Heritage,Identity and Tourism in Hong Kong

Once a part of the Chinese Empire, Hong Kong then became a British colony and changed its status again in 1997 to that of a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. The implications of this history for heritage and cultural identity are discussed with particular reference to their representation and promotion as tourist attractions. Hong Kong is seen to be using its unique heritage in a time of transition and uncertainty to assist in defining a distinct identity that is partly expressed through tourism. There are, however, certain potential conflicts of meaning and interpretation amongst the interested parties that have still to be resolved. The experience of Hong Kong provides an insight into the dynamics of the relationship between identity, heritage and tourism that are especially complex within the context of decolonisation.     

Postcolonial cultural governance: a study of heritage management in post-1997 Hong Kong

This paper seeks to unpack the politics of heritage preservation in post-1997 Hong Kong. Referring to international frameworks on heritage preservation, it seeks to position Hong Kong’s cultural resource management on par with international discourses for the advancement of heritage governance. Debates surrounding heritage are indeed a part of the wider picture of Hong Kong’s cultural and identity politics and the Hong Kong-China relationship. By examining various contested cases of heritage conservation, and by linking those debates back to the government’s responses within the context of cultural governance, we suggest that heritage management has become a hot stove for cultural politics in post-colonial Hong Kong with deep repercussions in the political, social and economic spheres. The paper examines the rising social debates concerning the removal and conservation of built heritage, and the various government attempts to address these debates. It argues that the current heritage governance mechanism has failed to meet social needs and provide an articulated heritage policy. We propose that a coherent organisational structure is required to better accommodate diverse and contradictory views and discourses surrounding heritage and cultural governance and to tackle the various cultural challenges in postcolonial Hong Kong.     

流动与认同：以香港居民为例

“接触假说”认为,群体间的接触和交往越多、偏见越少。这个观点有一定的局限性。本文使用香港社会动态跟踪调查2013年的数据,分析了受访者跨境流动频率对“中国人”身份认同的影响。研究发现,跨境流动的频率与“中国人”身份认同有显著的关系。跨境流动刚开始确实可以提升香港居民的“中国人”认同;随着流动频繁,“中国人”认同转而趋弱。结果表明,跨境流动对香港居民“中国人”身份认同的影响是非线性的,当流动频率超过某个节点,认同就不再增强甚至转而下降。研究结果揭示出身份认同是在寻求相似性和差异性两者的互动中形成的,并因应不同的社会情境而发生改变。香港与内地的差异体验越深,不同的身份认同越难合一。     

Conserving Hong Kong’s Heritage: The Case of Queen’s Pier

The case of Queen’s Pier in Hong Kong provides the context for a discussion of conceptions of heritage, the purposes it serves and the dilemmas surrounding conservation in modern Asian societies committed to economic growth. Efforts to save the historic pier from destruction are recounted and the perspectives of those with an interest are examined. Built heritage is shown to have socio‐cultural, political and economic functions and its contribution to defining identity is especially important in times of change and uncertainty. Circumstances in Hong Kong reflect its unique history and current status, but the issues emerging from the analysis have a wider relevance. The fundamental tension between development and conservation is highlighted, together with the challenges of reconciling these two forces in a satisfactory manner.     

Industrial Heritage: Valorising the Spatial–Temporal Dynamics of Another Hong Kong Story

This paper challenges current perspectives on Hong Kong heritage that are based predominantly on a dichotomous juxtaposition of traditional Chineseness vis‐à‐vis post‐colonial romanticism, and argues for a deeper appreciation of its industrial history and identity. Textured narratives are proposed that highlight the socio‐economic relationships that were/are essential components of the industrial (hi)story. Specifically, the paper identifies the time/space dimension as unique, and hence it should be valorised using context‐sensitive, carefully thought‐through and executed approaches. The paper presents an ‘other Hong Kong heritage story’ that foregrounds the compressed time–space nature of the city’s industrial history, the spatial organisation of manufacturing, and the dynamic spatial stretch that has been taken by the industrialisation process. Furthermore, a stretching of governance space for the identification, (re)presentation and conservation of heritage using a participatory approach is proposed. In the face of rapid deindustrialisation and pressure for urban renewal, prompt, well‐conceptualised and time/space‐sensitive efforts to valorise, preserve and manage this fast‐disappearing heritage in Hong Kong are vital.     

