You may know that the Chinese name of Causeway Bay is Tung Lo Wan, and that it literally means “Copper Gong Bay”. So, “Cooper Gong” and “Causeway”. It probably baffles you!

Causeway Bay was a silted area off the coast, and the foreshore was a stretch of shadow mudflat. Mangroves were found at the water’s edge close to the land (i.e. the area around today’s Hong Kong Central Library, Causeway Bay Sports Ground and Queen’s College), so always flooded at high tide when bay water poured in. Despite that, Causeway Bay was inhabited even before the city was opened up. While the tenants of these indigenous villages, including Soo Kun Poo and Tai Hang, were mostly from the Pang’s family, the farmland was owned by the Liu Clan of Sheung Shui. As the semicircular bay embraced a disc-shaped ocean as round as a Chinese gong, the indigenous people called the area “Copper Gong Bay”.