Today, this is the glamorous, touristy end of Canton Road, but past the China Ferry Terminal, the designer shops disappear. Canton Road merges with Kowloon Park Drive and becomes a wide seven lane arterial, swerving past the Xiqu Centre and luxury housing complexes until it intersects with Jordan Road and becomes Ferry Street. Judging by the suddenly massive scale of the infrastructure, this was a fairly recent development. In the 1970s, Canton Road was realigned to merge into Ferry Street, a wide new waterfront arterial was created by reclaiming part of the Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter. Yet plans for this existed on paper as early as 1926, when Hong Kong’s newly formed Town Planning Committee made the first long-term development plan for Kowloon. It planned to reclaim land along the shore to accommodate a new waterfront road and railway branch line linking Tsim Sha Tsui with Sham Shui Po. Instead of the railway, we got the MTR, but the road was eventually built some forty years later.    

Part 2: Jordan Road to Public Square Street

The second stretch of Canton Road begins at Jordan Road and continues to Public Square Street. It was built in the early 20th Century when the coast of Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok was reclaimed.  

A lot of early reclamation was done on a “bring your own rocks” basis; the government auctioned coastal marine lots on the condition that buyers reclaim them at their own expense. The first phase took place in 1875, extending the natural coastline to Reclamation Street. The second phase, which pushed the coastline out to the edge of Ferry Street and created Canton Road, occurred mostly between 1900 and 1904. 

However, the section between Saigon Street and Public Square Street was done by the government instead of the private sector, and was not finished until 1914, making it the youngest land under Canton Road. When completed, the Yau Ma Tei Police Station was relocated there from its original position opposite Tin Hau Temple. Other government land uses included a boat repair yard, open storage, a public toilet, and a public dispensary. The rest was sold and developed into tong lau.

In the 1950s and 60s, Guangzhou jade merchants displaced by the Chinese Civil War relocated here, and this stretch of Canton Road evolved into a jade market. By the 1970s, it had become a hectic tourist attraction with hundreds of stalls on folding tables in front of the shops. The stalls were relocated to the Yau Ma Tei Jade Market in the 1980s. Today, though the jade shop interiors look little changed from their heyday in the 1980s, the street’s atmosphere is a lot more sedate. 

At Public Square Street, we come to the second break in Canton Road, where a small, strange patch of land between Public Square Street and Waterloo Road has always separated the northern and southern halves of Canton Road. Though tiny segments of Canton Road appeared and disappeared from this area over the years, at no point did it connect all the way through. 

Part 3: A 57 metre long passage between two schools

This small, strange patch of land today consists of three parts. First, between Public Square Street and Tung Kun Street is Prosperous Gardens, an affordable housing estate built by the Housing Society in the 1990s. Cinephiles know it better as the location of the arthouse cinema Broadway Cinematheque. Second, in the centre between Tung Kun Street and Ching Ping Road are three schools. Third, between Ching Ping Road and Waterloo Road is the Yau Ma Tei Wholesale Fruit Market. 

This whole area once consisted of two large marine lots, Kowloon Marine Lot nos. 39 and 87, plus a smaller site at the northern end reserved for government use. From the time these lots were first reclaimed, they split Canton Road in two. The marine lots appear to have been private wharves and goods storage yards, and the northern site became the Yau Ma Tei Vegetable Market in 1913 (later becoming the fruit market). 

By the 1950s, the southernmost lot, KML 39, was developed into Yau Ma Tei’s Six Streets neighbourhood. It became home to many immigrants from Dongguan, which is why one of the streets was named Tung Kun Street (the Cantonese transliteration of Dongguan), and why one of the schools that was later built was founded by the Tung Koon District Society. It was a working-class neighbourhood overlooking the Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter. In a 2011 interview with Hong Kong Memory, long-time resident Ng Kin Sun recalled playing in the streets as a child, clambering between boats in the typhoon shelter, and being warned by his schoolteachers to avoid King George V Memorial Park, an alleged triad hang-out. 

Canton Road was extended through this neighbourhood, ending at the Yau Ma Tei Vegetable Market which had by then had taken over the middle lot (KML 87) and expanded to selling fruit, fish, and poultry. In the late 1960s, the fish and vegetable markets were relocated to Cheung Sha Wan, and three schools were built on the vacated site, extending Canton Road between two campuses.  

