[Transcript]
The change of Portland Street
- Introduction
Portland Street is located in Yau Tsim Mong District. North to Boundary Street while south to Man Ming Lane. Its name is endowed in 1927, taking reference from the British prime minister Duke of Portland. The whole street is surrounded with dense residential-commercial complex buildings. Along the street, we can find various shops including, funeral parlour, hometown associations, leather shops, church, grocery stores, medicinal herbs shops, bookstores, printing shops, siu mei shops and Mahjong schools, just to name a few.
Portland Street had maintained its symbolic status of local cultures for a long time. It is often mentioned, or even become the main setting in different stories of TV series, shows and films. It represents Hong Kong in two aspects: one is the prosperity and wealth, through displaying hectic pedestrians and commercial activities. The other one is the tough and vigorous spirit among the grass roots by highlighting the conditions when they worked. People in the past described Portland Street as “聲色犬馬、龍蛇混雜”, literally means Portland Street was filled with luxury enjoyment and the mingling of both plebeian and aristocrat. This enables us to reveal its complexity and mystery with a ballpark figure.
- Things that are disappearing
Portland Street arouses Hong Kong people’s common memory and cohesion by numerous elements on the street. For instance, the Tang Lau, alleyways, neon signs, bamboo scaffoldings and so on. During our field trip, we discovered certain areas or artefacts had been vanishing.
- Neon Signs. Without a doubt, neon signs are one of the famous elements which represent Hong Kong culture. They are a composition in scenes of films to demonstrate the flourishing image of Hong Kong city. However, due to the reduction in amount, we can merely find sparse neon signs overhead in recent time.
- Type of shops. Lots of types of goods are no longer existed amid Portland Street such as paper books, utensils and building materials because they are currently not prevalent anymore. This is a feature that both the industrial and commercial structure have altered thoroughly in Hong Kong.
- Mobile street food stalls. Nowadays, they are replaced by steady food stall or mostly restaurant on the street.
- Alleyways. They are the gloomiest corner inside a city occupied with hordes of cockroach and mice. They were a significant element to emphasize humanism since they showed the struggle of making a livelihood from impoverished stratum. In many scenes of the film “Little Cheung”, We see the protagonist and his partners sneak around the alleyways for no matter playing or delivering takeaways. In the films “Prince of Portland Street” and “Portland Street Blues”, the alleyways are also the site for gangsters to carry a fight. Many shop owners choose to discard garbage, carton boxes, building materials in alleyways. Perhaps it is a suitable interpretation of the term “hustle and bustle”. Walking along Portland Street today, we do not find dim alleyways as frequent as the past, but they are taken over by bright, broad roads instead.
- Reasons of disappearance
Firstly, Portland Street is the notorious Red-light district in the past. In the late 90s, Portland Street reached its heyday, and the porn industry went out of control. Prostitutes wandered to and fro in alleyways and took Tong Lau as secret foothold to carry their business. The police carried an action to strike the illegal industry in 2002.
Secondly, the government and the private developers were eager to demolish old buildings for the aim of redevelopment. In order to cater for tidiness and cleanness. Meanwhile, for safety reason, old buildings have to be rebuilt to prevent risks of fire and collapsing. There was a report of a neon sign falling in 2016 and it did cause the loss of property. We do not deny that the purpose of demolishing is essential and understandable but looking for appropriate method, procedure and range that accommodate every consideration is extremely crucial. Unfortunately, there are always controversies about topics of rebuild and preservation between each stakeholder.
- Potential influences
The fading of Portland Street may lead to the loss in confidence, pride and the belonging sense to the community to Hong Kong people. Portland Street constructed their common memory. A decline may trigger peoples’ pessimistic emotion. Also, Portland Street is a unique view in the past. Fewer tourists will be attracted to here for sightseeing. There will be losses on both cultural identity and economy.
On the contrary, stir up the resonance from teenagers. They may not be acquainted with the history of Portland Street. They have not experienced the golden era of Hong Kong but can only learn it on screens. Depressingly said, although Portland Street constructed the common memories of old Hong Kong people, there has no an inevitability for youngsters to accept the same image of it.
LI Zhengliang 3036128793 & Shu Yau Shing 3036067597