Cultural Remembrance- Neighbourhood and Community in Tai O

CRS 2021 Cosmopolitan Culture and Hong Kong Urbanscape

Cultural Remembrance

Tang Chin Hong ARC M1 07010270

Neighborhood and Community in Tai O In reflection of cultural planning and urban redevelopment

This paper is a cultural reflection on one of the remaining traditional fishing villages in Hong Kong. It consists of analysis in terms of perceptual, historical and cultural dimensions in both subjective and objective perspectives. It tries to relate those dimensions to the current urban condition of Tai O. As a final objective, to achieve a critique when juxtaposing it with the concurrent urban redevelopment and cultural planning in Hong Kong.

Visual Analysis River

River as foundational substance of settlements

Any city starts from river and trade. This is perhaps the fundamental theory of many city thinkers and critiques. The fishing village Tai O , some regarded as the “Oriental Vienna” starts its settlement basically due to the availability of a specific land and sea relationship. With adequate winding river, deep enough sea bed and the highly efficient “Y” shaped connections for navigation. The river in Tai O seems to cultivate the land and its settlement culture a lot.

We could see there are high surface area and short frontages of houses due to the intense competition of frontage and ownership of land. We could see the river navigation and trading in different scales of ships coming in and out. We

River-side

could see the corner of the land with beautiful scenery, giving the tides, and mountain landscape, in harmony with its nature. The rivers create the hinterland for settlement.

Streets Streets are crucial elements of the city. Except iconic symbols, most urban experience occurs in the linearity space of the street. We cannot deny that most of the land-plot podium-type redevelopment happened in TKO or West Kowloon has already destroyed our traditional streetscape very much. The streets in Tai O are generally narrow and long and winding, following its land geometries.

Traditional streetscape- soft-tactile quality

The street, some to most urban street in Hong Kong, architecturally paved in concrete with typical railings, however, deserves more life attraction than any others. We could see its tactile quality, both in terms of people activities and goods. Most of the shop front is generously non-enveloped with glass or any other kind of obstacles. It is simply a void for shop or for living. The goods of the shops always dominate the facade and the outlook of the building rather than architectural elements such as building services and another kind facade and tiling.

Hawker texture

Mobile Hawkers We could see mobile hawkers, which is absolutely un-encouraged in the urban context of Hong Kong. Referring to Wu (2005), a strong critique about the allowance of high brand telephone mobile hawker promotion instead of local urban small-scale economics, I could see a very precious reserve in Tai O. It is somehow formulated as urban remembrance of the traditional 70s. Those hawkers business, despite of worsening the urban hygienic situation, is making very great effort socially and economically. Firstly, it is regenerative and adaptable, it fluctuated and developed upon local market needs and has a complex and organic mechanism. In short, it formulates an essence of Hong Kong culture where flea market and mobile hawkers, such informality small-scale shop forms a social ecology system where low income people can sustain their life and tie up the cohesion between the place and the people and

Mobilized Hawker

the district and the society.

Mixed-living Upon traditional fishing village, there is a strong hierarchy of family and race group. However, it didn’t define a strong boundary between people. We could see through the introduction of tourisms and urban redevelopment, the land people relationship becomes more dynamics and sophisticated. It generates kind of community network based on people activities and economics. For example, in a mixed living 80s low-rise 4 storey village house, we could see the shop fronts at ground level and its attached access to upper levels, shared by different kind of people. Such dynamics of enouncement and social mix rather than strong subdivision is a precious asset when we think of Tin Shui Wan and West Kowloon, or the peak.

Social Network- Community Upon the competition of territory and places, Tai O people remain the habit of reserving the semi-public-private area as a buffer area of negotiation with its neighborhood. During the day, it may just be under a shelter for goods showing, during the night, it may be the chess-competition among neighborhood. It is strongly contrasted to club house where land use is specific and such

Foreign culture

semi-public-private negotiation doesn’t exist. The different mindset of the ownership of land cultivates different lifestyles between the “urban village” and the “urban apartment”.

Village-remembrance It could be seen that the fishing village habitant adopted a new kind of living on land or even on the urban-kind Lung Tin estates. The traditional fisheries boats are now built on land as if the boat is transported to land and the habit of buffering space still exist in the Lung Tin estates.

Cultural Analysis

Settlement Dynamics

Fishing Remembrance

Hong Kong people are actually has a strong sense interaction, dynamics and enouncement as opposed to the rigidity in the early 30s-60s. During the time the government imposed a lot of strict rules and boundaries which shape one’s freedom and thus life. As liberated as it could, most Hong Kong immigrants were hiding a sense of moving, flexible and mix-living. They are flexible in any environments, including different types of people and different places of settlement.

