:

     The district of Wong Tai Sin to the north of Kowloon City is known for two things: its enormous and faceless housing estate and one of the most active and interesting temples in the territory.

   • 2015, Charley Lanyon, Maloy Luakian, Dorothy So, Kate Springer, Fodor's Hong Kong: With a Side Trip to Macau‎^[6], 24th edition, Fodor's Travel, page 11:

     Immigrants from other parts of Asia also marked out their territories on the city’s culinary map, with Kowloon City known for its Thai food, Tsim Sha Tsui for Indian and Korean, and Causeway Bay for Japanese.

   • 2016 November 23, Lucas Peterson, “In Hong Kong’s Kowloon, the Markets Rule”, in The New York Times‎^[7], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 23 November 2016, Travel‎^[8]:

     On another day, I went for a walk through Kowloon City, a section of town that partly includes an actual walled city with a history that can be traced back centuries and was demolished in the 1990s (it’s now a public park).

2. A district of Hong Kong.

Translations

area in Hong Kong

• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 九龍城／九龙城 (gau² lung⁴ sing⁴)

  Mandarin: 九龍城／九龙城 (zh) (Jiǔlóngchéng)

Further reading

• Kowloon City at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.