Sung Wong Toi was known in Hong Kong as “the foremost site to dwell on the antiquated past”. It used to encompass the area marked out by Sung Wong Toi Park, Sung Wong Toi Road and the tip of the former Kai Tak Runway 13. Sung Wong Toi was a rocky mound with an altitude of 35m, located at the southern coast of Kowloon City, then a shallow bay. One could find boulders of varying size over the hill, but since Kowloon City was an imperial salt yard in the Sung dynasty, it was rumoured that the tor at the peak was the remains of a stone temple of a Sung emperor. In the Late Qing dynasty the words “Sung Wong Toi”, literally “Sung Emperor’s Terrace”, were inscribed onto the tor, and the hill was known as “Sacred Hill” ever since. In the early colonial days, a group of rumour-fueled Western sinologists, Chinese scholars, merchants and residents of Kowloon City boosted the status of Sung Wong Toi as a historic remnant of the Sung dynasty. In response to sweeping appeals for preservation, the government declared Sung Wong Toi and Sacred Hill monuments in 1899, proscribing exploitation and vandalism of the site. Since then it became a famous attraction for both Chinese and Western tourists.

Sacred Hill was disfigured over time. On the eve of the Second World War, the government gouged out an air-raid shelter at the foot of the hill; during the Japanese occupation that followed, part of the hill was demolished as the Japanese Army tried to expand Kai Tak Airport by leveling the hill (also as a form of punishment to war prisoners) and reclaiming some scraps of land with the debris collected. In the 1950s, Sacred Hill was completely demolished to make way for the new Runway 13, which was part of the plan to modernize Kai Tak. As a memorial, Sung Wong Toi Park and Sung Wong Toi Road was constructed at the former site of Sacred Hill outside of the airport, and the famous boulder etched with “Sung Wong Toi” was moved to the park, newly built in 1959.