Pok Fu Lam
| Pok Fu Lam | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Literal meaning | Thin shielding forest | ||||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Bòfúlín |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Jyutping | bok6fu4lam4 |
Pok Fu Lam (Chinese: 薄扶林) or Pokfulam is a residential area on Hong Kong Island, at the western end of the Southern District.
Pok Fu Lam is a valley between Victoria Peak and Mount Kellet, around Telegraph Bay.
Pok Fu Lam can claim several firsts in the history of Hong Kong: It was the place where Hong Kong's floral emblem, Bauhinia blakeana, was first discovered; the site for Hong Kong's first reservoir, Pokfulam Reservoir, (1883, now part of a country park); and the site for Hong Kong's first dairy farm by five investors, including Sir Patrick Manson in 1885. The farm supplied not only milk, but cattle to Hong Kong, and later became Dairy Farm. However, it no longer exists in Pok Fu Lam.
While the farm no longer exists, its remains and other colonial era institutions continue to exist serving, in some cases, other purposes. The former dairy farm can still be seen in the grassy slopes of the hills, but mainly in the two milking sheds that remain. They are between the new Vocational Training Center and the much older Béthanie. Béthanie and the cow sheds are presently administered by the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, but were previously controlled by the University of Hong Kong which used Béthanie as headquarters for the HKU Press. The APA uses Béthanie and the cow sheds for various educational purposes, but also lends the chapel in Béthanie to St. John's Cathedral (Anglican) as the locale for Emmanuel Church - Pokfulam, a daughter (subordinate) church serving the west of Hong Kong island.
Béthanie was built as a sanatorium between 1873 and 1875 for the French Catholic missionaries in China, better known as Missions Etrangères de Paris or MEP. Recently restored with loving care, Béthanie is now used by the Academy for the Performing Arts for educational purposes. Béthanie includes a small chapel. In its present restored configuration, this chapel seats about 100 and is used each Sunday by Emmanuel Church - Pokfulam, a daughter church of St. John's Cathedral. The Béthanie chapel is a beautiful Neo Gothic structure. Some of the original statuary and stain glass windows have been recovered and re-installed.
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