The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a surge of popular interest in Hong Kong heritage by default. But can the momentum be sustained and the reinvention of tradition taken to the next level? Joyce Yip weighs the pros and cons.

On an afternoon in July, actor Chage Fung put on a gray cheongsam, round spectacles and black Chinese slippers. He was playing the role of a disciple to the Chinese literary giant Lu Xun (1881-1936). The performance took place at the Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong’s Bridges Street Centre in Sheung Wan. Speaking in a lingo that was a throwback to the 1920s, Fung waxed eloquent on the pioneering architectural features of the building where Lu had famously lectured in February 1927.

The show was part of the Radix Troupe-produced Historic Site, His Stories’ Cite touring performance series — a theater project sponsored by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The program aims to rekindle popular interest in the city’s historically significant landmarks.

A few blocks away from the Bridges Street YMCA, on Peel Street, cocktail bar Kinsman serves tipples shaken with Cantonese spirits like black glutinous rice wine, sourced from a distillery nestled on the slopes of Tai Mo Shan — Hong Kong’s highest peak, located in the New Territories. Kinsman’s interiors mimic a Wong Kar-wai film set. Bar co-founder Gavin Yeung says that the idea is to conjure up a feel of “looking back at old Hong Kong through a dusty windowpane”.

Visitors to the Soundtrack of Our Lives exhibition, held from July to September, are still talking about its heartstrings-tugging re-creations of ’90s-style environments — a cha chaan teng and a zeitgeisty repair shop complete with cathode-ray tube TV monitors, among others. Held at Tai Kwun — the site of Hong Kong’s erstwhile Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison — the show was a celebration of two ’90s Cantopop legends, composer Joseph Koo and lyricist James Wong.

Evidently, nostalgia is the flavor of the season. The glass-bottomed cable cars of Ngong Ping 360 — which take tourists on a 5.7-km aerial journey over Lantau Island — were recently dressed up to resemble the interiors of a traditional Hong Kong-style cafe and herbal tea shop.

The recent success of the Soi Cheang-directed Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is one more example of Hong Kong people’s growing fondness for local heritage. The film is set in the Kowloon Walled City, an intensely congested and somewhat notorious neighborhood that was demolished by mid-1994. Since its release in May, Twilight of the Warriors has turned out to be the highest-grossing Hong Kong-made movie of the year, raking in HK$105 million ($13.5 million) in two months at the local box office.

Heritage in one’s backyard

The revival of interest in Hong Kong’s history and heritage began gaining currency during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the restrictions enforced by the local government practically ruled out overseas travel. Left without much choice, compulsive holidayers began exploring what lay in their own backyard. Soon the ever-familiar cha chaan teng staples became sought-after food items, and cheongsam-wearing selfies were filling up social media pages.  

As Hing Chao, chairman of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Earthpulse Society which hosts the annual Intangible Cultural Heritage Mart, says, “Sixty years ago, no one would have considered Hong Kong-style milk tea an intangible cultural heritage.” Now, thanks to the pandemic, Hong Kong residents’ awareness of local culture is “way better” than what it was even “in the early 2000s”.  

Yeung offers a reason for the apparent shift in Hong Kong people’s response to local heritage: “The alienation and dislocation of the past five years have been traumatic for Hong Kong,” he says, referring to the incidents of citywide unrest in 2019, the pandemic and droves of people leaving the city. He contends that since for most Hong Kong people it was their first time going through such enormous upheavals, “it’s natural for them to gravitate toward what defines the best of the city”.

Protecting the practitioners

The revival of interest in Hong Kong heritage ought to be good news for the city’s tourism sector. However, at least one of the city’s facilitators of intangible cultural heritage-based events sounds skeptical about the impact of packaging heritage for popular consumption.

Chao points out that most intangible cultural heritage practitioners are grassroots people, often quite old and set in their traditional ways. Hence, it’s “not correct” for producers of such events “to impose too many of their own ideas” on the performers, he says. “We must be mindful that we don’t push them to a point of discomfort.”

According to Anthony Fung, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s School of Journalism and Communication, many Hong Kong people who enjoy and participate in the enactment of local rituals do not seem to mind the commodification of their heritage and traditions.

He points out that trying to make a commercial enterprise out of local culture and history is part of the city’s cultural fabric. “For example, while the Wong Tai Sin Temple in Kowloon is primarily a religious space, today it’s also a popular spot for tourists and general socializing.”

He argues that there are several instances of “successfully commodified” heritage sites in Hong Kong. Tai Kwun, he says, serves as both a compound of preserved monuments as well as a public space, visited by cultural tour groups. Photos of the grand architectural facades of its buildings are often posted on social media.  

He says that the successful commodification of heritage depends heavily on capturing the attention of the younger generations. “Otherwise they’ll remain as just another relic from the past.”

Yeung emphasizes the need for tasteful presentation. At his bar, cliches like neon signs have been replaced with stylish Chinese calligraphy that was a staple of Hong Kong signboards in the ’50s. The obvious fish balls and egg tarts have been dropped from the menu to make way for lesser-known traditional Cantonese culinary delights like tea-smoked quail eggs and lap cheong, i.e., preserved Hong Kong-style pork sausage.

Wanted: long-term strategy

Chao contends that the local government — which currently has 480 items on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Hong Kong — can do more toward developing and raising public awareness about the same.    

To that end, he advocates formulating long-term projects that will involve creation of incubation spaces to generate ideas, facilitate in-depth discussions and research, as well as work out ways of driving public engagement.

“The HKSAR government must identify specific heritage items and explore what is required to properly preserve them,” he says. “It has done a lot for Cantonese Opera; but can you say the same of the craft of making Hong Kong-style costumes, or leung cha (herbal tea) or Unicorn Dance?”

He recommends that the government take a leaf out of the books of countries like Japan and South Korea, where cultural policies are not just aimed at the preservation of heritage, but also at empowering the stakeholders, by offering incentives attractive enough to ensure long-term commitment on their parts.  

Until a few years ago leung cha, wonton-making and Hakka Unicorn Dance were considered too familiar to Hong Kong people to merit a second glance. Now that these are being looked at through a new lens and are appreciated for their historical and aesthetic value, perhaps it’s time to launch a full-on campaign to take the city’s intangible cultural heritages to the next level, where they are noticed and appreciated by a wider audience.