The Last Stand of Colonialism? The Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils and the Sino-British Negotiations Over Hong Kong, 1982–1984

ABSTRACT

As influential leaders in Hong Kong, the Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Council (UMELCO) were arguably the only group of Hong Kong people permitted to take part in the Sino-British negotiations that defined the future of Hong Kong. But almost no studies have explored the broader significance of their participation in the negotiations. Using recently declassified British documents, this article argues that, in the wider history of decolonisation, UMELCO’s petition for British administration belonged to the less noticed voices that called for alternatives to independence. UMELCO’s participation also reveals how the negotiations challenged Hong Kong’s autonomy. Although governors at times advocated Hong Kong’s interests vis-a-vis London, the governor’s autonomy during the negotiations was restricted, so the appeal of UMELCO was further weakened. Although UMELCO wanted to preserve the existing system, their actions inadvertently boosted the rise of ‘Hong Kong people’ as an idea and encouraged local people to demand more democracy. The structure of ExCo, LegCo and the government was mostly inherited by post-1997 Hong Kong, while some of UMELCO shifted to the Chinese side, suggesting the irony that a supposedly anti-colonial China lived with a state that came largely from colonial rule.     

‘A Haven for Tortured Souls’: Hong Kong in the Vietnam War

The Vietnam War exerted a profound economic and social effect on Hong Kong. Between 1965 and 1970, the British Crown Colony annually hosted about 200,000 US ground and naval personnel on holiday. This influx annually earned Hong Kong about US$300–400 million (in 2012 dollars) and employed thousands of residents working in the colony's service industries. Using English- and Chinese-language archival materials from Hong Kong, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the article examines how US servicemen and the businesses catering to them became contentious issues in local society. Servicemen excited widespread interest, but their misdeeds and their stomping grounds provoked intense anxiety. Hong Kong residents’ ensuing debates exercised the colony's emerging public sphere, from newspaper battles to outspoken unions and neighbourhood associations. In tandem with the more commonly cited Star Ferry Riots of 1966 and the Communist agitations of 1967, US R&R was an essential ingredient in the emergence of a distinctive Hong Kong identity and citizenry during this period. While residents’ objections failed to curb the GIs’ haunts or holidays, Vietnam tourism and its reverberating effects pressed new sectors of Hong Kong people to grasp and articulate their investment as citizens in the territory's future.     

Cultural attraction, ‘soft power’ and proximity: the popularity of Japanese language in Hong Kong since the 1980s

This paper discusses the cultural attraction, ‘soft power’, and importance of cultural proximity to the popularity of the Japanese language in Hong Kong over the last three decades. Exploration of both primary and secondary sources constitutes the main research methodology employed. Email surveys and face-to-face interviews were undertaken to ascertain the nature and degree of the cultural attraction that stimulates local people's interest in learning Japanese language and culture. The paper concludes that Japan's ‘soft power’, i.e., popular culture and cultural products, are the most influential driving forces behind the popularity of Japanese language in Hong Kong. Also, the Japanese cultural proximity to the Chinese is another factor that excites local people's interest in learning Japanese as a foreign language. In the Hong Kong context, geopolitical and national identity factors do not seem to detract from the popularity of the Japanese language.     

1967年香港反英抗暴斗争后中国对港贸易的恢复

1967年香港的反英抗暴斗争,是中英关系史和香港发展史上一次有重大影响的事件。因此次事件,中国内地暂停经香港的转口业务,港英当局对内地采取贸易歧视政策,美国、日本和中国台湾等乘机加紧对港澳市场的争夺。到1968年,中国商品占香港进口市场份额退居第二位,位列日本之后。在此背景下,中国政府采取强有力措施,迅速恢复和扩大对港澳地区的出口供应。透过历史的考察与分析,可以看出中央政府确保对港澳市场的稳定供应具有战略意义,体现出中央保持港澳地区长期繁荣稳定的方针是一贯的。在反英抗暴斗争中,中央政府坚持有理、有利、有节的斗争方针,在外贸总量同期大幅度下降的情况下,中英贸易没有受到太大的影响。     

The politics of wetlandscape: fishery heritage and natural conservation in Hong Kong

