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Following is the speech on "Nostalgia is Not What it Used to Be" delivered by the Secretary for Home Affairs, Dr Patrick Ho, at the opening ceremony on International Conference on the Evolution and Rehabilitation of the Asian Shophouse today (May 10):
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The late French actress Simone Signoret wrote a book with the curious title, which translated into English, means "Nostalgia Isn't What it Used to Be".
It's a deliberately ironic title suggesting that, even in the act of remembering, we remember a time when our memories were better than they are now.
We talk of looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses, because we know the distorting effect that memory can have, how selective it can be, how it winnows out the bad and leaves us only with the good.
We need – and especially those of us who live in Hong Kong – to ask ourselves if the so-called "good old days" really were that good.
Do we really wish to go back to an age when we worked harder simply in order to survive, when nearly half our population were living in squatter huts, when our basic schooling, medical and welfare systems were nowhere near as sophisticated as they are today?
I pose this question not just to remind us how far we have advanced, but to place a magnifying glass over the curious human tendency to derive comfort from remembrance of things past.
Some would consider that retreating into the past could be another form of escapism, just as much as the nagging suspicion some of us continue to entertain that the grass is much greener on the other side of the hill.
I hasten to say that we should not be knocking nostalgia. I value my scrapbooks and photograph albums as much as anybody else. And let's face it, where would our museums be if they didn't cater to our enduring fascination with what was but no longer is?
Yet I also recall that our late Governor Sir Murray MacLehose once delivered a speech pointing out that Hong Kong would not be the city it is today if we had left our feet planted in the past.
It was his claim that we were too forward looking – too impetuous – with our eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead, to spare more than an occasional casual glance in the rearview mirror.
Now however, having accomplished much of what we set out to achieve by creating higher living standards and a more comfortable lifestyle, we have also acquired a more reflective disposition.
We can afford to turn our minds to the preservation of our "collective memory", to become more passionately protective of our heritage.
Just as, in other less congested, more forested regions of the world the call is "Woodman, spare that tree!", here in Hong Kong the cry is "Developer, stay that bulldozer!"
I personally suspect we are driven partly by a sense of guilt that we have already allowed so much of our heritage to be demolished without a word of protest, so that we are now determined to cling, willy-nilly, to what we have left.
But in doing so I suggest that we take a close look at what we are preserving. This requirement is especially relevant in the case of our shophouses. We should ask ourselves what it is we seek to maintain.
Is it the shells of the buildings themselves or is it the character invested in them?
Surely we would not deny their occupants the benefits of modern amenities that those shells cannot accommodate?
Given the choice I suspect many of them – as they have in similar circumstances elsewhere – would choose to move into better and safer dwellings that do incorporate such amenities.
Shophouses built for their forbears more than a century ago are not always capable of sustaining such changes.
We don't have to tear down the old and replace it with another tower block that bears no resemblance to what stood there before.
With intelligent planning we can simulate the ambiance of the old in a new structure that preserves its general features but offers a greatly improved interior working and living space.
I have seen examples of both approaches in other cities. In Shanghai for instance I encountered one development that sought to repair and refurbish the actual structures of historical buildings and another that sought to recreate the ambiance of the old in new buildings that preserved their essential character.
The latter, I found, was the more successful because its inhabitants were enjoying better facilities and therefore a better way of life.
This then is the dichotomy we need to debate as we meet today to discuss the evolution and rehabilitation of the Asian shophouse.
Shakespeare had Hamlet wrestle with the dilemma of "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them".
Our agenda is not nearly as dramatic, but it does call for us to wrestle with our conscience in debating the pros and cons of rehabilitation, and it certainly offers just as much food for thought.
Ends/Thursday, May 10, 2007
Issued at HKT 11:31
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