Ask Mr. Know-It-All: what does the "wan" in "Sheung Wan" and "Sai Wan" mean?

Dear Mr. Know-It-All,
Sheung Wan, Wan Chai, Sai Wan… Where do all these “wans” come from? – Wan Kerr

Let me tell you about the sei wan gau yeuk (四環九約), the “four rings and nine districts” that make up the heart of Hong Kong.

In 1857, the city of Victoria on Hong Kong Island was 15 years old and expanding. The city’s earliest reclamation works had begun, and the colony had spread to the point where it needed to be organized. And so the government took the city and divided it up into four wan, a word which means “ring” or “circuit”: Sai Wan, Sheung Wan, Chung Wan and Har Wan—western, upper, center and lower rings.

By and large, those names stuck. Sai Wan, Chung Wan and Sheung Wan are still used for Western, Central and… well, Sheung Wan, obviously. Har Wan, the lower ring, became “Wan Chai” (although it’s a different wan: Wan Chai means “little bay,” or “cove.”) The nine yeuk districts, subsections of the rings, were also named, and many of those names are with us still: Shek Tong Tsui, Sai Ying Pun and So Kon Po, to name three.

No one really knows where wan comes from. Why “ring”? The word was in use long before the government made it official. But it’s somehow a pleasing image, isn’t it? A cascade of interlocking circles laid over the map, overlapping and intertwining, separating and joining our lives like the roads which fly over the city today.

In 1903, seven boundary stones were erected to mark the fullest extent of the city of Victoria. Six of the stones still stand. You can go see them for yourself: The easiest to find is probably in Kennedy Town, at the end of Sai Ning Street on the waterfront. Walk west until you can’t walk anymore and soon enough you’ll find the boundary stone in all its glory, albeit tucked inside a recreation ground. More than a century on, the stone is still there, standing guard over the four rings and nine districts of Hong Kong.