Old Hong Kong at risk? Past, present and future of Temple Street

Abstract

Have you ever been to Temple Street? Take a visit to the street in the evening, you are welcomed by a considerable number of hawkers selling various types of products. Besides, you can enjoy watching singing performance and getting advices from a fortune teller when you walk along the street. Temple Street is now well known both in Hong Kong and internationally for this stunning night market. Being one of the symbolic local street markets, Temple Street is worth discussing and researching. This project aims to display the historical and cultural significance of Temple Street. The street is also widely recognized as the representation of the image of "Old Hong Kong". However, its Old Hong Kong features have been disappearing in this rapid changing city. So the project tries to study the settings and the ecology of Temple Street in 2014 which could keep as a record. During the research process, three factors including Central Kowloon Route, hawker policy and promotion of tourism which would determine the future of Temple Street are identified, so thorough discussion on the above factors would be presented in the project. Furthermore, suggestions for preserving the market oriented to the anticipating circumstance under those factors will be given. In a narrow sense, it is a project that aims to address the importance of Temple Street to Hong Kong and raise the local awareness on the development and preservation of this street market. In a broad sense, it is hoped that current government weakness in preserving the culture of street markets and hawkers could be addressed through the case study of Temple Street. Last but not least, public awareness to the values of local street markets and hawker culture would be raised and public participation in the preservation of this culture and heritage would be enhanced.