There's No Place Like Home
For almost its entire lifespan Hong Kong has been a city caught between two worlds, colonial and Chinese, but - at least in terms of built heritage - the past is losing out
They say there’s no place like home. What they don’t tell you, is that home never stays the same
I grew up in Hong Kong. We moved from wintery England (I was born during a snowstorm, which partly explains my initials ‘S.N.O.’) when I was just a one-year-old baby, after my father took a job in the government’s Lands Department. In 1980, the city was still a crown colony of the United Kingdom, although London took only a distant interest in the day-to-day affairs of the “barren rock”, as it was dismissively described by the British foreign secretary in 1841, after being wrested from China.
As one of the first parts of Hong Kong settled by the British, it makes sense that Central – once known as the City of Victoria, hence Victoria Harbour – was home to most of the territory’s grandest colonial edifices. These included the Supreme Court, Hong Kong Club, Cenotaph, Government House (official residence of the governor), St. John’s Cathedral, Flagstaff House and Queen’s Pier, alongside the cricket club.
Remarkably, given the city’s propensity to knock down and rebuild anything more than a decade old, some of these buildings still stand today (sadly, one of the grandest, the beautiful General Post Office, was knocked down in the 1980s to make way for the MTR and the hugely unremarkable World-Wide House, though it’s a great place to go for Filipino food). There is also one more heritage complex that probably played the most important role in colonial-run Hong Kong, but which most ordinary citizens – if they were lucky – were never privy to the inner workings: the Central Police Station.
Having functioned as the beating heart of ‘Asia’s Finest’ ever since 1864, it closed at the turn of the millennium and stayed shuttered for the best part of a decade, until its eventual relaunch following an extensive HK$3.8 billion restoration in 2018. Today, this historic assemblage of 16 Victorian-era buildings in the heart of the business district, which also includes Victoria Prison and the former Central Magistrates, has become an arts and culture hub called Tai Kwun (‘big station’, its former nickname).
“I think of the complex as Hong Kong’s ‘Forbidden City’,” says Pete Spurrier, author of The Heritage Hiker’s Guide to Hong Kong, remembering his first impressions of it. “It’s a dense compound of historical buildings dating from different times, all enclosed by high walls. It’s impassable to the pedestrian and so you have to go around it. Before 1997, I remember seeing laundered khaki-green uniforms hanging in the yard outside the station to dry, and thinking, ‘that’s something you would never see in England!’.”
For despite the name, this was not just a police station; at one time or other it was also Hong Kong’s main courthouse, prison, and police headquarters – with offices, police housing quarters, and even an armoury built within its brick walls. Over the years these functions were gradually dispersed, as the Victorian-era buildings were superseded. The city also grew up around the complex. While before you could see the grandiose façade from the Central waterfront, by the time the government vacated the premises in 2000, the low-rise complex was walled in on all sides. The neighborhood around it had also hugely changed. Where once the surrounding buildings had housed working-class Chinese, employed in a variety of trades in small, darkened shops, there now existed a bright and vibrant international scene of bars, cafés, and art galleries.
“For me the Central Police Station complex is almost the unofficial demarcation point between the Wyndham Street bar scene, where there are ever-present crowds spilling out onto the street; the quieter, more relaxed surrounds of SoHo (South of Hollywood Road), and the arty culture strip found along Hollywood Road,” explains Mark Tjhung, a former colleague of mine when we both worked at Time Out Hong Kong magazine.
In a former life, Tjhung, an Australian, was a lawyer in Perth (he remains an avid fan of Perth Glory FC), before moving to Hong Kong to become an editor. Having lived in the city for more than a decade now, with two children born locally, he’s seen his fair share of changes. He’d also born witness to the rise of the area around the Central Police Station. When I ask him what have been his favourite places to eat and drink in the neighbourhood, he reels off a list of names, most of which I’ve never heard of.
“The Tai Kwun area is very much geared toward the international offerings. Some of my favourites over the years have been The Bellbrook Bistro, opened by Australian chef David Laris; The Flying Pan, a 24-hour diner that was an institution; Socialito, a nightclub with an excellent taqueria out the front; and 10 Chancery Lane, a boutique gallery always pursuing some interesting international collaborations.” The latter is the only one still open, which just shows you the constant pace of change in the city.
You’d imagine, with the Central Police Station complex as its crowning centrepiece, that the whole area would be full of heritage buildings, with eateries and bars packing the crowds in to their cool spaces, but Tjhung says unfortunately that’s not the case. “Sadly, it’s hard to point to much heritage in the area any more, as the surrounding streets have already lost much of their value. There are still some buildings dotted around that retain some colonial significance, but they are too few and far between.”
It could be argued that the Central Police Station revitalisation project represented a turning point for Hong Kong’s last standing colonial structures. Around the same time as Tai Kwun there was the conversion of the old Tai O Police Station, built in 1902, into a nine-room boutique hotel; a former pawn shop in Wan Chai was turned into a bar and restaurant named The Pawn (and then a Cantonese restaurant called Woo Cheong Tea House, both now closed); and the North Kowloon Magistracy become the first Asian branch of art and design school SCAD, until 2020. Of course, with the restoration success stories have come abject failures, such as the Marine Police Headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui, where a beautiful tree-covered hill, which I remember walking past as a child on my way to swim at the (long gone) YMCA, was leveled to make way for a luxury shopping mall housing jewellers and fashion stores.
Some of my favorites though remain. Tucked down a quiet stone staircase at the back of Central are the Duddell Street lamps. The last four gas-powered lights in Hong Kong, they were built between 1875 and 1889, and continue to shine on to this day. Nearby on Lower Albert Road, the members-only Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) still lords it over the city, as it has since its heyday in the 1960s, when Vietnam War journalists thronged its bar with tales of Saigon and napalm. The FCC shares its 1892-built premises with the famous Fringe Club, one of the city’s foremost centres of arts and culture. Then on quiet Caine Lane to the south-west sits the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences, formerly the Pathological Institute, originally opened to find a cure for the 1894 bubonic plague outbreak, which killed thousands of locals.
Tjhung agrees with my hedged view of the city’s record on preservation. “While there has been an increased local recognition of the value of heritage – and an associated increase in revitalisation projects – in Hong Kong, the results of these ventures have really varied widely. There is still a widespread fear that a lot of these projects end up leading to over-gentrification. The challenge for Hong Kong is to find a consistent balance between heritage, culture and modernization. We’re certainly not there yet.”
Every time I go back I find it difficult to reconcile the city of my childhood with the one that stands today. So much has changed over the past 45 years that at times I don’t even recognize it. But then I catch little glimpses of the past, such as the bus I used to ride on, the cricket club we used to visit on weekends, or even my favorite brand of lemon tea (Vita, don’t even think of bringing me a Hi-C, Nestea or Crystal Spring).
Hong Kong will always be my home, it just won’t always be a familiar face.
Bittersweet …
Amazing photo of your mum and Nick, lots of memory lane flashbacks I imagine. Whatever happened to the infamous football club? Tony used to be a regular if I remember correctly.
Take care, cheers Mark