Hey, you're always asking me where I find stuff...
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Hidden Things
10 years ago the British gave Hong Kong back to China. We missed the 10th anniversary celebrations as we were in Thailand, but probably the only really interesting thing we missed was the fireworks display. Oh, and seeing the People's Liberation Army actually outside their barracks (they tend to stay out of sight so as to not disturb the sensibilities of the local population who all remember the Tiananmen Square massacre).
So that's the really obvious thing that's going on, and there's been a flood of articles about whether the 10 year experiment of "one country, two systems" is working. As I said, we were just in Thailand and when I came back to Hong Kong yesterday I got the curious feeling I always get when I have been out of Hong Kong for a day or two that the city had moved on without me. It's the kind of feeling you get when you've been away from home for some time, and you go home remembering it in a particular way only to find that your memory of home has been superseded. But only in Hong Kong do I get that feeling after only 3 days!
It's worth stopping to think about how quickly things change here, especially to the physical environment. A great example of this is the terrible Jean Claude van Damme film Bloodsport, which features footage of Hong Kong's old Walled City. Van Damme's character is in Hong Kong to compete in a bloody fight tournament, which takes place in the Walled City, and the movie actually features some footage of him walking through the city. It's incredible - the Walled City was an anarchic conglomeration of building piled upon building. There was no official running water or electricity, and the police hardly ventured there. There was almost no natural light due to the closeness of the structures. In the film we see the tiny alleys, the filthy water dripping down, the cramped and squalid conditions.
The Walled City was torn down in 1994, and is now a nice park, where families can relax and the only signs of its former past are some reinforced concrete posts near one of the gates and a temple that used to sit in the centre of the city.
The point is though, that unless you get hold of that terrible film, or find one of the few books available about it you would never know that it ever existed. And so all the stories about 10 years of Chinese rule seem to me to miss some essential point - it's all very well to ask about whether the new arrangement in Hong Kong has been a success, but if it's hard to actually compare what you have now with what you had then the question becomes harder to answer. From my point of view, I don't know what the city was like 10 years ago so I can't really say how it's changed. But I am sure it has, and I bet a lot of people haven't even noticed what the changes were.
So that's the really obvious thing that's going on, and there's been a flood of articles about whether the 10 year experiment of "one country, two systems" is working. As I said, we were just in Thailand and when I came back to Hong Kong yesterday I got the curious feeling I always get when I have been out of Hong Kong for a day or two that the city had moved on without me. It's the kind of feeling you get when you've been away from home for some time, and you go home remembering it in a particular way only to find that your memory of home has been superseded. But only in Hong Kong do I get that feeling after only 3 days!
It's worth stopping to think about how quickly things change here, especially to the physical environment. A great example of this is the terrible Jean Claude van Damme film Bloodsport, which features footage of Hong Kong's old Walled City. Van Damme's character is in Hong Kong to compete in a bloody fight tournament, which takes place in the Walled City, and the movie actually features some footage of him walking through the city. It's incredible - the Walled City was an anarchic conglomeration of building piled upon building. There was no official running water or electricity, and the police hardly ventured there. There was almost no natural light due to the closeness of the structures. In the film we see the tiny alleys, the filthy water dripping down, the cramped and squalid conditions.
The Walled City was torn down in 1994, and is now a nice park, where families can relax and the only signs of its former past are some reinforced concrete posts near one of the gates and a temple that used to sit in the centre of the city.
The point is though, that unless you get hold of that terrible film, or find one of the few books available about it you would never know that it ever existed. And so all the stories about 10 years of Chinese rule seem to me to miss some essential point - it's all very well to ask about whether the new arrangement in Hong Kong has been a success, but if it's hard to actually compare what you have now with what you had then the question becomes harder to answer. From my point of view, I don't know what the city was like 10 years ago so I can't really say how it's changed. But I am sure it has, and I bet a lot of people haven't even noticed what the changes were.
Labels: anniversary, handover, hongkong, kowloon, walledcity
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