The north‐western part of Hong Kong is a marsh with traditional freshwater fish farming; however, this brackish area has been agriculturally diversified to include cultivation of red rice, reeds, shrimp and fish, and has only largely concentrated on freshwater fish farming starting from the 1960s. By looking into the geographical and social changes that have taken place in the brackish area, I will explain how the coastal landscape was changed in the 1910s through the introduction of large‐scale rice production in Tin Shui Wai which has turned into a high‐density residential new town, and the wetland conservation of Mai Po marshes. This article aims at understanding the meanings of intangible as well as agricultural/fishery heritage and the local politics among indigenous communities, conservation groups, the government and developers in post‐handover Hong Kong society. Inland freshwater pond cultivation was actually a major industry in the 1970s since it supplied most of the freshwater fish for the local market. Nowadays, the industry is shrinking because of lack of manpower and high operation costs compared to the mainland. With various kinds of social, economic and physical pressures, the local communities which are located at the buffer areas of the wetland in Mai Po are actually facing the tremendous dangers of losing those fishponds; most importantly, the fishponds have been serving not only as mitigation zone and source of a traditional local food but also as a major food supplier for migratory birds, adding to the conservation value of the Mai Po marshes and Inner Deep Bay in Hong Kong at large.     

Integrating natural and cultural heritage: the advantage of feng shui landscape resources

Human activities interact with natural processes to produce landscapes. Cultural and natural phenomena sit side by side in the feng shui woods beside villages in the New Territories, but their continued existence is threatened by urbanisation. To highlight the value of these natural resources, three feng shui woods and villages located in the New Territories of Hong Kong were selected for investigation. The study examined their sociocultural, ecological and botanical characteristics. Investigations and interviews with local residents confirmed that the feng shui woods are: (1) regarded as cultural heritage because they bear testimony to a cultural tradition being revered by local people along the principles of geomancy; (2) an example of traditional human settlement that dates back several hundred years; and (3) characterised by historical continuity devoid of accelerated development. Similarly, they represent a natural heritage as they: (1) represent ongoing ecological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial ecosystem communities; and (2) contain important and significant natural habitats that can be used for education, environmental awareness, conservation of biological diversity as well as serve as destinations for ecotourists and nature appreciation.     

‘These are not the best students’: continuing education,transnationalisation and Hong Kong's young adult ‘educational non-elite’

This paper examines the under-explored relationship between young people's transitions to higher education (HE) and the opportunities afforded by transnational education (TNE) programmes, with a focus on understanding the contemporary situation in Hong Kong. A fascinating association has developed, over the past decade, between the expansion of TNE in the territory and the government's commitment to providing ‘continuing education’. We explore what this relationship might mean for the young people directly affected by these new opportunities, by drawing on 70 in-depth interviews with students/graduates. Our sample is, what Brinton [2011. Lost in Transition: Youth, Work, and Instability in Postindustrial Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press] has termed (in another context), Hong Kong's ‘educational non-elite’. We ask: how does this ‘non-elite’ negotiate the shifting terrains of educational provision in an era where credentials (particularly at degree-level) are seen as ‘everything’? Our paper contributes directly to discussions around young people and (international) education, and considers frankly the specific role that transnational HE plays in the education/employment transition of thousands of (hitherto neglected) individuals in contemporary Hong Kong.     

Helping the Rich get Richer: A Re-assessment of the Income Distributional Trend in Hong Kong

Although many are under the impression that income inequality in Hong Kong has been continually on the rise, the picture presented by official statistics is mixed. This article suggests that official statistics, due to limitations in their design, have underestimated the impact of the top earners. Utilising taxation data, a continuous and strong growth in inequality can be identified when the distribution among taxpayers is considered, providing an alternative picture of inequality in Hong Kong. It is argued that the surge in income inequality is driven in part by the rich earning more rather than by more people becoming rich. The Hong Kong government, instead of adopting redistributive measures to alleviate the situation, has exacerbated inequality through policy choices that strongly favour the richest group. Although these actions might be explained in relation to the political influence wielded by the business sector and the upper class, the social implications of inequality cannot be neglected. Apart from a stronger demand for democracy, perceptions of income inequality and the pro-rich bias in the political system significantly affect people’s political views, as seen in the support for the recent Occupy Movement.     

Learning from popular culture: Interpretation,visitors and critique

Abstract

The publication of Frank McCourt's autobiographical novel, Angela's Ashes in 1996 has sharply focused attention upon a sense of place and heritage identity of the Irish town of Limerick. It has both bolstered a local civic self‐conscious identity and spawned ‘McCourt tourism’. On the other hand it has provoked local controversy by revealing the existence of a number of hitherto largely concealed heritage dissonances.

