Abbas pinpointed the dissappeareance of history and local cultcure through acchitecture in Hong Kong. When you have a look buildings near by, there are either highrise residental buildings, or glassy commerial buildings, and that’s Hong Kong in people today’s mind. It is because over the years, old buildings in Chinese and colonial style were replaced by new highrise buildings more the less the same. The dissappeareance of post war history and collective memories goes together with replaced buildings and developments. For example, the Queen’s Pier. It conveys a lot post war memories like the Queen’s visit and new Governors arrive HK from this pier. However, It was disassemble in 2006 as land fill the central areas. The reason of dissappeareancing acchitecture and collective memories in Hong Kong may due to rebuilt our idenity after 1997, less colonial but more great China. The newest planned deassemble building is the General Post Office, It was said to build new commerial buildings after it. The problem leads to why goverment not to reuse the buildings, like the Japanese old Post Office next to Tokyo Train Station also reused as a shooping aracde. There are not likely for goverment to Cultural preservation and heritage conservation and that’s why very unlikely there are buildings in HK could last over 100 years.
Murphy Lok Kan Wong (UID: 3035400015)
Good reflection on Abbas’ idea of disappearance as a frame to understand Hong Kong’s built environment. Yes, Queen’s Pier and General Post Office are two of many other significant examples of disappearance or pending disappearance. (Be careful with the grammar and spelling/typos.)