WAN CHAI SERIES # 5 - HONG KONG RESTORATIONS

HK, 1937

Noel Coward said, when he visited in the early 70s, "Oh dear. Hong Kong used to be such a pretty city. Dear, oh dear, oh dear!"

OK, this is a pretty shot of HK,
but it's hard to get a bad one
when you're shooting from
the Harbour.
(I promise I'll go into the city soon
to take one that shows you
what I mean)

Since I visited back in the 60s, seeing it all again I feel the same way. Only undoubtedly much more deeply since it's been over 30 years since Noel Coward's complaint and so much more damage has been done since then:

Hong Kong
as seen from Hopewell Centre

My main complaint is that it's lost the visual cohesion it used to have since it's now a desperate hotchpotch of "nothing much really"! You know, thinking about it, it's unspeakable the way HK's forever demolishing its unique and colourful past and replacing it with dull, ubiquitous, rest-of-the-world-has-it-too crap. It must stop.

However, thanks to the strident vocal outrage of The Heroes of Wedding Card Street, HK is finally starting to say "Enough!" and people have started coming out to protest when historic and iconic landmarks are scheduled for the wrecking ball .

Who can forget the noble struggles and building-chaining and head-to-heading with police and wreckers by hundreds of Champion Souls when Queen's Pier was meant to be demolished! Linking arms, they kept them back for three whole days.

I actually took my baby sister Jane and the kids, when they visited two years ago ...

Me, Kate, Ella, Jane and Talei
not watching protests.

... down to see it all happening, simply because it was just so new and exciting: the first time ever - apart from Wedding Card Street, which I just had to look out my window to see, and which involved only the small handful of residents - for pragmatic HKers to feel strongly enough about anything to put themselves on the line in this way. It was great. Sincerely! They didn't win, sure, but they did manage to save the especially iconic old clocktower since the Developers compromised to get rid of them.

However, this isn't meant to be a treatise on restoration. I just wanted to show you two of Wan Chai's first really bad and desperately dishonest restorations, and the latest one, which, I'm proud to tell you, has worked.

DESPERATELY BAD RESTORATIONS #1

When the Developers were destroying Li Chit Street, they promised to keep and restore one of the old buildings to show what had once been there. And, yes indeed, here is "one of the old buildings":

You think? However, if you sneak around the corner and peek, here's what you see:Yup, it's a facade. Instead of keeping their word, the Developers pulled down all the old buildings and stuck up a copy of what those old buildings had been like, only ... umm, not so much!

DESPERATELY BAD RESTORATIONS #2

In this case, the Developers promised to incorporate part of the original building into the new one:Is this the stupidest thing you've ever seen? I think they didn't understand what has been asked of them. Makes me shudder to think that this same promise has been made for Wan Chai Market.

WONDERFUL RESTORATION #1 (hopefully)

Woo Cheung Pawn Shop is one of my favourite buildings in HK. And that's not just because it's visually stunning:

Pre-restoration

It's because it has so much history. When the Japanese invaded in 1941, they held a Victory Parade that went down Johnston Road, and if you see the films of this parade, you can see Woo Cheung Pawn Shop in the background.

Japanese Parade down Johnston Road.

And then, after the Japanese were defeated, the British had their own Victory Parade, and the subsequent packaged footage exactly duplicated the Japanese film, so you again see Woo Cheung Pawn Shop in the background. How can anyone even think of tearing it down.

Anyway, they haven't. They've done it up and they unveiled it a month back and I have to say it's sublime. Like, look at this entrance. Isn't it perfect?

Aren't those colours so exactly right?

Oops, I can't find the photos I've taken of the place post-restoration, but when I do I'll put them up here. In the meantime, here's a model a high school kid has made of it since it's been restored:

So it's obviously already caught the public imagination.

Don't you just love it when people get things right.