Transport and Facilities: The Festival Walk Link Bridge, Sports Centre and Campus Amenities

City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) Comprehensive Information Database · 05 Campus Module

An underground passageway less than fifty metres long funnels over sixty thousand people a day – making it perhaps the busiest ‘campus gateway’ in Hong Kong. CityUHK’s ‘transport DNA’ is inseparable from its urban location: it clings to MTR Kowloon Tong Station and sits atop the Festival Walk shopping mall, giving it some of the best public-transport accessibility among Hong Kong universities. On campus, a cluster of mega-buildings packs sports, dining, library, and medical facilities into a compact space. This article covers four topics: how to get here, how the link bridge came about, how to navigate the campus, and what facilities are available. For a broader discussion of campus siting and geographical zoning, see〈Campus Location, Geographical Zoning, and Building Directory〉.

Editorial note: All factual claims are supported by the sources listed at the end. Transport schedules, shop numbers, and facility lists may change over time; this article reflects current publicly available records. For the latest details, refer to the University’s current〈Transport Guide / Campus〉.

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# 1. External Transport: MTR Kowloon Tong Station + Festival Walk

The core of CityUHK’s external transport is the MTR Kowloon Tong Station–Festival Walk ‘metro-mall’ pairing.

Festival Walk is directly connected to MTR Kowloon Tong Station, which serves both the East Rail Line and the Kwun Tong Line^※ – meaning CityUHK has direct access to two of Hong Kong’s principal rail corridors: the East Rail Line (running through the eastern New Territories, crossing the border at Lo Wu / Lok Ma Chau, and connecting to Hung Hom and Convention Centre on Hong Kong Island) and the Kwun Tong Line (running east–west across Kowloon and linking to Yau Tsim Mong). For staff and students, this is a ‘dual-line’ campus: a relatively convenient commute from the New Territories, Kowloon, or Hong Kong Island.

The typical route for students, staff and visitors is: Kowloon Tong Station → Festival Walk → CityUHK’s academic buildings. From MTR Kowloon Tong Station via Festival Walk, it is about a 5-minute walk to reach the CityUHK campus^※. Festival Walk is a shopping centre at 80 Tat Chee Avenue, opened on 13 November 1998, developed by Swire Properties and CITIC Pacific^※, comprising seven levels of retail and four levels of office above, with around 220 shops, a cinema, an indoor ice rink, and an 830-space car park^※. For CityUHK staff and students, Festival Walk is both the commuting ‘gateway’ and a natural extension of campus dining, retail, cinema, and ice rink – the unique ‘external-amenity bonus’ of CityUHK’s urban location.

CityUHK is about a 30-minute drive from Hong Kong International Airport (according to University campus information). Bus, minibus and taxi services connect the Kowloon Tong area around the campus (for specific routes, consult the Transport Department and University sources). The main campus itself is compact; staff and students rely heavily on the MTR for commuting, and the proportion who drive is relatively limited.

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# 2. The ‘Time Tunnel’ (時光隧道): A History of the Link Bridge Connecting Festival Walk and the Campus

The pedestrian passage between CityUHK and Festival Walk that carries over 60,000 people daily^※ is not a later add-on; it is the product of a spatial history stretching back more than thirty years, to a 1993 land auction.

# Why was Festival Walk built next to CityU?

CityU’s permanent campus was completed at Tat Chee Avenue in Kowloon Tong in 1989^※. On the eastern side of the campus, a government-owned plot of land had previously been the Tat Chee Avenue public transport interchange, which opened on 1 March 1989 and closed on 1 March 1993^※, together with an adjacent open car park; even earlier, the site was the Chu Koo Chai Village squatter area. After the public transport interchange closed, the Government put the roughly 21,000-square-metre site out to tender. In 1993, Swire Properties and CITIC Pacific won the site with a government land auction bid of HK$2.9 billion^※, developing it as a 50:50 joint venture, and investing a further approximately HK$2.2 billion in construction costs^※ – a total of over HK$5 billion. The shopping centre’s north-eastern boundary directly abuts the CityUHK campus, rather than facing it across a road – this ‘seamless integration’ was no accident: building a shopping centre on a former public transport site, with a direct connection to the MTR station and a planned pedestrian link to the neighbouring university, was the central logic behind Festival Walk’s location.

