The Blue House!

Sometimes I don't get Hong Kong.  The Blue House is one of those times.

 The Blue House

A recent list of Hong Kong's Greatest Cultural Icons went like this:

#1  Star Ferry, 

#2  The Peak Tram, 

# 3  The Blue House, 

#4  Bruce Lee.

I thought this list had to be yanking our collective chains because there is no way on earth The Blue House is a greater Cultural Icon than Bruce Lee.

I think we're all being played for fools.  I think what really happened is that the late great Wedding Card Street ...

Wedding Card Street today.  

Literally.

Snapped it just this minute.

... applied for "Tangible Cultural Heritage Living Museum" status back in 2000 and was punished by being torn down. (Told you that story HERE.) However, it must have eventually got the ever-unimaginative and cretin-slow Hong Kong Heritage Council thinking "Mmmm, a living museum.  That's an interesting concept." and thus, too late to save Wedding Card Street, they must have looked around Wan Chai for some other set of buildings to be turned into A Tangible Cultural Heritage Living Museum.

I guess the colour caught their eye ...

From Queens Road East,

spot The Blue House.

 ... and so now, with all those surrounding buildings being torn down (although they think they may also keep the orange and yellow ones) and replaced with The Cube Project's all-glass luxury apartment high-rise, The Blue House is to be kept, given heritage status, and, by 2013 will be operating as A Tangible Cultural Heritage Living Museum, right in the middle.

Say what?

I mean, Wedding Card Street was a living museum.  It was a street of old shops that had dozens of centuries-old-and-still-operating printing presses out the back and a traditional and long-standing community who knew how to operate them. AND they turned out the most exquisite small-order printed works like cards and invitations. AND people from all over the world came to have their wedding invitations printed in Hong Kong, right there in the shops in Wedding Card Street, because of the standard of workmanship and special care given.

I mean, even the Tongan Royal Family would regularly rock up to have work done, thinking that these chappies did the best hand-printing they'd ever seen, PLUS it was fun dealing with the community.

The Blue House, on the other hand, once used to have a Chinese Herbalist and Bone-setter ...

 A cleaning lady finds these Foreign Devils mighty funny!

... and 500 other inhabitants who lived atop each other, cheek-to-jowl, in tiny apartments without bathrooms or running water.

As for the rest, built in 1920 it was "one of the first tenement buildings in HK to be built with reinforced concrete" and ... no, that's it!  The one claim to fame.

And it seems it didn't even want to be The Blue House.  Back in the 1990s, the Water Supplies Department had some vivid blue paint no one wanted to use and thus was going to waste and so, with this particular this tong lau (building) under a council maintenance order, used it here, outraging the kaifong (the local community) because they saw the colour as representing "bad luck, death and funerals" and thus shocking Feng Shui for the entire neighbourhood.

And if you look closely at the building, you can see the section farthest away remains unpainted because the locals got so very vocal it was stopped.

Anyway, they've now moved everyone out and will shortly be moving in a brand-new kaifong consisting of people with tangible cultural old-skills and who are willing to work as a traditional kaifong in order to show the world what a traditional kaifong actually is.

Seriously, they MUST be yanking our collective chains!

Nonetheless, I am more than willing to be won over and so, next week, will be going on a walking tour of the area, to listen to everything the Heritage Living Museum proponents have to say on the subject and hope I will walk away, inspired and thinking "Hot dang!  That indeed is a worthy #3 for Hong Kong's Greatest Cultural Icons!"

And if you too want to come on this tour, the booking number is 2835-4376.