Therefore, such kind of mixed-living formulate a favorable living style of

The canopy-like housing adopted from the habit

dynamics, which deteriorates very much when the OZP – land-use zoning is

of fisheries boat

strictly enforced in the early 50s.

Rituals and Events The religious actually tie up different races and as a social development perspective, it reunion and settle down conflicts and augment between groups, and collect individual energy to the social goods. We could see the village bridges, temples and some other infrastructural development are donated by local people. The strong cohesive force among Tai O people reserve a social

Rituals – Worshipping Ceremony (Thanksgiving

identity and collective states of mind. We could see people are gathered at

to Tin Hau Godness)

important life event such as traditional wedding or death ceremonies. The tradition continues while is simplifying. But the essence of having a ceremony and collective event that recall the significant of social bonding is still strong in Tai O than any other places in Hong Kong.

Living-working-fishing-schooling- an urban fabric We could see a very direct and in-born regenerative relationship between different activities in individuals. Traditional fisherman lives, work, play and eat in boats. In urban sense, reduce the necessity of commuting. While necessary, they commute and trade each day or twice a week. We could see a strong

attachment to a place where multi-dimensional activities would happen.

Through the development of time, fisherman starts to live in coastal region and how they arrange their life is strongly related to the activity of fishing and trading. In terms of urban terminology, the urban grain, texture and community network interweave a complex fabric. When the living, working, fishing form a localized sustainable web, if we put the framework of network science and biological ecology into the consideration of such web , we could formulate the term “sustainable urban ecology”, which describe a complex activity, place and people relationship in the urban fabric.

We would see the city is not planned by one stroke and by many tactical and careful trials and errors.

Elasticity of Place

Local Business

We could see the market is not dropped in, we could see the street is not pre-planned. It is generated, developed, in a very organic manner, and has the elasticity of post-planning, post-development and re-modification. Such elasticity is governing the actual perceptual quality of the street where conventional urban development doesn’t carries much. We could see Tai O paint the wall, cover the house with new materials and gather old furniture in buffer social area. The richness of a city, which directly related to and reflects people life, actually is governed very much by the elasticity of the place. It reflects traces of life and in terms of architectural theory. It is directly related to the post-planned perceptual space.

Towards Tourisms Tai O people have a very self-controlled conservative attitude towards external commercials and tourisms. We could see, through the intense competition of the same tourism products, e.g. local preserved seafood and others, in the very front of the visiting paths, there are still a lot of humble shop owners who doesn’t make the place as commercially tourist but for capital rich but for cultural rich, such as the Tai O Studio, Tai O Local Museum. They didn’t come from a sudden point of short-sighted income but strong social ambitions to keep and promotes Tai O local essence. While other local artistic or foreigners are settling in Tai O, they didn’t perceive the place as commercial paradise for capital investing but a cultural paradise.

The natural reserve in Tai O is not exploited to tourism, the mountain, the police monuments, and the all-sea-scenery. This may states a very strong local passiveness towards cultural or urban re-development. Upon the attitudes, they welcome incomers, but it seems to be a strong passive attitude when tourism distort their living styles and place so much.

Tactile Modification

If we juxtapose such states of mind to the current government ambitions on Tai O, we would see the gap between money and ideals, cultural and business, government and local group. Would we value the culture into an overriding factor of business? Can we achieve an optimized balance between the two?

Historical Analysis – Why keeping Intact?

To explain why Tai O is keeping its history and a precious reserve to Hong Kong identity, I would suggest the following factors, namely geographical settlements, localized living, moving inertness and anti-idealism of pre-planned-scape.

Geographical settlements We could see the local group of Tai O people is immigrated to Tai O from South

Local ecology

China before early 20s due to political reasons. It is a hinterland for settlement as explained above. The geographical quality of Tai O is virtually unique in terms of landform and natural resources. This inhibits a strong staying inertness forces when people begin to attach a place and searching for the identity once after moving.

Localized Living As explained above, the living quality is very localized with its rich textures and social relationship and dynamics, the inhabitants of Tai O treasure and enjoy life

Living mix

in such a habit of relaxing, naturally soothing, regular day-work-night-rest living modes, intimate neighborhood relationship and rich community cohesion. It is rather a closed system of urban ideals that doesn't govern the ambitions and the necessity of moving into a better places or adopting a better lifestyles except they need money and turns into a quite materialized typical urban states of mind in Hong Kong.

Moving inertness refers to the inertness due to the different between the previous immigration situation in South China and the existing living. The

Localized Habitat

ambitions of live and living ideals to the Tai O local people are transgenic to the next generations. Its localized and rather remote geographical distance from the urban city in Hong Kong enhanced such kind of inertia that people won’t move again.

