Built military heritage conservation and the perception of history in Hong Kong

Abstract

In simple terms, built heritage is the old buildings that might have once been abundant and/or active in a location, but had been supplemented or displaced by newer technologies and constructions. But that location’s inhabitants may keep a few of these buildings around well after their prime because they hold meaning for much of the populace.

In Hong Kong, built heritage is a new concept compared to its reception in many other societies. The city’s economy has long stressed property development, which is predicated on high building turnover. The idea of preserving a few older buildings had not occurred to most Hong Kongers until recently. Built military heritage, a subset of built heritage that this dissertation will examine, is even less recognizable to the average resident of the city because most civilians did not have hands-on experience with these facilities when they were operational or learn about them in school.

The latter factor could be blamed on the Hong Kong Government’s light emphasis on the teaching of history – especially Hong Kong History – and coolness towards the preservation of its official records. A stronger commitment to both would do much to give Hong Kongers a solid foundation to better know their hometown’s remaining significant old buildings and possibly speak out against their demolition, but the efforts on both fronts thus far have generally been disappointing.

In this wilderness, a few Hong Kongers have struck out on their own to learn more about their city’s built heritage, find meaning in it, and spread the word. In 2012, the University of Hong Kong’s (HKU) Department of Real Estate & Construction initiated an undergraduate course to introduce students to some of Hong Kong’s old and mostly obscure structures via site visits. The course became the foundation for this dissertation, which examines some of the sites the course has visited for its case studies.

Some of Hong Kong’s former military sites are the chief focus of HKU’s undergraduate course and will be covered in this dissertation. As they were situated outside of Hong Kong’s principal populated areas then (and many still are today), most Hong Kongers are not aware of their existence, never mind their history. Case studies that involve visiting these sites give the author a chance to determine how familiar a select group of Hong Kongers (in this case, HKU undergraduates) is with their city’s history and old buildings and what this could mean for the future of Hong Kong’s built heritage preservation efforts.

Although this dissertation focuses on Hong Kong’s built military heritage preservation efforts, it has been enhanced by comparing them to those of a city with which it shares some similarities. For this, the author chose New York because it, like Hong Kong, was a British territory that was a key military base on the coast and its military presence was once bigger than it is today. It also happens to be the author’s adopted hometown.

If the case studies showed how inadequate was Hong Kong’s awareness of its history and former military structures, the use of New York as an analogy highlights Hong Kong’s flaws in the built heritage preservation game even more. In all fairness to Hong Kong, it has long been a transient society whose wheels keep turning, leaving it relatively little time to stop and think about its past and how it wants to remember it.