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Hong Kong suddenly seeks its soul
In protesting the demolition of the famed Star Ferry pier, a town of money and migrants discovers its collective memory. GEOFFREY YORK reports
GEOFFREY YORK
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
HONG KONG — For almost half a century, the Star Ferry pier was the symbol of Hong Kong. Its clock tower and wooden docks were immortalized in Hollywood films and countless tourist photos. For millions of people, the pier was the gateway from the fabled harbour to the skyscrapers and mountains at the heart of the city.
Yet when authorities announced last year that the pier would be demolished to make room for a shopping mall and a highway, few people seemed to care. After all, this was Hong Kong, a city built on money and property. Demolition and construction were the lifeblood of China's financial capital.
Then, last November, a 42-year-old single mother named Ho Loy launched a lonely, one-woman sit-in to protest against the demolition. At first, she was deluged with angry criticism. "You're wasting your time," people spat at her as they strode past. "You're stupid. The city needs to grow. Why are you stopping development?"
But within a few weeks, Ms. Ho had ignited a fast-growing protest movement that has transformed Hong Kong's civic consciousness. The Star Ferry pier became a new symbol -- the inspiration for a burgeoning political activism that is reinventing Hong Kong's identity.
For the first time, this relentlessly energetic city is questioning the materialism that made it one of the richest cities in Asia. A new phrase -- "collective memory" -- has emerged as a rallying cry for a young generation of activists who have rediscovered the city's history. Hong Kong, which once saw itself as merely a temporary place of business for capitalist refugees who fled Communist China, is finally recognizing that it has a soul.
By last December, dozens of protesters were breaking through police lines at the Star Ferry pier. They were camping inside the site, launching hunger strikes, chaining themselves to posts, climbing the scaffolding and shouting slogans.
The police hauled away the protesters and threw Ms. Ho into custody, along with several of her supporters. On the night of Dec. 15, the pier and clock tower were demolished. But public outrage erupted. Suddenly, it was the city's hottest issue, dominating headlines and sparking legislative debates.
Even the territory's chief executive, veteran bureaucrat Donald Tsang, acknowledged that the Star Ferry protests were a "sea change in public opinion" for the city. "We cannot ignore this awakening," he said, pledging a stronger system of heritage protection.
For years, Hong Kong had been ruthlessly clearing away the legacy of its Chinese and colonial past, replacing it with anonymous malls and apartment towers. The constant clamour of redevelopment seemed fitting for a city of uncertain identity, torn between Britain and China, filled with migrants who held passports from Canada and dozens of other countries, ready to flee at a moment's notice. The city's unofficial slogan was: "Borrowed place, borrowed time."
After a long economic slump following the 1997 handover to China, the city survived and stabilized. The passport holders who escaped before the handover were returning. People began to think of Hong Kong as their home, a place with a "collective memory."
In the aftermath of the Star Ferry battle, there is a growing movement to defend dozens of threatened sites -- historic markets, piers, old apartment blocks and cluttered streets of shops that for decades were the heart of Hong Kong life.
"It's a sign of a maturing society that takes its own future more seriously," said Martin Lee, a veteran pro-democracy leader in Hong Kong. "I'm proud of our people. Nobody expected this. The Star Ferry clock won't affect their daily life, yet they care about it. There's a sense of belonging now. Hong Kong is our home, and we want a say in how this home will be managed."
Ho Loy's story is typical of the young activists. Her father fled from Southern China in the 1950s after his land was confiscated by the new Communist regime. He worked as a labourer and a street vendor in Hong Kong, hawking traditional Chinese desserts in the streets. As a child, his daughter rode the Star Ferry, fascinated by the sailors who jumped onto the pier to tie the boat down with thick ropes.
Ms. Ho went on to have an eclectic career as a professional dancer, newspaper editor and arts-festival organizer. But she was shocked when she discovered last year that the pier would be demolished. The project was approved in 2002, when few people were paying attention. A legal challenge had failed, and the city pushed ahead without debate after the case ended.
The clock tower -- made famous in the opening scene of the popular 1960 Hollywood film The World of Suzie Wong -- was to be demolished along with the rest of the Star Ferry pier. The city built a sterile replica of the old pier several hundred metres out into the harbour, and announced that a shopping mall and highway would be built on reclaimed land where the pier had stood. The new pier is filled with glitzy new Starbucks and Haagen-Dazs outlets replacing the old pier's mom-and-pop shops.
