LettersReinventing Hong Kong does not require amnesia
Readers discuss another side to the nostalgia for old Hong Kong, and investment prospects in Asia
But there is another side to nostalgia worth considering.
Born in Hong Kong, I remain a permanent resident though I have spent much of my adult life elsewhere in Asia. I am drawn not to new shopping centres, but to wet markets, old restaurants, crowded streets and traditional yum cha.
Online, I follow groups that post photographs of Hong Kong in the 1960s and 70s: trams passing shops that have vanished, old housing estates, neon signs, ferries and markets. People identify buildings, debate dates and contribute their own memories.
Recently I watched the 1960 film The World of Suzie Wong. In its opening scenes, William Holden arrives by the Star Ferry and walks through crowded streets and markets. The depiction is stylised, even quaint, yet I found it immensely pleasurable. It evoked the Hong Kong of my childhood – not that I wish to return to that world, but I recognise traces of it.
It would be easy to interpret this as longing for a lost Hong Kong, especially given the political and social changes of recent years. But something more complicated is happening.