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In the dim confines of the time-worn Wing Woo grocery, a short hop from Hong Kong's gleaming financial towers, Kwan Moon-chiu, 73, quietly arranges supplies of salted-fish and eggs, knowing his store's days are numbered.
"This shop is 130 years old, I have deep feelings for it. But if the Government wants to tear it down, what can I do?" he said.
The plight of Kwan's rickety store, which faces demolition for a massive urban renewal project, embodies the dilemma faced in Hong Kong - one of the world's most densely populated places with 7 million residents - of whether to raze or save.
While development has long taken precedent over heritage preservation, the recent demise of two iconic colonial-era piers sparked widespread public outrage among Hong Kongers tired of seeing their history effaced in the name of progress.
"I would see it as a major social movement in Hong Kong and it's an emerging attitude among the young," said Lee Ho-yin, an architectural conservation expert at the University of Hong Kong.
Activists who chained themselves to the doomed piers and who wrote protest banners in their own blood helped make heritage preservation an emotive, hot-button civil cause, alongside other long-established Hong Kong issues such as the push for greater democracy and social equality.
"Our city would be identical to any other, lacking personality. It would just be blasts of glass, steel and concrete blocks," said local, Bonnie Yiu.
Kwan's shop stands to be demolished in a controversial US$487 million ($708.98 million) redevelopment that rips the heart out of one of Hong Kong's oldest neighbourhoods centred on Central's last surviving street market on Graham and Peel Sts.
Thirty-seven mostly post-war tenement blocks will be replaced by four 30- or 40-storey skyscrapers including a hotel and new shops that will displace the quirky old stores including noodle-makers and incense sellers lining the narrow, sloping streets.
The numerous street hawkers selling produce ranging from broccoli to live crabs to pig trotters also face an uncertain fate.
"This market must really be preserved for its historical, economic and social value," said Katty Law, an activist with a network of social and heritage groups who have been campaigning against the project.
"Other countries have charters guiding the preservation of old areas but Hong Kong has never done this."
The red-brick Edwardian and Victorian buildings with elaborate facades on the waterfront in the 1950s have since been largely demolished.
Neighbouring Macau on the other hand - which is even more densely populated than Hong Kong - has managed to preserve much of its historic Portuguese core - and is now a Unesco world heritage site.
The chairman of Hong Kong's Urban Renewal Authority, Barry Cheung, defended the development project by saying it would create more open, greener spaces, resettle residents now stuck in the decrepit buildings and generally gentrify the area.
With Hong Kong marking its 10th anniversary since returning from British to Chinese rule, some observers say the growing civil activism is tied to a greater sense of belonging and a desire to preserve the city's cultural roots and identity.
But for activists like Chu Hoi-dick, Hong Kong's heritage activism boils down to a simple lack of democracy and the Government's heavy-handed policy-making without adequately involving the public.
- Reuters