A group of artists began a campaign against the demolition last August, but it failed to gain momentum until Ms. Ho began her sit-in in November, in support of another protester who picketed Hong Kong's Toronto trade office.
Ms. Ho today is facing two criminal charges, including a weapons charge for using a paper cutter to damage the scaffolding around the pier during the protests. She could be sentenced to up to two years, but she views it fearlessly. "It will be a chance for the public to learn more about this issue," she says.
She spends a lot of her time now at the nearby Queen's Pier, which is also slated for demolition. It was the colonial-era landing place of British royalty and a traditional spot for wedding photos, and polls show that most Hong Kongers want to preserve it. The government has agreed to review the demolition, but it is expected to proceed.
As she stands at Queen's Pier, Ms. Ho gazes back at the ruins of the Star Ferry site. "I'm heartbroken," she says. "It wasn't just a piece of rubbish to be dumped into the sea."
A few protest banners and memorial wreaths remain. "To give up is easy -- to forget is hard," says a line of Chinese calligraphy on the sidewalk. But now the site is dominated by cranes and pile drivers on barges as the harbour shrinks and land reclamation begins.
"I feel that we're facing a mechanical monster, taking over our lives without any discussion," Ms. Ho says as she stares at the cranes. "What kind of future is this? There will be no more beauty in the city. It will become mechanical, without meaning or feeling."
Analysts point out that Hong Kong's government traditionally has relied on land sales and harbour-reclamation projects for the bulk of its revenue. There has been a tacit alliance between the government and the private developers, with little concern for the broader desires of the community.
"Hong Kong people have never been encouraged to express their feelings about their city," Ms. Ho says. "We don't take a moment to sit down and think about our lives. Hong Kong was built by immigrants and refugees, and we need to learn to communicate with each other, so that we can build a community movement."
One of Ms. Ho's fellow hunger strikers was a young man named Chu Hoi-dick, a 29-year-old freelance writer and heritage activist who has campaigned to save the endangered history of Wan Chai, one of the oldest neighbourhoods on Hong Kong island.
Giving a tour of the area, he begins at Lee Tung Street, popularly known as Wedding Card Street, where Hong Kong's card-printing business was born in the 1960s. Once there were dozens of small printing shops on the bustling street, with their owners living in apartments above them. Now, they are deserted. Hundreds of owners have been evicted, and the shops will be demolished to make room for a massive $500-million commercial and residential complex.
"I always used to enjoy walking down this street," says Mr. Chu, who grew up here. "It was a lively and vibrant community. You could drink herbal tea and chat with the shop owners. Big families would occupy three or four apartments in the same building and share dinner together. The roofs were interconnected. It was like a playground -- you could run across the roofs from one end of the street to the other. They would fly kites from the roofs. Now, everyone is gone."
Streets are barricaded with construction hoardings and scaffolding. Rents have doubled in the past three years, forcing many of the shop owners to leave. Mr. Chu points out the street markets and low-rise apartment blocks that will be cleared away to make room for luxury 40- and 50-storey residential towers.
"There were vegetable and clothing vendors all the way up to the end of this street," he says. "Now, it's just another tower. This community is being totally destroyed. In 10 years, all of Wan Chai will be a jungle of skyscrapers. They're suffocating the streets."
Yet even here, there are the first stirrings of resistance. The evicted shop owners sometimes gather on Wedding Card Street to fly kites in protest against the mammoth development.
Two blocks away is the famed Wan Chai Market, built in 1937 in a distinctive Bauhaus style with a gracefully curving façade. It is said to be one of only two such markets in the world. It, too, is slated for demolition. Yet the fish and vegetable vendors, determined to stay, are campaigning against the demolition, and a huge protest banner flutters at the market entrance.
As the city begins to redefine its identity, the clashes at the Star Ferry pier have played a crucial role in strengthening the activist movement. "Politically, it stunned the government," says Christine Loh, head of Civic Exchange, a leading think tank in Hong Kong. "The protesters weren't the usual suspects."
She says the authorities failed to understand that the Star Ferry pier had become close to the hearts of a generation of Hong Kong people -- even if it lacked the grandeur of a historic monument.
"We're not Rome or Beijing. We were born as a southern Chinese fishing village, not the centre of an empire. But that clock tower is part of us. That clock tower is us."
Geoffrey York is The Globe and Mail's China correspondent.
