About Hong Kong and Chinese food

The name Hong Kong means in the Chinese language the "Fragrant Port". How did this place come to have such a beautiful name? There are several different legends about the origin of this name. The most reliable one according to popular opinion is that this place was once a port for the transit and distribution of incense, which is an aromatic substance, such as a gum or wood, that burns with a pleasant odor. During the Ming Dynasty, Dong Guan, Bao An (renamed Shen Zhen in 1979) and adjacent places produced in great abundance a kind of incense which appealed to great numbers of people and found markets in the Jiangsu province, the Zhejiang province, and many other regions of the country. Since incense merchants generally loaded their cargoes on ships at the northern part of the coast of this island to be sent to the Guangzhou city and the Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, people began to call this port the incense port. As the noun "incense" and the adjective "fragrant" are identical in the Chinese language, the port was considered later to mean a fragrant port, though it was connected only with the sale and transshipment of a commodity that had fragrance. The village in the vicinity of the port was likewise called the "Fragrant Port Village".
In 1840, the Opium War broke out. After the British aggressors landed at the southern part of the coast of the island, they marched northward, guided by a local inhabitant. When they went by the Fragrant Port Village, a British officer asked about the name of the village. The guide answered: "Hong Kong", in his local dialect. About Hong Kong

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