The waterfall at Pok Po Wan — the Cantonese name for Waterfall Bay — drops from the hillside above Wah Fu Estate and the Cyberport residential development into a rocky bay on the East Lamma Channel. The etymology linking the falls to Hong Kong's name is attributed to the fresh water that flowed here: fishermen and sailors used 'Hong Kong' to identify Aberdeen Harbour and its surrounds, with the cascade as the anchor of the reference. Whether the name spread outward from this bay alone or from a broader pattern of clean water sources in the area is uncertain, but the falls were well enough known by the early 19th century to appear in a 1817 painting by William Harvell, making them one of the earliest-recorded natural features of the island.

The geography has not changed as dramatically here as in Wan Chai or Central. The bay still exists. The waterfall still falls.

By December 1941, Hong Kong was under Japanese assault. The Battle of Hong Kong lasted 17 days before the British garrison surrendered on Christmas Day. Waterfall Bay, already known for its secluded rocky shoreline, served a grim practical purpose during those weeks: the ruins near the falls served as a bunker for Allied soldiers. The structures — now in ruins and accessible at low tide — are among the quieter remnants of the battle scattered across Hong Kong Island. They lack the visibility of the pillboxes on the hilltops or the memorials in the city center, but at low tide, when the rocks are exposed and the falls are audible, the site carries the particular weight of a place where people took shelter and waited.

After the war ended, the bay returned to its long civilian life, far from the development corridors that remade the northern shore.

Waterfall Bay Park now surrounds the site, accessible from Waterfall Bay Road off Wah Fu Road. A trail descends a series of stairs to the rocky and sandy area below the falls, where the cascade can be seen dropping to the water's edge. The bay forms part of the East Lamma Channel, the strait separating Hong Kong Island from Lamma Island to the southwest.

The park sits between two very different neighbours: Wah Fu Estate, one of Hong Kong's early public housing developments, and Cyberport at Telegraph Bay, a commercial technology complex built in the 2000s. The juxtaposition — public housing, tech campus, colonial-era waterfall — is distinctly Hong Kong. The falls themselves remain indifferent to the company they keep, dropping as they always have into the same small bay where sailors once queued with empty barrels.