Yau Ma Tei

Yau Ma Tei, also known as Waterloo (see Name section), is an area in the Yau Tsim Mong District in the south of the Kowloon Peninsula in Hong Kong.

Name

Yau Ma Tei is a phonetic transliteration of the name 油麻地 (originally written as 油蔴地) in Cantonese. It can also be spelt as Yaumatei, Yau Ma Ti, Yaumati or Yau-ma-Tee.

Yau (油) literally means "oil", Ma (麻 or 蔴) can either refer to "sesame" or "jute", and Tei (地) means "field" or "open ground". Hence, Yau Ma Tei can be interpreted to mean either "oil-sesame field" or "oil and jute ground". This dual-interpretation is perhaps the reason why there are two explanations for the origin of the place name.

The area is also named Waterloo in English, after Waterloo Road. This name was used for the MTR station in the area when it was opened in 1979.

Geography

Dundas Street marks the north border of Yau Ma Tei with Mong Kok and Austin Road its south border with Tsim Sha Tsui. To its west is Victoria Harbour and its east the hilly region of Ho Man Tin.

Yau Ma Tei Station

Yau Ma Tei, formerly called Waterloo after Waterloo Road, is an MTR station located in Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon. It is the western terminus of the Kwun Tong Line, and is also served by the Tsuen Wan Line.

The station opened in 1979 and renamed as Yau Ma Tei on 31 May 1985 along with Argyle (Mong Kok) and Chater (Central).

Yau Ma Tei is an interchange station, yet it is used less frequently for this purpose than the nearby Mong Kok station since the platforms are not designed for cross-platform interchange. The lower platforms are therefore used mainly by Kwun Tong Line passengers whose MTR journeys begin or end at Yau Ma Tei. This station is used by many students during commuting hours, since it is in the vicinity of many large schools.

The station's livery colour is a light grey. Red, white, and blue stripes, representing the colours of the French national flag, is located prominently adorned the station walls until they were removed as part of renovation works in 2005 which also saw the original Helvetica typeface, used in station name signs, replaced by Myriad.

Mong Kok East Station

Mong Kok East Station (Chinese: 旺角東站), formerly Yaumati Station (Chinese: 油蔴地車站) and Mong Kok Station (Chinese: 旺角車站), is a station on Hong Kong's East Rail Line. Only out-of-system interchange is available with Kwun Tong Line and Tsuen Wan Line at Mong Kok Station via a footbridge.

The station, initially named Yaumati Station, was constructed on 1 October 1910 to cope with the opening of the British Section of Kowloon-Canton Railway. The station was later renamed as Mong Kok Station. In 1983, the station was rebuilt. A temporary station was in use just to the south (towards Hung Hom) during reconstruction. After the takeover of KCR operations by the MTR Corporation on 2 December 2007, the station was renamed to Mong Kok East Station because the MTR-KCR merger caused a name conflict with Mong Kok Station on the Tsuen Wan and Kwun Tong lines.

Although the station is in the same region and quite close to Mong Kok Station, the fares are quite different from each other.