Preserving Pok Fu Lam village is a chance to save some of city's history
Pok Fu Lam village is on an international list of sites to be preserved, but will Hong Kong listen?
Hundreds of humble huts and small houses perch on a hillside in the middle-class neighbourhood of Pok Fu Lam. Between them, narrow alleys lead to small shops, green fields and historic structures that were once part of Hong Kong's largest dairy farm.
For decades, Pok Fu Lam village has crouched in the shadow of the residential high-rises of Chi Fu Fa Yuen. The village has been categorised as a squatter area, and is constantly under threat of development. This makes the 2,800 residents of the 150-year-old village - one of the last on Hong Kong Island - uneasy.
Efforts to preserve this special place won support last month. Pok Fu Lam was named on a list compiled by the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based organisation seeking to preserve architectural and cultural sites. Also making the list was Venice, where dredging is creating floods, and Yangon's historic city centre in Myanmar.
Fund executive vice-president Henry Ng acknowledges that the village, dating back to at least 1868, is "not like many of our other sites", which are better known and have greater architectural merit. Ng says it is important because it is "pre-British", and even "pre-modern". It even lacks a modern sewage system.
"It's one of the last such villages in Hong Kong," Ng says. "If you lose something singular, you can never get it back. You lose a whole chunk of history."