It's All About Soul

Budget Tai-tai

An old street isn’t the same without its old residents

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Tabitha Wang
voices@mediacorp.com.sg

AMID the tall, gleaming buildings that make up one of Hong Kong’s priciest districts is a small backstreet, reeking of dust and decay.

On one side are 12 derelict tenement buildings, typical of the homes you see in many drama serials from the region. Tattered washing hang from rusty balconies that threaten to collapse on onlookers if they so much as sneeze.

There isn’t even a view to recommend it. At the back, a towering block perches on the steep mountainside while in the front, yet another building cuts out the sky.

It’s hardly what you’d expect of Hong Kong’s latest attraction.

But Wing Lee Street is drawing them by the hoards. On a busy Sunday, dozens of shutterbugs climb up the precipitous steps, from parents determined to get a photo of Junior against a crumbling wall to lovebirds hoping for a shot of posterity.

The rise in the fortunes of this quiet street can be traced to one film: Echoes Of The Rainbow. The film about a shoemaker’s family in the 1960s won the Crystal Bear at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival last month.

Shot mostly on Wing Lee Street, it single-handedly propelled the street out of crumbling obscurity — and protected it from the wrecking ball.

All but three of the buildings had been slated for demolition since 1998. But until the film, there had been hardly any protest.

Then came the Berlin accolade and within days, railings along the street were covered with yellow ribbons protesting plans to tear down the buildings.

The government did a quick U-turn on the decision and announced it was going to preserve the entire street a fortnight later. It was an amazingly impetuous decision from a government not given to sentimentality.

Last week, actress Nancy Kwan, who had played the lead role in the iconic 1960 film The World of Suzie Wong, lamented to AFP: “Hong Kong was really very charming in those days. Every time I come back it’s like going to a new city. I loved the old colonial buildings in Hong Kong, but now they’ve torn them down. It’s terrible.”

The decision to preserve Wing Lee Street is now pending structural reports. But if it does happen, the best news of all is that it will be conserved for the community that had thrived in the area for generations.

That includes a 92-year-old granny who has been there all her life, and an 80-year-old who has worked in a printing shop there since he was an apprentice.

As heritage activist Katty Law once told me: “Preserving the buildings means nothing if you don’t preserve the lifestyle too.”

Many people who champion for conservation in Hong Kong point to Singapore as a model. They cite areas like Boat Quay, Clarke Quay and Chinatown as marvellous examples of restoration.

I disagree. Like Law, I think that preserving an old building is not enough. You are just maintaining the body but not the soul.

A building comes alive because of the people in it who turn it into their own.

Restoring empty shells will just turn the area into another Tang Dynasty Village — nice to look at but not somewhere you want to linger.

So yes, many of Singapore’s heritage areas have beautifully-restored shophouses but where are the folk who used to live and work in them? Slotting in an international clothes brand or a hip restaurant just doesn’t cut it.

Kampong Glam used to be a charming area but ever since the last blacksmith in Singapore moved out, it has never had the same homely feel.

The kind of homely feel you get when you visit the restored Blue House here in Wan Chai, where all the residents have been allowed to stay on.

That’s why I’d pick the dirty, higgledy-piggledy lanes of Malacca, with their old-time goldsmiths and coffin-makers, anytime over any of Singapore’s sanitised quays or Macau’s soulless Senado Square.

That’s why, even though Singapore has no shortage of Peranakan architecture, The Little Nonya was filmed mostly in bustling and realistic Malacca and Penang.

Singapore has done a fine job of saving buildings.

Now it has to save communities.

Maybe a film can do the trick. Maybe something like The World Of The Little Nonya Echoes The Rainbow.

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Tabitha Wang thinks nothing says passion more than giving up indoor plumbing so that an old way of life can be preserved.


From TODAY, Voices - Friday, 26-March-2010
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