Reclaimed Land
Reclaimed Land: Hong Kong in Transition
David Clarke
Copyright Date: 2002
Published by: Hong Kong University Press
Pages: 200
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jc09k
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Reclaimed Land
Book Description:

Between the end of 1994 and the beginning of 2000 - the last five years of the previous millenium - David Clarke took at least one black-and-white photo every day as he created a unique 'photo diary'. Drawing on this extensive visual archive, Reclaimed Land: Hong Kong in Transition offers a personal and critical perspective on the life of one of the world's most vibrant cities during a time of great change and self-questioning. This innovatively conceived book presents an analysis in deeply considered words and imaginative images of five years of Hong Kong's history whose exact mid-point - midnight on 30 June 1997 - saw the end of British colonial rule and the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. Instead of focussing on the much-documented ceremonial events surrounding the handover itself, however, Reclaimed Land examines a longer term process of physical and cultural transformation of which the events of mid-1997 were but one part. This is an extraordinary and original way of telling the story of those years, and of examining the forces and phenomena behind that story. It can be enjoyed for its photography, considered as an excitingly different way of recording history, and read as a profound reflection on a city foreseeing and then experiencing an historical transformation.

eISBN: 978-988-220-262-7
Subjects: History
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. Acknowledgements
    Acknowledgements (pp. vii-viii)
  4. Introduction
    Introduction (pp. 1-12)

    At midnight on 30 June 1997, Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. A city which came into existence under British colonial rule and grew to be a major nodal point in the global capitalist network was belatedly to enter the post-colonial world, experiencing not independence, but absorption into a much larger entity with alien political values. From the point of view of China, the transfer of sovereignty which took place at the mid-point of 1997 was simply a moment in a larger story of selfhood regained: the reclaiming of Hong Kong fed a...

  5. The Emporium: Spaces of Commerce and Consumption
    The Emporium: Spaces of Commerce and Consumption (pp. 13-50)

    Above all else, Hong Kong's image in the world is that of a place of trade, a quintessentially open capitalist marketplace perched at the door of China. In visual terms, this image translates into a view of a forest of tower blocks, a sort of Manhattan of the East, and indeed the tall buildings of Central – the business district of Hong Kong Island – do house the headquarters of numerous financial and trading companies. To many, Central stands for Hong Kong itself: its architectural structures feature in tourist publicity for the city, and visitors often make it the first...

  6. Sites of Power Contested: Official and Civic Space
    Sites of Power Contested: Official and Civic Space (pp. 51-90)

    Commercial structures define through their size and concentration the privatized heart of Hong Kong's urban space, but within a short distance of the Central business district are to be found a number of government buildings, and in some cases these are of quite considerable vintage. Such older structures, now overshadowed for the most part by their commercial counterparts, enable us to discern something of the topography of early colonial power, as well as of political landscapes dating from more recent times. Key amongst them are Government House (1855 and since rebuilt), the home of the colonial governors right until the...

  7. City in Transit: Spaces of Circulation
    City in Transit: Spaces of Circulation (pp. 91-110)

    Hong Kong's existence as a city is owed to its natural harbour, to its usefulness as a port for trade with China. Even today that task as an economic gateway to China, as a place of transit, is a major role for Hong Kong, and in terms of traffic volume its container port counts as one of the world's busiest. The vitality of this aspect of the city's economic life is easy to monitor, since anyone can observe the constant flow of ships into the harbour, and the unloading of their cargoes onto the swarms of attendant lighters. One of...

  8. Spaces of Memory: The Older Urban Neighbourhoods
    Spaces of Memory: The Older Urban Neighbourhoods (pp. 111-138)

    Not far from the earnestly contemporary environment of the Central business district can be found older, more settled areas. These districts stretch from the vicinity of the Central-to-Mid-Levels escalator link as far as Kennedy Town, occupying the lower land while middle-class commuter dormitories command the hillsides above. The housing in these areas is still predominantly low rise, and following a geography of privilege established in the nineteenth century it is occupied primarily by those with lower disposable incomes.

    In this area, and in its counterparts elsewhere in the city, older forms of life find a haven still and the globalized...

  9. Beyond the Concrete Forest: Village and Island Life
    Beyond the Concrete Forest: Village and Island Life (pp. 139-160)

    The days when Hong Kong was associated with manufacturing are now long gone. Plastic goods and competitively-priced garments were crucial to the development of the city's economic life, but its cheap-labour status has disappeared and most of the production which formerly took place in Hong Kong is now undertaken in China, often just across the border in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. Low wage costs (and other fringe benefits such as lax environmental and safety provisions) have of course been the driving force behind this mass migration of industry, which has left only remnants of production behind in present-day Hong...

  10. Against the Grain: Sites of Artistic Expression
    Against the Grain: Sites of Artistic Expression (pp. 161-198)

    Government support for the arts in Hong Kong has generally been a rather top-down affair, a hardware rather than software approach with a major focus on developing prestige concert halls and museums. The most visible of these municipal venues for the arts are the Cultural Centre, which was completed in 1989, and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, which opened in 1991. Located side by side, along with a Space Museum, they have turned a harbourfront site in Tsim Sha Tsui into a kind of reservation for high culture. Events presented by the two Municipal Councils (and following their abolition...

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