Establishing the themed heritage trail -- The Happy Valley Heritage Trail: Seng Lou Beng Sei in Happy Valley

Abstract

Heritage is crucial to all mankind because it links the past to our future. We inherit the culture, traditions and accumulated properties from our ancestors today by learning from the remaining cultural heritage either tangible or intangible. Heritage conservation is thus a fundamental agency of development of mankind which ensures the inheritance process. There is no doubt that it needs our passion and lifelong devotion to take part in. To conduct heritage conservation efficiently, not a single one of proper attitude, policies setting, techniques and education can be omitted. With regards to the rising concerns for Hong Kong’s cultural heritage among the public in recent years, heritage conservation in Hong Kong has officially moved into a new era since the 2007 Policy Address A New Direction for Hong Kong announced by the Chief Executive Donald Tsang, who declares that “a progressive city treasures its own culture and history along with a living experience unique to the city (Tsang, 2007)”. Heritage conservation is now on the right track after the stressed importance of “living experience” of the community as the essence of heritage. In the previous stage, heritage had long been seen as tourist attractions and the cultural significance of our local history and heritage was not sufficiently acknowledged and appreciation. Heritage trail is a rather new and emerging form of heritage education and conservation. In this proposal, we focus on heritage trail as one of the mostly potential means of education of heritage conservation. We sincerely propose the idea of establishing a new themed heritage trail in Happy Valley, a unique and symbolic district in Hong Kong that highly represent the cultural diversity as the local cultural characteristics, which emphasizes on the living experience of the community and manifests the cultural uniqueness of Hong Kong. The proposed heritage trail comprises of religious sites, historic sites, cemeteries, public facilities still in use, etc, which is all-embracing, inspirational and educational. Finally, in addition to a final year project, we wish to make the whole idea as a practical project that may contribute to the local heritage conservation.