Tseung Kwan O is one of Hong Kong's fastest growing, most densely populated satellite towns. When the new Tseung Kwan O MTR extension opens next month, the previously isolated area in East Kowloon, which already has a population of about 300,000, will be linked efficiently to the rest of the peninsula. A complex called Dream City will be built there in the next 10 years. To most locals the extension means convenience. But the name of its terminal, Tiu Keng Leng, has far greater significance to many older residents.
For decades, Tiu Keng Leng, otherwise known as Rennie's Mill, was a little piece of Taiwan in Hong Kong, a remote, bucolic, ramshackle township where blue, white and red Nationalist flags fluttered on the edge of tranquil Mirror Bay, and old Kuomintang soldiers, who fought with Chiang Kai-shek against the Communists on the mainland, lived out their days in peace. But in the run-up to the handover they found themselves thrown into another battle, this time with a Hong Kong government that had decided to redevelop the area and scatter the tight-knit community they had built from scratch.
Rennie's Mill was named after Albert Herbert Rennie, who bought a house and established a flour mill in the area in 1907. No businessman, the luckless Canadian's venture soon failed and in April 1908 he went bankrupt. Devastated, he tied a rock round his neck and jumped into the harbour at Lei Yue Mun. Tiu Keng Leng, translated from Cantonese, means Hanging Neck Ridge.
Few people lived in the area of Rennie's Mill while war raged across China during the 1940s. Come 1949, when the defeated Kuomintang fled to Taiwan, many of its soldiers, along with thousands of mainlanders escaping Communist rule, made the long trek south. Hong Kong had a population of only 450,000 before 1949. This influx added almost a million people, most from Guangdong, who scattered across the territory.
Refugees from other provinces clustered around Mount Davis near Kennedy Town. Jobless, penniless and homeless, many had been injured in or traumatised by the war, and the Tung Wah Hospital gave them vegetables and rice. When their numbers grew too big, the straining hospital was forced to ask for help from the government, which created a refugee camp. Tensions ran high.
During the Dragon Boat Festival of 1950, a pro-Communist mob marched on Mount Davis. They sang and mocked the Kuomintang soldiers, openly performing the yanggewu, the dance of the Communists. Fighting broke out and the government, realising it had a powder keg on its hands, decided the Nationalists would have to be banished from Hong Kong Island. On June 26, 1950, 7,000 refugees, most with Kuomintang backgrounds, were sent to Rennie's Mill aboard six shuttling Star Ferries. The Chinese Relief Association, a Taiwanese non-governmental organisation, offered support, raising money in Hong Kong and Taiwan and providing food.
The name Tiu Keng Leng then took on a more auspicious meaning - the ridge with an improving situation - although ironically, conditions were abysmal. The residents of Rennie's Mill were without electricity, running water and paved roads. Flush toilets were non-existent; times were hard. But the Nationalists developed their community, preserving traditions such as the Double-Tenth festival on October 10 in commemoration of the 1911 Republican revolution, led by Dr Sun Yat-sen, that overthrew the Chinese imperial government. But all that meant nothing in 1988 when the redevelopment plans were announced. Rennie's Mill would have to go and the residents rehoused.