Over the past 136 years, the old Dairy Farm depot on Lower Albert Road has wielded many surprises, including a basement room believed to have been used as a morgue during World War II. It was unearthed during renovations at the Fringe Club, which has occupied most of the historic building since 1984. But is there still something else to be discovered?
Last year, during a panel discussion at the 2025 Hong Kong International Literary Festival, Fringe Club founder Benny Chia speculated there may well be. Renovations uncovered a surprisingly thick metal floor in the basement, he said — and legend has it there’s a river running underneath.
Bowrington Canal in 1868, visible in the lower third of the image. Photo by John Thomson
“There were a lot of tiny streams mapped in the 19th and 20th centuries, and they’re not there anymore,” says Carine Lai, a researcher for the WYNG Foundation. “When you try to figure out what happened to them, you realise they’ve been buried under the streets.” In 2024, Lai and fellow researcher Phoebe Tsui began looking into Hong Kong’s lost streams and rivers for City Unseen, a WYNG initiative that highlights overlooked aspects of Hong Kong’s built environment. They soon discovered that there are dozens of former waterways hidden across Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.
“We all know about land reclamation,” says Lai. “But Hong Kong has altered its hydrogeography in drastic ways in order for a city to be able to survive here. It’s a place where one never would have naturally developed, if not for geopolitics. I mean, just think about it — the north shore of Hong Kong Island is an absolutely insane place to put a city.”
She’s not wrong. When the British took possession of Hong Kong Island in 1841, it was famously rocky and barren, valued for its strategic location and deep harbour but not much else. Only a few thousand people called the island home, eking out a living as farmers, fishers and quarriers. Steep mountain slopes had long ago been deforested, leaving them prone to landslides in the torrential summer rains.
Illustrated news of the 1889 rainstorm
Mountain streams
And yet it was that very water that drew the British to Hong Kong in the first place. In the early 19th century, ships travelling to Guangzhou would stop at Waterfall Bay to replenish their reservoirs; the stream that feeds that famous waterfall would eventually nourish the dairy farm whose products were stored in the depot on Lower Albert Road.
That was just one of many small streams cascading down the slopes of Hong Kong’s mountains. As the British began to develop their colony in the 1840s, one of the first things they did was to convert these streams into engineered drainage canals known as nullahs, a term derived from the Hindi word for stream — a word that is now defunct except for its continued use in Hong Kong English. Among the first nullahs built in Hong Kong were the Glenealy Nullah in Central and the Stone Nullah in Wan Chai.
Though these nullahs channelled mountain water into Victoria Harbour, they couldn’t always cope with Hong Kong’s storms, which was the case during the Great Rainstorm of 1889, when an incredible 697 millimetres of rain — one-third of the average annual total — fell on Hong Kong in less than 24 hours. The Glenealy Nullah overflowed its banks, sending torrents of water through the narrow streets of Central.
Tai Hang residents washing their laundry in the nullah, 1949, Photo by Douglas Moore
A city of canals
In the early 20th century, these nullahs were a key feature of Hong Kong’s cityscape. Water from Happy Valley flowed through the Bowrington Canal, whose Gooseneck Bridge became a local landmark. Tai Hang residents washed their laundry in the nullah that ran through the old village. But as Hong Kong boomed after World War II, the government began burying the nullahs, turning them into culverts, in order to make more space for roads and development.
It was also to contain their stench. As Hong Kong’s sewerage system lagged behind the city’s growth, industrial waste and raw sewage flowed directly into nullahs, pervading the city with an unmistakable odour. The first time comedian Bob Hope landed in Hong Kong, he stepped off the plane and asked a friend what the horrible smell was. The friend explained it was raw sewage. “Yes, I know, but what have they done to it?” Hope replied.
One by one, most of the nullahs in Hong Kong’s urban areas were culverted, a process that continued until quite recently; the nullah running through the Mong Kok Flower Market was only covered in 2008. But there are still many traces of these old waterways. “Sometimes when a street goes in strange directions, it’s because there’s a nullah under it,” says Lai.
That’s the case of the old nullah that runs underneath the Flower Market, which continues next to the aptly-named Nullah Road, slicing a diagonal path through the otherwise orderly street grid of Mong Kok. “You see buildings cut off at weird angles and that’s because they were next to the nullah,” says Lai.
The vanished waterways are also reflected in Hong Kong’s toponymy. Stone Nullah Lane in Wan Chai is an obvious reminder of the nullah that ran through the area until it was culverted in 1959. But there’s also Canal Road in Causeway Bay, whose flyover is still referred to as Gooseneck Bridge, even though the Bowrington Canal was buried and the bridge destroyed in the early 1970s. Wun Sha Street (浣紗街 wun5 saa1 gaai1) was named after the laundry that was once washed in the adjacent Tai Hang Nullah. Places with the character 涌 (jung2) in their name, like Kwai Chung, refer to streams that once ran through the area.
Bowrington Canal in 1958
A new life for old streams?
Could these old streams be uncovered and restored? The idea has gained traction around the world as cities try to create engaging, eco-friendly public spaces. Perhaps the most famous example of daylighting a stream, as the process is known, is in Seoul. Cheonggyecheon is a nearly 11-kilometre-long stream that was gradually covered by concrete after 1958 and covered by an elevated expressway in 1976. In 2003, work began to demolish the expressway, uncover and replenish the stream and restore historic bridges. It is now one of the most celebrated public spaces in the Korean capital.
The closest Hong Kong equivalent to Cheonggyecheon is the Bowrington Canal, which has similar historical significance — it was considered one of the city’s most beautiful places in the 19th century — and is also capped by a flyover. But there has never been any discussion of restoring it.
Interestingly, Cheonggyecheon was only brought back to life by pumping enormous amounts of water from the Han River; the ancient stream had essentially run dry during its years of being entombed. Keeping the water running costs the equivalent of HK$6.6 million per year. Lai notes that something similar would have to be done to any restored nullah or stream in Hong Kong, since their original sources of water have been thoroughly rerouted by decades of drainage works.
Which raises the question: is there actually a stream running beneath the Fringe Club? It’s entirely possible — the former Glenealy Nullah runs right next to the building, underneath Wyndham Street. Just how much water is left is another question entirely.