Hong Kong suddenly seeks its soul
In protesting the demolition of the famed Star Ferry pier, a town of money and migrants discovers its collective memory. GEOFFREY YORK reports
GEOFFREY YORK
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
HONG KONG — For almost half a century, the Star Ferry pier was the symbol of Hong Kong. Its clock tower and wooden docks were immortalized in Hollywood films and countless tourist photos. For millions of people, the pier was the gateway from the fabled harbour to the skyscrapers and mountains at the heart of the city.
Yet when authorities announced last year that the pier would be demolished to make room for a shopping mall and a highway, few people seemed to care. After all, this was Hong Kong, a city built on money and property. Demolition and construction were the lifeblood of China's financial capital.
Then, last November, a 42-year-old single mother named Ho Loy launched a lonely, one-woman sit-in to protest against the demolition. At first, she was deluged with angry criticism. "You're wasting your time," people spat at her as they strode past. "You're stupid. The city needs to grow. Why are you stopping development?"
But within a few weeks, Ms. Ho had ignited a fast-growing protest movement that has transformed Hong Kong's civic consciousness. The Star Ferry pier became a new symbol -- the inspiration for a burgeoning political activism that is reinventing Hong Kong's identity.
For the first time, this relentlessly energetic city is questioning the materialism that made it one of the richest cities in Asia. A new phrase -- "collective memory" -- has emerged as a rallying cry for a young generation of activists who have rediscovered the city's history. Hong Kong, which once saw itself as merely a temporary place of business for capitalist refugees who fled Communist China, is finally recognizing that it has a soul.
By last December, dozens of protesters were breaking through police lines at the Star Ferry pier. They were camping inside the site, launching hunger strikes, chaining themselves to posts, climbing the scaffolding and shouting slogans.
The police hauled away the protesters and threw Ms. Ho into custody, along with several of her supporters. On the night of Dec. 15, the pier and clock tower were demolished. But public outrage erupted. Suddenly, it was the city's hottest issue, dominating headlines and sparking legislative debates.
Even the territory's chief executive, veteran bureaucrat Donald Tsang, acknowledged that the Star Ferry protests were a "sea change in public opinion" for the city. "We cannot ignore this awakening," he said, pledging a stronger system of heritage protection.
For years, Hong Kong had been ruthlessly clearing away the legacy of its Chinese and colonial past, replacing it with anonymous malls and apartment towers. The constant clamour of redevelopment seemed fitting for a city of uncertain identity, torn between Britain and China, filled with migrants who held passports from Canada and dozens of other countries, ready to flee at a moment's notice. The city's unofficial slogan was: "Borrowed place, borrowed time."
After a long economic slump following the 1997 handover to China, the city survived and stabilized. The passport holders who escaped before the handover were returning. People began to think of Hong Kong as their home, a place with a "collective memory."
In the aftermath of the Star Ferry battle, there is a growing movement to defend dozens of threatened sites -- historic markets, piers, old apartment blocks and cluttered streets of shops that for decades were the heart of Hong Kong life.
"It's a sign of a maturing society that takes its own future more seriously," said Martin Lee, a veteran pro-democracy leader in Hong Kong. "I'm proud of our people. Nobody expected this. The Star Ferry clock won't affect their daily life, yet they care about it. There's a sense of belonging now. Hong Kong is our home, and we want a say in how this home will be managed."
Ho Loy's story is typical of the young activists. Her father fled from Southern China in the 1950s after his land was confiscated by the new Communist regime. He worked as a labourer and a street vendor in Hong Kong, hawking traditional Chinese desserts in the streets. As a child, his daughter rode the Star Ferry, fascinated by the sailors who jumped onto the pier to tie the boat down with thick ropes.
Ms. Ho went on to have an eclectic career as a professional dancer, newspaper editor and arts-festival organizer. But she was shocked when she discovered last year that the pier would be demolished. The project was approved in 2002, when few people were paying attention. A legal challenge had failed, and the city pushed ahead without debate after the case ended.
The clock tower -- made famous in the opening scene of the popular 1960 Hollywood film The World of Suzie Wong -- was to be demolished along with the rest of the Star Ferry pier. The city built a sterile replica of the old pier several hundred metres out into the harbour, and announced that a shopping mall and highway would be built on reclaimed land where the pier had stood. The new pier is filled with glitzy new Starbucks and Haagen-Dazs outlets replacing the old pier's mom-and-pop shops.
