Tai O Village

Case study 4: TaI O Village is a scenic, stilted fishing village which is an excellent example of an organically evolved and associative cultural landscape. In addition to fishing, Tai O was renowned for its salt pans and production of shrimp paste. The physical fabric of the village is largely intact despite many threats and pressures for change over many generations. Despite recent attempts by government authorities to ‘revitalise’ the village for tourism, resettle the villagers from the stilt houses, as well as natural disasters, such as, typhoons, flooding, and devastating fires, the villagers have a very strong bond that allows them to rebound after each setback with a passion for conserving their way of life. Tai O offers a valuable contrast to the fortunes of Ping Shan and underlines the importance of adopting an integrated approach to conservation that ensures that the policy, planning, and project levels of intervention put the interests and aspirations of residents first.

Ping Shan

Case study 3: The cluster of villages in the New Territories, known collectively as Ping Shan, is one of the oldest traditional, rice-growing settlements in Hong Kong. It is a mixture of organically evolved and associative cultural landscapes, the latter comprising an auspicious fung shui hill resembling a crab and a strategically positioned pagoda that are credited with bringing fortune and prosperity. British colonial control of the district was enforced by construction of a police station on the fung shui hill which symbolically killed the ‘crab’. The subsequent decline of the village’s fortune is believed to stem from this action and was compounded by the development of a new town on the adjacent farmland. A recent change of use for the police station to a clan museum has lifted the spirits of the villagers but the cultural landscape has been irreversibly depleted by inappropriate land use zoning that permitted urban encroachment and cumulative impacts from major road and rail projects.

Dragon Garden

Case study 2: Dragon Garden is a designed cultural landscape that is still largely intact and serves as a valuable counterpoint to the loss of Tiger Balm Garden. The garden was owned and designed by Lee Iu-cheung, a philanthropic businessman who based the layout on fung shui principles as well as sustainable construction techniques which were advanced for their time. The garden was integrated sensitively into the surrounding landscape, incorporating stream courses and ornamental pools. It became known for its iconic dragon motifs, sculptures, seasonal floral displays, and being featured in the Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun. Despite being sold to a developer, the garden was saved by the timely intervention by a descendent of the founder who recognised the heritage value of the site. Subsequent detailed study of the garden design has revealed subtle layers of meaning and symbolism that had previously been overlooked.

Mai Po

Case study 5: The Mai Po Wetlands are a protected wildlife habitat of international importance. There is a common misconception that the site is a natural wilderness with no human intervention. Instead, Mai Po is one of the most intensively managed areas in Hong Kong in order to maintain the optimum biodiversity and balance the interests of commercial fish farmers, visitor education, and wildlife conservation. Although the extensive site is owned by government, the wetland reserve is managed by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). This chapter traces the history of human intervention that has shaped the wetlands beginning with paddy fields and later construction of fish and shrimp ponds within the dense coastal mangrove plantations. The Mai Po story has a lot to teach the conservation practitioner about resolving conflicts between human activities and habitat protection, sensible land use zoning, establishing buffer zones, and understanding the dynamics of organically evolved cultural landscapes in general.

Government Hill

Case Study 7: When the government announced its plans to sell the former Central Government Offices (CGO) on Government Hill, there was a public outcry against the proposals. The ensuing debate highlighted how little the government understood the heritage value of the site and the public’s perception of this cultural landscape. The term ‘cultural landscape’ was used for the first time in this conservation debate to expand the heritage site beyond a single building and include its broader landscape setting. Government Hill’s cultural landscape comprises the CGO in its hillside setting as well as a cluster of other heritage buildings dating from the early years of the British colonial rule; all symbolic of the invaders’ military, administrative, legislative, judicial, and spiritual centres of power. The Government Hill debate provides a very helpful definition, for the lay reader as well as the conservation professional, of a heritage urban cultural landscape, what natural and built heritage elements should be included, and why it should be conserved.

Dried Seafood Street

Case study 6: Dried Seafood Street is a popular commercial neighbourhood, specialising in selling a wide variety of dried seafood, tea, and herbal goods. Close to Hong Kong’s central business district and served by the iconic tramline, the cultural landscape comprises several blocks of colourful, bustling shops with distinctive sights, sounds, and smells. Historic urban districts in Hong Kong are vulnerable because land is scarce, property values are high, and the usual consequence of such economic forces is eventual loss of heritage sites to new development. However, for over a century the dried seafood businesses have survived several phases of urban renewal thanks to the Nam Pak Hong Association, a traders’ organisation, which has provided a degree of cohesion and stability that other commercial districts lack. The importance of conserving both the hardware and software of heritage sites is discussed. In the absence of conservation tools in Hong Kong to protect heritage urban cultural landscapes like Dried Seafood Street, land use zoning and financial incentives used elsewhere in Macau and Singapore are reviewed for comparison.

Pulling the Threads Together

The concluding chapter stresses the need for Hong Kong to recognise the concept of cultural landscapes and apply it in conservation studies. Instead of the current ad hoc ‘fire-fighting’ approach to conservation, Hong Kong needs to get ahead of the curve by taking proper stock of its natural and built heritage resources and mapping cultural landscapes would be an effective way to integrate these data. In the absence of formal government guidelines, a simple 5-step process is set out to guide the layman and practitioner how to assess the heritage value of a cultural landscape. The importance of understanding the dynamic, evolving interrelationship between nature and mankind that has shaped and will continue to shape cultural landscapes is stressed with a final reminder that conservation is not preservation. Instead, conservation is concerned with the sensible management of change.

Tiger Balm Garden

Case study 1: The origins and evolution of this designed cultural landscape are presented, including a review of the flamboyant owner and designer, Aw Boon Haw, founder of the successful Tiger Balm empire, His design was a bold concept based on a unique expression of Chinese garden principles using vibrantly coloured sculptures and structures to depict scenes from Chinese mythology, religion, and philosophy. The garden functioned as a valuable public open space, a reminder to Chinese immigrants of their cultural roots, a promotion of the Tiger Balm products, and, most profoundly, as an allegory to reflect on one’s journey through life. In its heyday, Tiger Balm Garden was a popular landmark and venue for local residents and visitors, How it came to be neglected and eventually demolished is a cautionary tale for other heritage cultural landscapes in Hong Kong. The lessons learned reveal how the planning and heritage conservation system is not equipped to deal with protecting cultural landscapes.

The Cultural Landscape

Cultural landscapes are the combined works of man and nature and it is only by studying this dynamic interaction that the essence of the resulting cultural landscapes can be fully appreciated and valued. Differences and similarities between western and eastern perceptions and artistic expressions of landscape are discussed to establish the cultural values that underpin our understanding and interpretation of the natural and built world. The way by which the cultural landscape concept attained international recognition as a more holistic approach to define and interpret heritage sites is outlined. World Heritage definitions of the different categories of cultural landscape, namely, designed, organically evolved, and associative, are described using examples inscribed on the World Heritage List. Examples of equivalent categories of cultural landscapes in Hong Kong are then presented to introduce the concept and, for the first time, highlight their heritage value.