The historical vision of the interwar period that it vividly portrays is a working‐class experience of poverty, poor housing, and absence of facilities compounded by an indifference of the local contemporary political and clerical establishment. There is a geography of McCourt's Limerick, much of which is still extant, composed of row housing, docks, gas works, public houses, Victorian churches and the like that is a different Limerick to the medieval conserved monuments of English Town or the stately residences of the Georgian Newtown (as portrayed in the earlier novels of Kate O'Brien). Such an image contrasts not only with the tourism image projected externally but more significantly with much of the received interpretation of the post‐independence Irish State that was until recently an almost unchallenged dominant ideology.

The catalytic impact of a single novel upon a town's self‐identity raises more general issues about the role of the novel in the shaping, revision and essential instability of heritage messages through time, as well as the management of disagreeable or contradictory elements in a local past through a polysemic and essentially multilayered heritage.     

基于居民感知的跨界意义研究——以深港跨界居民为例

对于在边界两侧居住的居民，跨界流动、居民对边界另一侧的地方感、跨界的个人意义以及跨界的区域意义这四者之间的互动关系是值得关注的话题。本文基于深港跨界居民的调查数据，构建了路径模型来分析上述四者之间的关系。发现：跨界频率对深港居民的地方感具有显著的正向作用；跨界频率对个人和区域意义的感知均具有显著影响，对个人意义的感知影响是正向的，但对区域意义的感知影响却是负向的；地方感对边界的个人和区域意义感知均具有显著的正向影响。本文通过对深港边界居民的实证研究，深化了对跨界流动意义的理解，以期为深港一体化相关政策制定和实施提供依据和借鉴。     

香港回归的历史"前奏曲"——1979年3月邓小平与麦理浩的"北京会谈"述略

1979年3月香港总督麦理浩的北京之行,代表英国方面以香港"土地契约"问题为"突破口"逼中国方面对过"九七"的"英国管治"作出让步,第一次将中英两国政府"长期搁置"的香港"九七"前途问题明朗化.而邓小平"叫香港的投资者放心"的正面回应,初步揭示了中国共产党和中国政府关于"九七"以后"香港还可以搞它的资本主义"的战略思考.以此为契机,中国共产党和中国政府开始初步调整当代中国"国家统一"的战略重心,将以"一国两制"的"新思维"解决香港问题的"时间表"提前,探索将"台湾版"的"一国两制"香港化".     

1848 1 and All That

Conserving built heritage involves competition for land and ongoing costs. The incentive to preserve is thus particularly low in areas where economic considerations prevail and conservation mechanisms are centralised. This used to be the case in Hong Kong. However, a series of civil conservation efforts since 2003, featuring judicial review, civil disobedience and private donation, have contested the official definition of monument and highlighted the values of local heritage in the public discourse. A recent case, namely the campaign to save Dragon Garden through private donations, reveals the roles of voluntarism in built heritage conservation when neither the state nor the market has the incentive or commitment to do so. Based on this case study, this article also examines the sustainability of civil action in an unfavourable institutional setting, which only managed to evoke perfunctory conservation measures from the government.     

Britain,European Economic Community Enlargement,and ‘Decolonisation’ in Hong Kong, 1967–1973

Politicians and businesspeople in Hong Kong paid close attention to British efforts to join the European Economic Community (EEC). The British colony was exempted from most tariffs in Britain, an arrangement that could not survive EEC enlargement. EEC members were unwilling to extend to Hong Kong, a significant exporter of manufactured goods, the same trade preferences offered to other dependent territories. Instead, the unique provision the EEC made for the colony was limited inclusion into their Generalised System of Preferences scheme, which granted tariff concessions to developing countries. Historians of Hong Kong have shown how the colony experienced British imperial withdrawal in a number of ways, despite remaining under British rule until 1997. This article demonstrates that an important element is missing from this account: how global economic shifts led to an erosion of imperial ties. EEC enlargement from 1973 entailed the end of Hong Kong's privileged access to the British market, but for the colony, the importance of imperial economic links had already faded. At the same time, an assessment of Hong Kong's capacity to pursue favourable terms of trade in global markets independently from Britain offers a more tentative conclusion of the extent of the colony's autonomy.     

抗战时期香港华人民族教育的勃兴

此文论述了在全民抗战的大背景下,受到各方面因素的促进,香港华人民族教育的繁荣发展,及其对于香港社会的促进作用.