The Forgotten Place

As controversial as it was, chief executive Donald Tsang’s policy address last month did actually present a novel plan that may bear fruit—his plan to conserve Central district as a whole is a break from the usual government actions to conserve only particular buildings and structures, and an idea activists have been promoting for a long time. The idea is that because Central as a whole has a significant historical status to Hong Kong, the whole district should be preserved, with special attention to its “unique historical and cultural features,” according to Tsang’s statement. The proposal is to conserve a cluster of buildings including Murray Building, two of three government headquarters buildings, Central Market and the Legco building. Conservationists have applauded the move, believing the government is finally taking the right step toward trying to preserve the very little there is left of our city that actually bears testimony to our history.

Tsang’s plan, however, has one major flaw—while the conservation area he proposed extends as far south and west of Central as the Hollywood Road Police Quarters, he has put almost no emphasis on a very important venue from our history—Edinburgh Place. Sandwiched between City Hall and the former site of the already removed Queen’s Pier, the square has important links to the already demolished Star Ferry Pier. And because of that, a concern group called Heritage Watch is proposing to the government that the square, along with City Hall (a Grade I historical building) and the removed Queen’s Pier (also another Grade I historical building, which they are requesting be returned to its original location) should be viewed as an historical cluster and receive a grading by the government’s Antiquities and Monuments Office.

Paul Zimmerman, founding member of Designing Hong Kong, says Edinburgh Place is a particularly important historical landscape that is often overlooked. Heritage Watch’s Miranda May Szeto, who is a professor in comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong, agrees. “This particular area reflects our history from the 1950s to 60s, especially developments in the social movements of the city,” she says. Edinburgh Place, after all, is perhaps best-known as the place where British governors first arrived in Hong Kong back in the colonial days (they would first arrive by boat at Queen’s Pier). When Queen Elizabeth II visited Hong Kong in 1986, her first steps into Hong Kong were at that very same place. “Edinburgh Place was designed to be a ceremonial venue,” Zimmerman explains. Its significance to British colonial government also made it an important location for protests and demonstrations, the most significant of which was the hunger strike against the Star Ferry fare hike of 1966, and also the campaign to protect the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands by patriotic students back in 1971.

Despite its significance, Edinburgh Place still has not received much attention from the government since the handover conservation-wise, particularly in Tsang’s latest policy address. However, Zimmerman says Tsang should not be blamed. “Hong Kong has been too focused on Queen’s Pier,” he says. “The piazza clearly is more significant than the pier but all the protests have solely been about Queen’s Pier.”

He explains that their proposal this time aims to shift that focus back to where it matters. He also stresses that the area should be seen as a whole. “The architect who designed Edinburgh Place deliberately aligned the entrance of City Hall up with that of Queen’s Pier,” he says. “That is an important architectural feature we have to pay attention to, that preserving one building but not the other would just make no sense.” The plan to conserve Edinburgh Place, he says, should include a plan to relocate Queen’s Pier to its original location. Secretary of Development Carrie Lam announced earlier that the government has decided to relocate the original structure of Queen’s Pier to between Pier 9 and 10 instead of its original location. Zimmerman says relocating it in its original position only costs $30 million, while Lam’s plan would cost $220 million.

Conservation architect Dr. Hoyin Lee, who is the director of the Architectural Conversation Programme at the University of Hong Kong, welcomes the proposal. He says Hong Kong needs to understand that resources put into heritage conservation should not be object-oriented. “We are used to grading buildings and conserving them,” he says. “But functional space and also the cultural landscape should receive recognition. I think [the proposal] would help the public to understand that heritage is beyond just physical objects.” However, Dr. Lee worries that the proposed grading would not mean much. “A Grade I grading doesn’t give much protection to the heritage spot,” he says. “Only if the space is zoned properly will the whole area retain its original vibe.”