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Hong Kong
OpinionComment
Helen So
Yolanda Lam
Helen SoandYolanda Lam

Opinion | Preserving Hong Kong’s cultural heritage must start with documenting it

  • The capsizing of Jumbo Floating Restaurant and the upended fate of a timber factory with post-war roots have renewed discussion about cultural heritage
  • If we are to know what cultural assets we have and determine what is worth saving, documentation and digitalisation is a necessary step

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An artist prepares for a Chinese opera performance backstage in a temporary bamboo theatre during a Taoist festival in Shek O on November 10, 2016. Both traditional opera and the building of bamboo theatres are listed in Hong Kong’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Database. Photo: Nora Tam
Helen SoandYolanda Lam
The Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau was finally set up this month, under Hong Kong’s new administration, not long after the iconic Jumbo Floating Restaurant left the city and capsized. More recently, the fate of Chi Kee Sawmill and Timber, a wood factory with post-war roots that has been served with a land resumption notice, has also sparked discussion. The new bureau has been given the long-standing yet urgent task of taking cultural preservation in the city more seriously. But how?
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Cultural heritage encompasses a broad range of tangible and intangible forms, from art forms like Cantonese opera to historically significant buildings such as the State Theatre. The heritage that survives transcends its cultural manifestation. It becomes a symbol of the wealth of knowledge people have handed down through the generations and which has withstood the test of time, and also provides a lens into how the generations before ours lived. Cultural heritage is an important vessel for understanding who we are and how we got here.
While we lament the fate of Jumbo Floating Restaurant, among others, a more meaningful conversation going forward must be anchored around concrete ways to preserve cultural heritage. To begin with, we must know the cultural heritage we have, and determine what is worth preserving.

The documentation and digitalisation of cultural resources is thus a necessary first step. Across the globe, there are many state-initiated efforts to build cultural databases: catalogues of valuable information and historically significant material, such as old newspapers, periodicals, photographs, poetry, art, literature and scripts. This is particularly pertinent to intangible cultural heritage.

In May, mainland China revealed a plan for a “national culture big data system” that will involve digitalising cultural materials to build repositories of Chinese cultural knowledge. In fact, a 2021 paper already proposed the construction of three such databanks.
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With these repositories, various forms of cultural heritage will ideally be protected on multiple levels: in regional and provincial cultural data centres, as well as a national cultural network. This could drive research and innovation for various stakeholders, such as universities, technology start-ups and cultural content providers. This project will certainly involve cross-sectoral collaboration and is no easy task. China expects to take a decade or so to build its big data system.

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