When the Six Streets were redeveloped into Prosperous Gardens in the 1990s, its piece of Canton Road was deleted, leaving only the short section between the two schools. At 57m long, it is the shortest fragment of Canton Road. It is so short that it has no street addresses attached to it since both schools face Tung Kun Street. 

Part 4: Waterloo Road to Lai Chi Kok Road

The last part of Canton Road goes from Waterloo Road to Prince Edward, terminating at Lai Chi Kok Road. For one block on either side of Argyle Street, Canton Road transforms into a humming, vibrant street market selling every type of food and daily necessity. According to some sources, the market has been there since the early 1900s, likely forming as hawkers gathered around the officially designated Mong Kok Tsui Market at the corner of Canton Road and Argyle Street. (The old Mong Kok Market building is now a district health centre, opened in March 2026.) 

Before the reclamation of West Kowloon caused the Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter to be relocated in the 1990s, the shoreline extended up to Argyle Street. Until the early 1970s, there were still piers and godowns along the shore. Towards the northern end of Mong Kok where it starts to bleed into Tai Kok Tsui, there were factories along Canton Road and in the immediate vicinity; maps from the early 1960s identify soy, ginger, enamelware, metalwork, timber, garment, glassware, vacuum flask, and button factories. That is why today, there is still a cluster of industrial buildings near Arran Street, and why Mong Kok west of Nathan Road hosts an agglomeration of light industrial businesses selling hardware, home renovation supplies, machine parts and industrial equipment. 

This grungy side of Canton Road is completely different from the glitzy version in Tsim Sha Tsui, and again different from the old-fashioned jewellers’ row in Jordan. Aside from Nathan Road, Canton Road is the only road that runs the entire length of the Kowloon Peninsula from Tsim Sha Tsui to Prince Edward, but with so many interruptions, it evolved into the a road of many faces. 

Sources

Christopher DeWolf, “From bastion of working-class Hong Kong to art-house magnet for film lovers, how Six Streets in Yau Ma Tei renewed itself”, South China Morning Post, 4 May 2018. 

Stephen Davies, “Terminal Dilemma, Hong Kong’s Waterfront 1841-1898”, Australian Journal of Victorian Studies, Vol. 20 No. 1 (2015). 

Klaus, “1914 Yau Ma Tei Reclamation”, Gwulo.com, 9 May 2022.

Hugh Farmer, “The Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company, newspaper article 1937”, The Industrial History of Hong Kong Group, 27 November 2021. 

Hong Kong Government Gazette, Notification No. 92, “Land sale, Yaumati”, 14 March 1896.

Hong Kong Government Gazette 1905, Notification No. 184, “Land – Auction sale of, Yau-ma-ti”, 13 January 1905. 

Hong Kong Government Gazette 1908, Notification No. 786, “Hawking within certain limits of the Mong Kok Tsui Market prohibited”, 6 November 1908. 

Hong Kong Government Gazette 1909, Notification No. 15, “Changes in names of streets”, 19 March 1909. 

Tung Koon District Society Fong Shu Chuen School, “Brief Biography of the School Founder” (only available in Chinese), 2026.

Ng Kin-sun, “The Geographical Landscape of Yau Ma Tei Six Streets”, in Hong Kong Memory: Oral History Archive, 2011.

Hong Kong Jade & Stone Manufacturers Association, “Introduction”(only available in Chinese), 2026.

“Hong Kong and Part of the Leased Territory”, 1913, Great Britain War Office, National Library of Australia. Accessed at hkmaps.hk. 

“Map of the Kowloon Peninsula (including portion of New Kowloon) (New Territories) Colony of Hong Kong” 1920, Crown Lands and Survey Office, Public Works Department., UK National Archives. Accessed at hkmaps.hk.  

“Development Plan of New Kowloon”, 1926, CO 129/494, UK National Archives. Accessed at hkmaps.hk.

1:600 Old Survey Sheets 1963-4, Hong Kong Map Service, Lands Department Open Data.

1:1000 Topmap 1997, Hong Kong Map Service, Lands Department Open Data.