A group of artists began a campaign against the demolition last August, but it failed to gain momentum until Ms. Ho began her sit-in in November, in support of another protester who picketed Hong Kong's Toronto trade office.
Ms. Ho today is facing two criminal charges, including a weapons charge for using a paper cutter to damage the scaffolding around the pier during the protests. She could be sentenced to up to two years, but she views it fearlessly. "It will be a chance for the public to learn more about this issue," she says.
She spends a lot of her time now at the nearby Queen's Pier, which is also slated for demolition. It was the colonial-era landing place of British royalty and a traditional spot for wedding photos, and polls show that most Hong Kongers want to preserve it. The government has agreed to review the demolition, but it is expected to proceed.
As she stands at Queen's Pier, Ms. Ho gazes back at the ruins of the Star Ferry site. "I'm heartbroken," she says. "It wasn't just a piece of rubbish to be dumped into the sea."
A few protest banners and memorial wreaths remain. "To give up is easy -- to forget is hard," says a line of Chinese calligraphy on the sidewalk. But now the site is dominated by cranes and pile drivers on barges as the harbour shrinks and land reclamation begins.
"I feel that we're facing a mechanical monster, taking over our lives without any discussion," Ms. Ho says as she stares at the cranes. "What kind of future is this? There will be no more beauty in the city. It will become mechanical, without meaning or feeling."
Analysts point out that Hong Kong's government traditionally has relied on land sales and harbour-reclamation projects for the bulk of its revenue. There has been a tacit alliance between the government and the private developers, with little concern for the broader desires of the community.
"Hong Kong people have never been encouraged to express their feelings about their city," Ms. Ho says. "We don't take a moment to sit down and think about our lives. Hong Kong was built by immigrants and refugees, and we need to learn to communicate with each other, so that we can build a community movement."
One of Ms. Ho's fellow hunger strikers was a young man named Chu Hoi-dick, a 29-year-old freelance writer and heritage activist who has campaigned to save the endangered history of Wan Chai, one of the oldest neighbourhoods on Hong Kong island.
Giving a tour of the area, he begins at Lee Tung Street, popularly known as Wedding Card Street, where Hong Kong's card-printing business was born in the 1960s. Once there were dozens of small printing shops on the bustling street, with their owners living in apartments above them. Now, they are deserted. Hundreds of owners have been evicted, and the shops will be demolished to make room for a massive $500-million commercial and residential complex.
"I always used to enjoy walking down this street," says Mr. Chu, who grew up here. "It was a lively and vibrant community. You could drink herbal tea and chat with the shop owners. Big families would occupy three or four apartments in the same building and share dinner together. The roofs were interconnected. It was like a playground -- you could run across the roofs from one end of the street to the other. They would fly kites from the roofs. Now, everyone is gone."
Streets are barricaded with construction hoardings and scaffolding. Rents have doubled in the past three years, forcing many of the shop owners to leave. Mr. Chu points out the street markets and low-rise apartment blocks that will be cleared away to make room for luxury 40- and 50-storey residential towers.
"There were vegetable and clothing vendors all the way up to the end of this street," he says. "Now, it's just another tower. This community is being totally destroyed. In 10 years, all of Wan Chai will be a jungle of skyscrapers. They're suffocating the streets."
Yet even here, there are the first stirrings of resistance. The evicted shop owners sometimes gather on Wedding Card Street to fly kites in protest against the mammoth development.
Two blocks away is the famed Wan Chai Market, built in 1937 in a distinctive Bauhaus style with a gracefully curving façade. It is said to be one of only two such markets in the world. It, too, is slated for demolition. Yet the fish and vegetable vendors, determined to stay, are campaigning against the demolition, and a huge protest banner flutters at the market entrance.
As the city begins to redefine its identity, the clashes at the Star Ferry pier have played a crucial role in strengthening the activist movement. "Politically, it stunned the government," says Christine Loh, head of Civic Exchange, a leading think tank in Hong Kong. "The protesters weren't the usual suspects."
She says the authorities failed to understand that the Star Ferry pier had become close to the hearts of a generation of Hong Kong people -- even if it lacked the grandeur of a historic monument.
"We're not Rome or Beijing. We were born as a southern Chinese fishing village, not the centre of an empire. But that clock tower is part of us. That clock tower is us."
Geoffrey York is The Globe and Mail's China correspondent.