Heritage preservation grips Hong Kong amid building boom

By James Pomfret

HONG KONG (Reuters) - In the dim confines of the time-worn Wing Woo grocery, a short hop from Hong Kong's gleaming financial towers, Kwan Moon-chiu, 73, quietly arranges supplies of salted-fish and eggs, knowing his store's days are numbered.

"This shop is 130 years old, I have deep feelings for it. But if the government wants to tear it down, what can I do?" he said.

The plight of Kwan's rickety store, which faces demolition for a massive urban renewal project, embodies the dilemma faced in Hong Kong -- one of the world's most densely populated places with 7 million residents -- of whether to raze or save.

While development has long taken precedent over heritage preservation -- the recent demise of two iconic colonial-era piers sparked widespread public outrage among Hong Kongers tired of seeing their history effaced in the name of progress.

"I would see it as a major social movement in Hong Kong and it's an emerging attitude among the young," said Lee Ho Yin, an architectural conservation expert at the University of Hong Kong.

Activists who chained themselves to the doomed piers and who wrote protest banners in their own blood helped foment heritage-preservation an emotive, hot-button civil cause, alongside other long-established Hong Kong issues like the push for greater democracy and social equality.

"Our city would be identical to any other, lacking personality. It would just be blasts of glass, steel and concrete blocks," said Hong Kong resident Bonnie Yiu.

Kwan's shop stands to be demolished in a controversial HK$487 million redevelopment that rips the heart out of one of Hong Kong's oldest neighbourhoods centered on Central's last surviving street market on Graham and Peel Streets.

Thirty-seven mostly post-war tenement blocks will be replaced by four 30-40-storey skyscrapers including a hotel and new shops that will displace the quirky, old stores including noodle-makers and incense sellers lining the narrow, sloping streets.

The numerous, boisterous street hawkers selling all manner of produce from broccoli to live crabs in wicker baskets and pig trotters hung on metal hooks also face an uncertain fate.

"This market must really be preserved for its historical, economic and social value," said Katty Law, an activist with a network of social and heritage groups who have been campaigning against the project.

"Other countries have charters guiding the preservation of old areas but Hong Kong has never done this," Law added.

In the 1950s -- Hong Kong's waterfront was still filled with red-brick Edwardian and Victorian buildings with columns and elaborate facades. These have since been largely demolished.

A historic Victorian building called Murray House was dismantled and rebuilt in 1999 on the other side of the island in a manner which critics say was tasteless and failed to preserve its original character.

Neighboring Macau on the other hand -- which is even more densely populated than Hong Kong -- has managed to preserve much of its historic Portuguese core -- and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.