KMT supporters' anniversary event highlights fight to save old monastery
Sai Kung District Council's planned heritage centre would clear away remnant of 'Little Taiwan' refugee enclave, shrine
The "blue sky and white sun" flag returned to Tiu Keng Leng yesterday, 18 years after the clearance of the enclave once known as "Little Taiwan" in Hong Kong.
About 70 pro-Kuomintang people in the city, including former residents of the now-demolished squatter area for civil war refugees, celebrated the 120th anniversary of the Revive China Society, a forerunner of the KMT.
Yesterday's event was held at the old Tiu Keng Leng Police Station - the sole surviving building of the former Nationalist refugee enclave - as part of a campaign to save a Tibetan Buddhist monastery inside the building.
The building, also known as Rennie's Mill Police Station, is to be converted into a heritage showroom under a project launched by the Beijing-loyalists-controlled Sai Kung District Council. The move is facing opposition from a group of former residents of the area who are politically tied to Taipei.
The white concrete house was built in 1961 along the Mau Wu Shan hill for the British colonial police to oversee the downhill settlement from 60 metres above. It became home to Po Yin Fat Yuen, a monastery founded in 1956, after the monastery building was torn down in 1996 with the clearance of the squatter area.
Last year, the council decided to turn the building into a new Tseung Kwan O History and Heritage Information Centre, under the government's Signature Project Scheme, which gives each district HK$100 million to launch two projects.