Colonial Nostalgia? Demolition of Colonial Space and its Aftermaths in Hong Kong

Author(s)

Liza Wing Man Kam

Abstract

The Queen’s and Star Ferry Pier complex, serving as significant infrastructure during the colonial era in Hong Kong, was demolished by the post-colonial authority in 2006/07. While voices raised against the demolition could be perceived as nostalgic for colonial past, buried with the ruins there were complicated and contradictory representations of the annihilated colonial heritage. The Queen’s and Star Ferry Pier complex was the place where colonial governors disembarked from the Royal yacht when they reached the colony and the spot that hosted the city’s first wave of social movements directed towards colonial suppressions in the 1970s. Although many perceived the piers as representation of colonial symbolism, the understanding of their complex meanings was in fact an ultimate route for an escape from the colonial legacy behind the camouflage of nostalgia for the colonial era. The post-colonial authority’s attempt and success to transform the colonial space on the one hand, and the public’s reluctance to take actions when losing their ‘lieux de mémoire’ (the realm of memory) on the other are seen as driven by different forms of colonial legacy. The attempt of the post-colonial authority to transform or demolish colonial architecture so as to achieve fast de-colonisation in Hong Kong is seen as actually neo-colonialism, which has triggered a ponderous emergence of self/identity recognition and hence of civic awareness over the last decade. In this chapter, I intend to narrate how a deemed nostalgia for the colonial past, nurtured since the disappearance of the piers has in fact led to an essential struggle for the Hongkongers’ recognition of their city’s history, of what colonialism has really brought to the territory, and hence how this recognition has escalated in the recent Umbrella Movement.

Organisation(s)

Department of East Asian Studies

External organisation(s)

Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

Pages

51-60

No. of pages

10

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848883987_006

Publication date

2016

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

507011 Spatial research, 507020 Urbanism, 507021 Urban history, 201201 History of architecture

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Social Sciences(all)

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/colonial-nostalgia-demolition-of-colonial-space-and-its-aftermaths-in-hong-kong(d0d7da13-fd55-498c-92bb-935186526855).html