Podcast link:
Team member:
Liu Zihan
Leung Nim Yan
Transcript and stills:
Liu: What is the space/place/artefact/building that is vanishing?
Liang: We have chosen Bowring Street as our filming location for the Field Work and the Visual essay. Bowring Street locates in Jordan, where next to the Shanghai Street. This area contains lots of old and traditional buildings, which has become one of the symbols of the Hong Kong Street Culture. The reason of choosing the Bowring Street, especially the local market is the street is regarded as an indivisible part of the local’s life. Comparing to the Mong Kok Women’s Street, the main customer of its selling products is the locals, selling daily necessities like Clocks, Clothes, even toys. While the Women’ Street is selling souvenirs, hence, the target customer group is completely different. We indeed believe that the Bowring Street contains the local Hong Kong culture and would like to preserve it by filming and recording it.
Liu: Why is it vanishing? How do we know that it will no longer exist in the near future?
Liang: There are three main reason that affects the existence of Bowring Street Day Market. The most important factor is the government policies. Mong Kok Used to hold a Pedestrian Zone in the Sai Yeung Choi Street. However, due to the noise pollution, the chaos of social order, the government dismissed the allowance of the pedestrian Zone and the corresponding street performance. This shows that, while the public order and the local culture are in confront, the government would abandon the local culture to assure stability of society. Which has given a clear message that, preserving local culture is not the golden shield of grassroot places, so to the Bowring Street Day Market.
Moreover, as shown in the fieldwork video, there are increasingly percentage of empty shops in the day market. Also, most of the shop keepers are reaching silver age. That implies that, the size of the market is continuously declining, with the shortage of people starting up a business in the market. Even without the government pressure, the existence of the day market is unstable.
The last and the most important reason of the vanishing is more subsidies that competes with the day market. Nowadays people tend to consume on ‘modern shops’ in shopping malls. Day market is always labeled with negative words like poor people’s paradise, selling goods with poor quality. Such comments has built up a huge barrier on the development of the markets.
Hence, with the three main reasons, we can know that the Bowring Street Day Market will no longer exist in the near future.
Liang: What do we know about its past and present? i.e. What purpose/s does it serve?
Liu: As we know, the origin of markets was for bartering system, people need a platform for exchanging goods and services with each other when there were no mediums of exchange in ancient times. Then after a long-time development, it becomes modern markets today, which use money as a generally acceptable payment.
Liang: Who are and/or will be affected when it no longer exists? What are their feelings and attitudes toward this?
Liu: Well, talking about day markets, we can’t get away from the customer base it serves. So who are actually buying things here? The first must be active consumer group, usually contains people who live beside or passes the market in their daily routine, and therefore got used to buying things here. Another consumer group could be tourists, who happen to see the market or plan to visit the street as part of their trip to Hong Kong. But, just as what you mentioned before, sometimes day market is labeled as poor people’s paradise, less people are willing to go to those traditional day markets, instead, they visit more modern fairs that were opened in shopping malls or decorated in fashion styles. This way, customer decreases, sellers are affected as they have to decide how to deal with this fall in demand, whether to lower the price, improve the quality, or just get out of the market. Apparently, many of them chose the last one.
Liang: What is being done about its impending disappearance?
Liu: Nowadays, preserving the traditional culture and customs of a region is becoming more and more important, individuals and mediums tends to pay attention to those vanishing places like old buildings, old markets and even some special handiworks that could represent traditional lifestyles of the citizens here, so I could guess that these places will not vanish completely in the future. Although Bowring Street Day Market seems to be vanishing, I believe some similar but more representative markets will be preserved as part of the culture of the city.
