Lui Seng Chun

Lui Seng Chun
雷生春
Lui Seng Chun
Location of Lui Seng Chun
General information
Location	119 Lai Chi Kok Road
Coordinates	22°19′29.77″N 114°9′54.2″E / 22.3249361°N 114.165056°E / 22.3249361; 114.165056
Construction started	1929
Opened	2012
Website
scm.hkbu.edu.hk/lsc/en/index.html/

Lui Seng Chun (Chinese: 雷生春) is a Grade I Historic Building located at 119 Lai Chi Kok Road, in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, at the junction with Tong Mi Road. It is a 4-storey tong-lau (the local term for Hong Kong shophouse typology) that was built in 1931 by Mr. Lui Leung. The architect was Mr. W. H. Bourne.

A replica of the building was featured in the 2016 movie Doctor Strange.

Mr. Lui Leung (雷亮) (alias Lui Hung Wai 雷鴻維), the owner of Lui Seng Chun, was born in Taishan County of Guangdong Province. Upon his arrival in Hong Kong, he became actively engaged in transport and trading businesses. He was one of the founders of the Kowloon Motor Bus Company (1933) Limited.

In 1929, Mr. Lui purchased a piece of land at 119 Lai Chi Kok Road from the Government of Hong Kong and appointed W. H. Bourne, a local architect who specialised in designing shophouses to construct Lui Seng Chun. The construction work was completed in around 1931. The ground floor of the building was occupied by a Chinese bone-setting medicine shop named "Lui Seng Chun", while the upper floors became living quarters for the members of Lui's family. The name "Lui Seng Chun" was derived from a pair of rhymed couplets, implying Lui's medicine could bring a patient back to life. The medicine enjoyed a good reputation locally and overseas.

Mr. Lui Leung died in 1944 and the shop was closed down a few years later. The building was subsequently used as accommodation and let out as tailor shops. In 2000, the Lui's family proposed to the Antiquities and Monuments Office to donate the building to the Government of Hong Kong. The transfer of the building was accomplished in October 2003.

The building was constructed a few years before the enactment of the Public Health and Building Ordinance of 1935, which stipulated a set of more stringent building requirements. Thus, the building only needed to comply with the less restrictive conditions of the Public Health and Building Ordinance of 1903, which required that each building should have a small open space at the rear for natural ventilation purposes; the building height should not be more than the width of the street it faced or 75 feet (whichever was the less); and the depth of each building should not be greater than 40 feet.