July 31, 2007 5:08

That's Nice, Let's Tear it Down

Posted by Liam Fitzpatrick | Comments (6) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This

One wishes that Hong Kong’s heritage movement would pick its battles with greater discrimination. Its current cause célèbre—at least for another few hours, until bulldozers come and sweep it into the sea—is Queen’s Pier. I was there last night, to bid farewell to the equally doomed protestors who have been camped there for weeks, and as I picked my way among the listless hunger-strikers, the fluttering banners and the news cameramen—who have already staked out the best vantage points for filming the rout that will surely take place when the police arrive to evict the protesters—it struck me that Queen’s Pier was a strange thing to want to preserve. It isn’t particularly venerable (in fact it’s just 50 years old). It has all the architectural grace of a bus shelter in Almaty. It’s also a glaring symbol of colonialism, for this was the place where successive British governors landed to assume power over the empire's little Asian dominion.
The last fact alone should spark off a round of high-fives at its demolition and replacement with a six-lane highway, but no. Here are the poets and the songwriters, the bearded profs and their nervous looking students, signing petitions in blood and calling for the pier to be preserved, in situ, forever. The reason is obvious and sad: it’s because, when it comes to conservation, this mucky little pier is about all we have. The structures that were really worth fighting for—the old General Post Office, the Hong Kong Club, the Repulse Bay Hotel, Kowloon Railway Station—were all atomized long ago, each of them replaced with artless new buildings. If one or two of them had been preserved, would anyone seriously consider going on a hunger strike over Queen’s Pier?
The protesters are well meaning. They have beautiful hearts. But there’s hardly anything left to save. Perhaps Hong Kong’s fate is to be forever shiny, forever new, to build up and tear down in a ceaseless reinvention of the cityscape. I know that isn’t much consolation, but I don’t see any other being offered at the moment.

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Reader Comments (6)

Madox:

Preserving culture and history is always a balancing act. One wants to keep the memory but wants to move forward as well.

Hong Kong has no history to preserve? That's not true. The problem is that Hong Kong has lost its culture identity. A world city. East-west gateway. What does it mean? It means commerce, not culture.

Culture underlies meaning and identity. Hong Kong needs to recover its deeper identity, not clinging to colonial residuals.

If Hong Kong's poets and professors and intellectuals don't understand it, it is a further indication of lack of its own culture.

Posted by Madox | July 31, 2007 7:35 AM

Webber:

Liam -

Among the five Time reporters here I like him most.
Reading between his lines, I can feel affections, concerns as well as worries. Hong Kong is Liam's lover, Every time when he writes about her past or present, his magical power can make an outsider, like me, begin to ponder over her future.

Posted by Webber | July 31, 2007 8:06 AM

John Smith:

"A world city. East-west gateway. What does it mean? It means commerce, not culture." Another piece of pure Chinese culture...

"Culture underlies meaning and identity. Hong Kong needs to recover its deeper identity, not clinging to colonial residuals."

Talking about clinging to colonial residuals, isn't China going to make the film about the Nanjing Massacre ?

Posted by John Smith | July 31, 2007 10:58 AM

anonymous:

I know we come off as hating life in China over at Sinocidal, but it’s really not the case, for most of us at least. Like you, my wife is Chinese so in a sense I feel married to the country from that respect. But like Jeremy says, you can never really go home. China has become home, and while I miss the friends and family back in the UK, if I moved back I know I would miss China terribly. Imagine having that variety of (reasonably priced) food taken away suddenly, or popping down the shops to buy a few DVDs and coming away $100 lighter. I also think it would take some time to readjust. I know people would find me ruder than when they knew me - I’d hang the phone up without saying 9 goodbyes, or drink my soup out of the bowl at the dinner table, to much tutting, without even thinking about it.

Yes, life here can be annoying, and there are some things I have learned to tolerate, but will never agree with, and there are others which I will always find intolerable. But overall life in China is good, and it has been a very liberating experience. I’m not ready to leave just yet…

Posted by anonymous | July 31, 2007 11:18 AM

anonymous:

Racists in China:
(1) http://www.sinocidal.com

More racist stuff:
(2) http://www.thehumanaught.com/blog/2007/07/05/will-i-ever-leave-china/

Posted by anonymous | July 31, 2007 11:26 AM

China Tsunami:

If any of the hunger strikers are old enough to remember 蘇守忠, a young man of 21 years old then in 1966, stunted all Hongkongers mostly made up of newly arrival refugees from mainlander, declared hunger strike in protest of 5 cents Star Ferry fare increase. He started the first day of sit-in at Central Star Ferry, wearing dark sunglasses and black leather jacket with “protest” in Chinese written on the backside. The next day he stood at the Kowloon Star Ferry, and the third day at the Queen's pier. He was interviewed by reporters on the spot but he only spoke in English, something at the envy of every man on street because not even the police dare to arrest him. His hunger strike action sparked off a social riot in Hong Kong in late 1966, and followed by huge social riot disturbance in 1967, which was more linked to the over-zealous union leftists to follow the footsteps of mainland compatriots at the height of Cultural Revolution.

My other fond memories of Queen's Pier are watching, only at a distance, Sir Robert Black, and Sir David Trench wearing funny looking feathered hats in full colonial pageantry embarked and disembarked a Walla Walla reporting to duties as governor. Otherwise, in the 1980s watching Hong Kong tycoons boarded their sea going yachts, and in the last 10 years, at close range, watching mainland capitalist comrades showing off their new boats.

I have no sentimental attachments to this Queen's Pier, except for a hunger striker named 蘇守忠, a courageous young man later joined the Hare Krishna movement in Oregon, and suddenly went into oblivion as a poet in 1980s.

That's nice, let's tear it down!

Posted by China Tsunami | July 31, 2007 11:46 AM