Shape of Lo's new treasures
The drab, functional blocks of City Hall are painfully at odds with a new exhibition it houses, celebrating the most exquisite of traditional Chinese buildings on the mainland and in Hong Kong. Filling the grey, utilitarian boards dividing the supremely uninteresting space of the Exhibition Hall, there are rare architectural treasures to behold.
This is the latest project of Kai-yin Lo, well-known jewellery designer and lesser-known historian, patron and collector of Chinese furniture, ceramics, jade and paintings. In this mainly photographic exhibition and its fine 250-page catalogue, she hopes to illustrate the social and symbolic values of vernacular - or 'non-imperial' - dwellings in China, with help from some expert quarters.
Her growing furniture collection prompted Lo - who studied history at Cambridge and London universities - to look more deeply at the subject. 'I feel that to be a really good collector you have to understand Chinese civilisation. You can't just say 'I like this object'.' Last year she wobbled the foundations of scholarly opinion with her first book on the subject, Classical And Vernacular Chinese Furniture In The Living Environment. In it she sought to raise the profile of the vernacular to be considered alongside elite hard-wood furniture, while knocking both off their pedestals into a more popular domain.
Rather than being cut down to size by disdainful connoisseurs, the favourable responses she received encouraged her to take her research a step further. Now she contends that in the vernacular arena there is, in fact, no such thing as furniture. 'It's my new theory,' Lo says, with a swipe of an elegantly bejewelled hand. 'I'm going to stick my neck out to be chopped off. For me furniture is 'portable architecture', based on the fact that the same craftsmen commonly built the architecture and furniture.' Living Heritage is thus an exhibition liberally furnished with contradictions. But for a woman renowned for her trademark of wearing a different colour shoe on each foot, perhaps this is par for the course.
Her contention that it is impossible to study furniture outside its architectural context also flows contrary to a sad fact of modern life. 'Many areas [on the mainland] have been milked dry - there's hardly any furniture left. The families have sold it off to dealers,' she says. All the better for Lo the collector, but all the more difficult for the historian. The result is that the photographs cannot really accomplish what Lo set out to do.
As few interiors are left anywhere near their original state, most of the photographs are of exteriors - the indoor scenes of domesticity left to diagram and guesswork. Select items of furniture are scattered through the display, with a 'main hall' vignette of 18th-century furniture and a 'library' furnished with the scrolls and ornamentation of its literati occupant.
But if the exhibition has taken on a new direction, it is in line with public interest - particularly in view of the urgent need to preserve the little that is left of Hong Kong's heritage, highlighted recently by the precarious plight of 12th-century Nga Tsin Wai village in Kowloon City. Although probably of greatest interest to many visitors, Lo points out that 'Hong Kong is really the poor cousin' in terms of historical importance. An offshoot of Guangdong, what is left of the architecture here fails to stand up against the wealth of the other featured areas of Shanxi, south Anhui, Jiangnan and west Fujian.
Locally, buildings were chosen for their decorative and historical merit and social significance, Lo explains. The deserted, crumbling New Territories village of Shalotung, founded in the mid-17th century, contrasts with the defensive walled villages in Lung Yeuk Tau in Fanling. Elsewhere, from the breathtaking circular dwellings of Fujian, to the swooping roofs of Shanxi province, in the stunning photographs of Li Yuxiang are some exquisite and often-rarely glimpsed examples of mainland architecture.
One of the most inviting sections is 'Living Patterns' showing the lives of present-day inhabitants. A platform-soled young woman carries a brace of baskets in one photograph, in another, elderly women use old-fashioned foot warmers in a way of life which seems little changed. This perhaps best fulfils Lo's aims: 'I hear great scholars talking about these topics, but they can't put them in an everyday perspective - I suppose that's what we hope to achieve.' Living Heritage - Vernacular Environment In China. Until July 5, 10am-7pm, July 6, 10am-3pm. Exhibition Hall, 1/F Low Block, City Hall
