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.