# Was the link bridge part of the original design, or was it added later?

From the architectural plans, the pedestrian link bridge was part of the original design. Festival Walk was designed by the American architecture firm Arquitectonica^※, with a design concept themed around ‘water, canyon, and ice’ – ‘water’ referring to the flowing, winding pedestrian routes on each level mimicking river movement, ‘canyon’ the dramatic vertical view from the highest level down into the atrium, and ‘ice’ the indoor ice rink. Arquitectonica’s project description explicitly states that Festival Walk includes a pedestrian connection to the adjacent City University of Hong Kong^※, listing university staff and students as one of its core user groups. The MTR Kwun Tong Line (the East Rail Line was then part of the KCR) tunnels through the entire site, and the shopping centre connects directly to Kowloon Tong Station^※ – this system of link bridges essentially strings together the MTR station, the shopping centre and CityUHK into a single line; the concept was written into the design from the very opening in 1998.

# Where is the passage, and how do you get through it?

From the mall side, the entrance is on LG1 level, next to an escalator at shop LG1-10^※. After walking through the passage, the exit is at Level 3M of CityUHK’s Yeung Kin Man Academic Building (AC1), connecting to the footbridge between Fong Yun Wah Building and Mong Man Wai Building – students commonly call this footbridge the ‘3M Bridge’. The passage itself also has a student-given nickname: the ‘Time Tunnel’ (時光隧道). The name comes from the tunnel’s low natural light, its somewhat dark interior, and the long-standing display panels chronicling CityUHK’s history, giving a metaphorical sense of travelling through time when one walks through. The red exit door (habitually called the ‘Red Door’ by staff and students) marks the entry point to Level 3 of the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, and is one of the first anchoring landmarks new students learn in navigating the campus. The University’s official route description puts it simply: Take Exit C2 at MTR Kowloon Tong Station into Festival Walk, and it is about a five-minute walk to the campus^※. Beyond commuting, this route is also the preferred path for staff and students on hot or rainy days to avoid open-air stretches and enjoy the mall’s air-conditioning.

# Has the link bridge ever been interrupted through all the changes of ownership?

Festival Walk’s ownership has changed hands three times since its 1998 opening, but the pedestrian passage has never been closed by these ownership transfers:

Through all three changes of ownership, the positioning of Festival Walk as ‘a shopping centre serving CityUHK staff and students’ has not changed, and the link bridge has remained open throughout.

# What changed after 2019?

During the 2019 social unrest in Hong Kong, CityUHK tightened campus access controls. From December 2019, the University banned members of the public from freely entering the campus, erected hoardings around the perimeter, and stationed security guards at entry points; staff and students had to tap their cards and show identification to enter^※. Turnstiles were then installed at the Time Tunnel entrance. Later, according to the Chinese Wikipedia, in November 2025, CityUHK relocated the turnstiles from the Time Tunnel entrance to an indoor position on Level 3 of the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building^※, shifting the control boundary inwards and giving the passage a character closer to a ‘semi-public space’.

# Renovating the ‘Time Tunnel’ into the ‘Tunnel of Future Innovations’

At the end of 2024, CityUHK appointed QUAD Studio through an open tender to redesign the Time Tunnel. The renovation was carried out in four phases, keeping the passage open to pedestrians throughout; much of the work was scheduled at night. The ‘Tunnel of Future Innovations’ officially opened on 21 May 2025^※:

CityUHK’s School of Creative Media positions this passage as a ‘showcase corridor’ for student work. The Tunnel of Future Innovations won a Silver award in the Education Building category at the Perspective A&D Design Awards in January 2026^※.

# Why did CityUHK buy Festival Walk’s office space in 2025?

On 10 December 2025, CityU Limited, a subsidiary of the University, signed a sale and purchase agreement with Mapletree Pan Asia Commercial Trust (MPACT) to acquire four floors of Grade A office space above Festival Walk for HK$1.96 billion (approximately US$252 million)^※, covering a gross floor area of about 213,982 square feet (roughly 19,882 m²). The University explained the purchase by citing a surge in demand for research facilities such as wet laboratories, with additional campus space not expected to be available until 2030 or beyond^※; renting external laboratory space would incur high fitting-out and reinstatement costs, making a direct purchase more economically efficient. The deal completed its legal transfer in February 2026^※ – through this acquisition, CityUHK has upgraded its ‘adjacent’ relationship to ‘integrated’, marking the third historical layer of the CityUHK–Festival Walk relationship, after daily commuting reliance and the extension of consumer services.

From ‘former public transport interchange’ (1989–1993) → ‘shopping centre construction site’ (1993–1998) → ‘mall opens, link bridge comes into use’ (1998) → ‘Time Tunnel becomes a CityUHK cultural emblem’ (2000s–present) → ‘Tunnel of Future Innovations unveiled’ (2025) → ‘CityUHK buys office space’ (2026), these six milestones sketch a thirty-year-plus urban-spatial history of moving from passive adjacency to active integration.

