The Sung Wong Toi rock, pictured in 2006
Between A.D. 1277 and 1279, Song dynasty emperors Zhao Shi and Zhao Bing sought refuge in Hong Kong from the Kublai Khan’s Mongol army. They eventually settled on Sacred Hill along the shore in Kowloon. Accounts of the boy emperors’ fate vary, but some say Zhao Shi died after an illness, and with the Southern Song defeated by the Mongols in the Battle of Yamen, in Guangdong province, his younger brother and successor Zhao Bing met a tragic end after a court official carried him on his back and jumped off the cliff to the sea. After the dynasty was overthrown in 1279, locals set up a memorial for the dynasty in the form of a huge rock inscribed with the words Sung Wong Toi, meaning Terrace of the Song Kings. In 1941, the occupying Japanese demolished Sacred Hill to build Kai Tak Airport. The memorial rock, however, remained intact. Four years later the British colonial government built Sung Wong Toi Garden and moved the rock into the park.
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