Still time to ensure city is a place with a past
The old Star Ferry pier has been lost, but that does not mean the widely publicised campaign to save it from the wrecking ball has been left without a cause. It has succeeded in redefining the competition between development and conservation in Hong Kong. As a result, debate about preservation of our cultural heritage will never be the same. To the extent that development has tended to prevail over conservation, that is not a bad thing.
The depth of feeling and the broad-based community involvement in the Star Ferry protest caught the government off guard. It responded with new proposals for public consultation on heritage conservation and a new-look Antiquities Advisory Board to provide a wider representation of community views.
Young professionals added to the membership of the advisory board are losing no time in trying to give it a shake-up and make it a more effective instrument for preserving cultural heritage. At the first meeting on Tuesday of the expanded board, they are expected to seek the reopening of discussions on historic sites previously not considered heritage.
Chief among them will be Queen's Pier, swiftly adopted as a symbol of Hong Kong's collective memory after the fate of the adjoining ferry pier was sealed. The former landing place of royalty and colonial governors and a popular waterside leisure venue was to be demolished to make way for a road in the Central reclamation. The government put the plan on hold after the public outcry over the Star Ferry pier. Legislator Patrick Lau Sau-shing, on behalf of the Institute of Architects, will ask the board to reopen the matter. The architects have proposed protecting the pier with a retaining wall to separate it from the reclamation.
Such a radical alternative raises questions about the boundaries of a more sympathetic approach to preservation of cultural heritage. One board member who is said to have dismissed Queen's Pier as 'not worth it' is not a lone voice. The pier does not share associations with Hongkongers and visitors alike that made the Star Ferry pier such a compelling cause. There is still support for the board's suggestion to preserve significant relics of both piers and reconstruct them on the new central waterfront.
It is right, however, that the board provides a public forum for every reasonable - and even radical - alternative to the loss of cultural heritage. It is even more important, though, to recognise that the Star Ferry outcry has forced open a window of opportunity for the public and the government to reach a consensus on a coherent, balanced approach to development that does not leave Hong Kong looking like a place without a past, be it historic buildings or landmarks, the Central and Wan Chai markets or dai pai dong.
This is still a relatively young city. There remains time to see that much of the cultural heritage and collective memory of the generations who made it what it is today are preserved for those to come.