Anti-idealism of urban-landscape redevelopment When comparing Tai O to similar village redevelopment in places like Lamma island and Cheung Chau, we would see the inadequacy in hostlic planning, or multi-dimension sense in cultural planning and village-re-development. As a result, local cultures sacrifices into materialized commercial business of tourism. Such mode is very convention in Hong Kong while local groups would

Communal Water Front

not want it to happen again, remaining a state of mind of passiveness on the redevelopment of Tai O.

Personal Dimension- Cultural Planning in Tai O As informed by the concurrent debates on cultural identity, cultural planning and urban redevelopment and also the concurrent governmental ambitions and initiation on the redevelopment of Tai O. I would suggest the following points as feedback or critique.

On cultural value Hong Kong people are strongly materialized and current has also a strong attachment of local identity and an urge to find the cultural essence or roots of Hong Kong culture. It is surely understandable that such forces are contradicting together once it usually didn’t work out an optimization in

Self-initiated Communal activities

conventional redevelopment projects in Hong Kong. Based on different times, we have different collective emotions and thus different attitudes towards redevelopment. In general, we are in the way to continue to seek an optimization between culture and business, which is all the time in an dynamic equilibrium. What is lacking and way behind in Hong Kong, suggested already by many cultural critics is an immersive system, both top-down and bottom up, both hierarchical and adaptable to the urban landscape.

On local essence I could say Tai O has its cultural essence and dignity which is related to very root of the Hong Kong fishing settlement. What’s lacking behind is the collective self-recognition of our cultural essence. It would be related to the pre-97 colonial governance where local dignity and cultural character is not encouraged and somehow mimicry by many other colonial worship and other

Communal Bridge

distortion of attitudes. It is a self-generative process that after 97, the land and identity issues arises interests to local people and is also seeking the way to repositioning ourselves in a specific cultural consciousness.

And this is crisscrossing with external upcoming culture, e.g. the opening up of China and the materializing richness of nearby Shenzhen too.

On redevelopment project I could see a significant of holistic planning, what is in different scales and at different perspectives to inform urban design and planning, not only by statistic numeric figures of plot ration or professional architectural or cultural point of views. How to achieve a flexible landscape of idealism of tourism selling local cultural essence would all the time the important agenda on redevelopment of Tai O. Of course we see a lot of fail-case in the redevelopment of CEDD (Civil

Textile Quality

Engineering Development Department). It takes a lot of effort in making a well-planned Tai O tourism, however, it is based on infrastructural point of view, which is perceived as construction and building projects of dams, roads, tree landscape, all are facilities and performance based rather than cultural and architectural based.

On Fire and Water Precaution The fire and water flooding are by no means un-preventive accidents. It draws a lot of consideration to the CEDD in terms of infrastructural perspectives, how is

Local Temples

it relates to the culture and architecture and re-inform the urban design would be crucially important to the next 10 years of Tai O.

Rituals Transformation It stays from a long flow of history of the traditions and rituals of Tai O. how is its acceptance to the conventional urban events and cultural activities such as fashion shows and art gallery high-cultural foreign business. If we find an optimization and the co-operative opportunities between the foreign culture and local culture, we would stay make the old culture stay young.

Natural Reserve

Round-ups Overall, tourism, re-development, re-positioning could be both active and in-born passive action. It didn’t impose a specific good or bad meaning to that city-re-modification. The critical point is not do it or not, but a collective consciousness of know-how to re-modification of city.

In most cases in Hong Kong, tourism redevelopment drives urban energy and incomes, however, it also deteriorate the local character and landscape. The concurrent Stanley bay redevelopment may be satisfactory on better trails.

Being urban designer or cultural critics, or local people, how to preserve the local cultural substance and portray into a signification value which has a dignity and unify the society would be the next agenda.

In a short summary, redevelopment is not only the way out, doing nothing may

Old Police Station Heritage

be better than doing rough things. It is a high time to study the future impact of redevelopment not only by figures but by an organic summary of citizens.

Localized living

Biography 改善大澳景貌工程– 可行性研究 (IMPROVEMENT WORKS FOR TAI O FACELIFT – FEASIBILITY STUDY) – CEED, HKSAR Government 大澳 廖迪生, 張兆和 三聯書店(香港)有限公司, 2006 香港風格 胡恩威, Zuni, 2006 大澳水鄉的變遷 – 風土人情二三事, 黃惠琼, 進一步多媒體有限公司, 2000 活在西九(Our life in West Kowloon),香港社區組織協會, 2007

Developmental Void

New Estate development after Fire

CEDD Dam Project with entrance piazza