Depressing reports over recent months on the government's plans to build its headquarters at Tamar, knock down history on the Central waterfront and further reclaim our beautiful harbour remind me forcefully of a cautionary story I read to my children when they were small. The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein, is an environmental parable which recounts the many gifts a majestic tree lavishes lovingly on a small boy over the course of his long, increasingly needy life.
In the beginning, the boy is happy simply to play beneath the tree's protective canopy and to swing from its branches. 'And the boy loved the tree', as I imagine senior government officials loved the harbour before they became important men and women. However, as the boy grew older, he no longer went to visit the tree, for he was becoming a very busy man. Then, one day, this young businessman took a long, hard look at the tree again and saw its vast potential for making money. And the tree was only too happy to give up its apples for sale, as our property developers and road planners have been only too happy to gobble up the harbour shoreline.
As the young man grew older, one of the defining characteristics of adulthood was that he was no longer happy or satisfied for long. So he returned to the tree, which gladly gave him its branches to build a house for his family, as our harbour provided commercial office and retail space.
Finally, the boy reached retirement age and, like our senior civil servants became 'too old and sad to play' and wanted to sail into the sunset - not on a Star ferry that would only take him a short distance across a dramatically reduced harbour (in any case, relocated to a berth impossible for the old and infirm to reach with ease) - but on a big boat that would take him far away. So he returned to the tree and requisitioned its trunk. The tree was so happy to see him again at any cost that 'she could hardly speak'. Likewise our harbourfront, which has no united voice in government to defend it, is now offering up what is left of its body to groundscrapers, government headquarters, shopping malls and a six-lane bypass.
However, in retirement, the boy discovered the wisdom to see that he didn't need much to be happy - not a big boat or another Mercedes-Benz to speed him along the waterfront road without seeing the harbour, but 'just a quiet place to sit and rest'. So the tree gave him the only thing it had left - its old stump, where he could take a seat and savour the view.
Leung Kong-yui, chairman of a subcommittee of the Harbourfront Enhancement Committee, cannot assure us that phase two of the Wan Chai Development Project and the Central-Wan Chai bypass will be the last reclamation of Victoria Harbour ('Calm sailing tipped for harbour plan', October 7). The government may provide a stump where we can sit and rest now, but what will be left for our children? When will we grow up and realise that, in our seemingly insatiable consumption of the harbour, we are destroying a natural landscape that is not only intrinsic to Hong Kong's identity but may also be vital to the legendary energy and dynamism that flow through our city?