Skating, sachets of sugar and a cable car
If the weather gets really hot, ice skating could be a good way of cooling off. A suitable place for this recreational fun is City Plaza in Quarry Bay. The shopping centre is part of the Taikoo Shing housing complex, which belongs to the Swire Properties empire. If that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because at one time or other all Hong Kongers have had a pack or a sachet of Taikoo sugar in their hand.
The Swire Group is one of the oldest, and largest companies in the city, and so the name, picked by the original British company Butterfield & Swire in 1866 for various (Chinese) subsidiary firms, seems almost like an omen, because the Chinese word taikoo is not just simply the translation of “Swire,” as is often claimed, but means “big and old.” In the early 20th century Taikoo Sugar was the largest sugar mill in the world, and then in 1900 the company diversified by opening a large shipyard. Since the humid climate during the summer months fostered various diseases - particularly the plague - Taikoo built a sanatorium for its European employees on Mount Parker, high above the company’s headquarters. To get there they set up a cable car to take people the two kilometres to the top. It had two cars, was powered by a steam engine, and dismantled again in 1932.
Info
Address East or north of King’s Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong Island | Public Transport MTR Island Line (blue), Tai Koo Station, Exit D1, City Plaza | Tip The foundation stone of the yard can still be seen today on Tai Fung Avenue right next to the entrance to the garage of Citiplaza that was built in the disused dry dock.
Because of the persistent waves of refugees from China, housing was in high demand. Mobil Oil had led the way back in 1965, when it constructed the huge Mei Foo Sun Chuen housing development on a former storage space in Lai Chi Kok, Kowloon. After Taikoo shut down the sugar refinery and shipyard in 1970, suddenly it too owned the most desirable kind of waterfront building plots. The new subsidiary Swire Properties built 61 high-rise buildings, a shopping mall, and an underground MTR station. Within ten years the whole borough of Taikoo Shing, along with a complete infrastructure, had emerged.
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