Xin an county gazette (), published in AD 1819, did not have any description of Lai chi kok, therefore, we did not have detail information of earlier history of the region. Lai Chi Kok literally means "
lychee corner", referring to a seashore named after a type of fruit tree native to southern China. However, some historians such as Leung Ping Wah suggested the original name of the region was Lai Tsai Kuok (), literally mean the footprint of the youngest son. The river once separated Cheung Sha Wan from
Lai Chi Kok Bay, and a river from
Butterfly Valley separated Cheung Sha Wan from Lai Chi Kok. At the innermost area of Lai Chi Kok Bay, namely present-day
Lai King Hill Road, is a settlement called
Kau Wa Keng. The
Qing government had set up a customs station in Lai Chi Kok, to collect
customs duties after ceding
Hong Kong Island and
Kowloon Peninsula to the British. After the lease of the New Territories, the British reclaimed Lai Chi Kok for military use. A torpedo storage facility was also erected on the west point of Lai Chi Kok Bay, an area near Kwai Chung. At the time of the 1911 census, the population of Lai Chi Kok was 173. ==Buildings==