| Sheung Shui | |||||||||||||||
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 Aerial view of Sheung Shui | |||||||||||||||
| Chinese | 上水 | ||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | Above the Water | ||||||||||||||
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Sheung Shui (Chinese: 上水; Jyutping: soeng6 seoi2, literally "Above-water") is an area in the New Territories, Hong Kong. Sheung Shui Town, a part of this area, is part of the Fanling–Sheung Shui New Town in the North District of Hong Kong. Fanling Town is to its southeast.
Shek Wu Hui (石湖墟) used to be the marketplace of the Sheung Shui area, before the development of Sheung Shui Town. Bounded by Lung Sum Avenue (龍琛路), San Fung Avenue and Jockey Club Road, it was the main market in the Sheung Shui area from the 1930s onwards.[1] Today some private residences can be found towering over the old flats in the hui (market). The majority of the buildings still standing were repaired in the 1950s.
Sheung Shui Wai (上水圍), originally lived in by the Liu (廖) clan,[2] is a walled village. The ancestral hall Liu Man Shek Tong (廖萬石堂) in the village is one of the declared monuments of Hong Kong.
The Fung Kai No. 1 Secondary School, located near Sheung Shui Wai and originally established by the Liu clan, is the largest secondary school in Hong Kong, in terms of area covered. More than one turfed football pitch can be found inside the school campus. Because of its green and ample campus, the school used to serve as a scene for local educational television programs.
Sheung Shui is in Primary One Admission (POA) School Net 80. Within the school net are multiple aided schools (operated independently but funded with government money); no government schools are in this net.[3]
Sheung Shui Town and the rest of the Sheung Shui area is served by the Sheung Shui station of the East Rail line in the Sheung Shui's town centre. This line takes them into Kowloon within 40 minutes, and then onto surrounding areas through connections with other MTR lines.[4]
Many KMB routes and minibus routes serve Sheung Shui. Residents can take buses to other parts of North District, western New Territories (including Yuen Long Town, Tuen Mun new Town and Tsuen Wan new Town), Tai Po newTown, Sha Tin new Town, most parts of Kowloon, parts of northern Hong Kong Island and the Hong Kong International Airport. The KMB bus terminus and the green minibus terminus are located by Landmark North in Sheung Shui Town. Also, a non-schedule red minibus terminus is located at San Hong Street in Sheung Shui Town.
Taxi ranks are located around the town, including outside the MTR station, Landmark North shopping centre and on side roads branching off of San Fung Avenue. Ma Sik Road is a road connecting Sheung Shui and Fanling in Hong Kong. It is an U-shaped road.
Due to their proximity to the Shenzhen border, towns in the northern parts of Hong Kong, notably Sheung Shui and Yuen Long, have become hubs for parallel traders who have been buying up large quantities of goods, forcing up local prices and disrupting the daily lives of local citizens.[5][6] Since 2012, there has been a vertiginous increase in mainland parallel traders arriving in the North District of Hong Kong to re-export infant formula and household products – goods popular with mainlanders – across the border to Shenzhen.[7] Trafficking caused chronic local shortages of milk powder in Hong Kong, forcing the government to impose restrictions on the amount of milk powder exports from Hong Kong.[8]
The first anti-parallel trading protest was started at Sheung Shui in September 2012.[9] As government efforts to limit the adverse impact of mainland trafficking were widely seen as inadequate, so there have been further subsequent protests in towns in the North District including Sheung Shui.[10][11]
