Tunnel beneath the "Fragrant Harbour”

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33189, 31 March 1973, Page 12

Tunnel beneath the "Fragrant Harbour”

(BY

KENNETH ANTHONY)

Hong Kong, the great commercial • centre on the south Chinese coast, is actually an island—the name means “fragrant harbour” in Chinese. But the modem territory also includes a small area of the mainland, and between Hong Kong island and the peninsula of Kowloon lies one of the world’s finest natural harbours. In 1972 the opening of a tunnel a mile long, running beneath the harbour and linking Hong Kong with Kowloon, marked a big improvement in the colony’s communications; an important enough event to justify the special stamp illustrated here. The new tunnel took 34 months to build, and cost £2O million. It is the largest four-lane road tunnel to be constructed by the immersedtube method anywhere in the

world. The stamp shows the entrance from the island end.

In the first half of the nineteenth centurv China had a monopoly of the important tea trade, and the irksome restrictions imposed on British and other European merchants by the Chinese authorities in the port of Canton, led to the suggestion that a new port and trading centre should be established under British control. This was the origin of Hong Kong, whose history as a British colony goes back to 1842. Then it was just a small fishing village, the haunt of pirates. Now it is one of the world’s leading ports. Kowloon was added to the colony in 1860, and in 1898 the so-called "new territories”—another area of the mainland and the nearby island of Lantau—were

acquired from China on a 99year lease. The whole of modern Hong Kong amounts to only about 390 square miles, and in this small region live three million people. The lease on the "new territories” has only another 25 years to run, and what will happen when it expires is anybody’s guess. But the construction of the tunnel —which, incidentally, is owned by a private company —shows considerable faith in Hong Kong’s future.

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