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# 3. Campus Circulation: Indoor Link Bridges and the ‘Colour Zone’ System

Internal ‘transport’ on CityUHK’s main campus is nothing like the traditional university experience of ‘walking along tree-lined outdoor avenues’ – instead, it uses indoor link bridges, lifts and escalators as its backbone to thread the huge academic blocks into one continuous whole. Inside the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, staff and students navigate by a system of five colour zones: Purple (P), Green (G), Blue (B), Yellow (Y), Red (R)^※, using ‘colour + floor’ as coordinates. The University has a ‘Gathering Point System’ and carefully designed wayfinding signage^※ to help newcomers and visitors orient themselves within this ‘indoor labyrinth’. Campus access is controlled; persons with valid credentials may enter from 07:00 to 23:00 daily^※, and unauthorised entry outside these hours is a breach of regulations.

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# 4. Sports Facilities

At the heart of CityUHK’s sports facilities are the Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre and the Joint Sports Centre.

# Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre: Naming, Collapse and Rebirth

The centre is named after Hu Fa Kuang, founder of Ryoden Development^※. The original centre was a five-storey building with a multi-purpose arena and several practice halls (per the English Wikipedia). On 20 May 2016, the roof structure of the sports centre collapsed (per the English Wikipedia; details are covered in the Wild History / Campus Anecdotes module, so this module will not elaborate), and it was subsequently rebuilt on the same site.

The rebuilt Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre had its grand opening on 27 May 2026^※. According to the University, the new centre features: Hong Kong’s largest single-storey university sports hall (10-metre ceiling, maple-wood flooring)^※, the first doubles squash court in a local university (with electrically movable side walls)^※, an international-standard table tennis room (accommodating 8 tables, ITTF-specification flooring)^※, the first all-weather indoor running track in a local university (connecting to a 1.5 km outdoor mountain trail)^※, as well as digital fitness facilities (cloud-based health tracking) and one of the first standard pickleball courts in a local university^※. The main hall can be flexibly configured into 14 badminton or pickleball courts, 3 basketball or volleyball courts, or 1 handball court^※. The University sums up the design philosophy as ‘Built for excellence, designed for all’.

The previous Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre was described as having a multi-purpose hall, four practice halls (for badminton, basketball, volleyball, martial arts, dance, etc.), a table tennis room, six squash courts, an indoor climbing wall, two fitness rooms, two golf practice rooms and a golf simulator room (based on old records relayed from search results). Some facilities have changed in the new centre; current official information prevails.

CityUHK also has a Joint Sports Centre, a sports facility shared by multiple institutions (per University campus information). For external competitions and traditions of CityUHK sports teams, see the Student Life module.

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# 5. Library, Catering and Other Campus Amenities

• Run Run Shaw Library: The University’s main library, located on Levels 2–3 of the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, with about 2,700 seats and a collection of approximately 3.25 million items^※. See also〈Campus Landmark Buildings〉and〈Library and Indra and Harry Banga Gallery〉.
• Indra and Harry Banga Gallery: A museum-grade exhibition space on Level 18 of Lau Ming Wai Academic Building (see〈Campus Landmark Buildings〉).
• On-campus catering: Multiple buildings on the main campus have restaurants and canteens; for instance, the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building houses several eateries (per the English Wikipedia).
• External extension: The dining, supermarket, cinema, and ice rink in Festival Walk are just steps away, effectively expanding CityUHK’s amenity footprint.
• Campus retail/services: The University runs the CityUHK Gift Shop, among other services (per University campus information).
• Visitor accommodation: The Academic Exchange Building houses the ‘CityUHK Lodge’^※; there are also staff/visitor residences such as Wong Fung Ling Hall (Tak Chee Yuen) (per University campus information).
• Medical and health: CityUHK provides campus medical/health services offering basic healthcare support for staff and students (per University campus information). As we have not obtained authoritative details on the precise name, location or service hours, this entry is marked ‘partially unverified’; refer to the current〈Student Development Services / Health Services〉page on the University website. The newly opened Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre integrates sports and health (‘whole-person participation’) into the campus health strategy (per University 2026 information).

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# 6. Summary

CityUHK’s transport and facilities consistently reflect its ‘urban compact’ DNA: Externally, through MTR Kowloon Tong Station and Festival Walk, it enjoys a ‘dual-line MTR + large shopping mall’ accessibility that is rare among Hong Kong universities, while the ‘Time Tunnel’ that links the two has evolved over thirty years from a piece of former public transport land into a landmark passage carrying over 60,000 people a day, and further ‘integrated’ in 2026 with CityUHK’s purchase of Festival Walk office space. Internally, indoor link bridges and the colour-zone system compress sports, library, exhibition and dining into giant building blocks. In its outward reach, it naturally incorporates the mall beneath it—its restaurants, cinema, and ice rink—as an extension of campus life. This configuration of facilities is both a product of the premium on land, and the concrete realisation of the University’s character of being ‘layered over the city’.

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