Lee Tung Street
Encyclopedia
Wan Chai
Wan Chai is a metropolitan area situated at the western part of the Wan Chai District on the northern shore of Hong Kong Island, in Hong Kong. Its other boundaries are Canal Road to the east, Arsenal Street to the west and Bowen Road to the south. The area north of Gloucester Road is often called...
, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
. Involved in a project executed by the Urban Renewal Authority
Urban Renewal Authority
The Urban Renewal Authority is a statutory body in Hong Kong responsible for accelerating redevelopment to provide a better living environment and neighbourhood.-History:...
(URA), was torn down in December 2007. The demolition
Demolition
Demolition is the tearing-down of buildings and other structures, the opposite of construction. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for re-use....
is seen by many as an irretrievable detriment to the cultural heritage of Hong Kong.
All interests of this street are now being resumed and were reverted to the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region since 1 November, 2005.
History
The street has been famous for its printingPrinting
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
industry for long and Wan Chai was a long time host of the headquarters of the Hong Kong Times, Ta Kung Pao
Ta Kung Pao
Ta Kung Pao is the oldest active Chinese language newspaper in China. It is based in Hong Kong and has been funded by the government of the People's Republic of China since 1949...
and Wen Wei Pao. In the 1950s, Hong Kong Government gathers print shops in Lee Tung Street between Johnston Road
Johnston Road
Johnston Road is a major road in Wan Chai on the Hong Kong Island of Hong Kong. It spans from the junction with Heard Street, Hennessy Road and Stewart Road are at its east towards another junction with Hennessy Road and Queensway at its west near Asian House...
and Queen's Road East. Rumours had it that the purpose is to easily monitor any illegal publication. In any case, the print shops developed their own letters, envelopes and name card. In 1970s, they also produced wedding invitation
Wedding invitation
A wedding invitation is a letter asking the recipient to attend a wedding. It is typically written in formal, third-person language and mailed five to eight weeks before the wedding date....
s, lai see, fai chun and other items and became famous in 1980s. Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people had visited the shops there to order their wedding cards, name cards and traditional Chinese calendar
Calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
s.
Destruction by the Urban Renewal Authority
In 2003, the Urban Renewal AuthorityUrban Renewal Authority
The Urban Renewal Authority is a statutory body in Hong Kong responsible for accelerating redevelopment to provide a better living environment and neighbourhood.-History:...
announced it would spend HK$3.58 billion to redevelop Lee Tung Street and McGregor Street (Chinese:麥加力歌街), an area covering 8,900 square meters. According to an authority spokesman, up to the end of June 2005, more than 85 percent of the 647 affected homeowners on Lee Tung Street had agreed to accept compensation offers of HK$4,079 per square foot. The purchase of the land is expected to be completed early 2006. The street was dully demolished starting from December 2007. In its place will stand four high-rise buildings and one underground car park, and new shops that together makes the image of the street as a “Wedding City”. That means the old shops here, which are mostly small businesses and family run, have to move to somewhere else to make business, facing high rent and losing old customers. In the meantime, the commodification process of Hong Kong is carried on.
Contestation
In spite of a viable counter-proposal (dubbed the Dumbbell Proposal and designed by professional architect Christopher Law, it proposed to keep intact the signature six-storey Tong LauTong Lau
Tong Lau or Kee-lau are tenement buildings built in late 19th century to the 1960s in Hong Kong, Macau, southern China and Taiwan...
in the middle part of the street and would have rendered possible to preserve the community) by the H15 Concern Group and strong protests by residents (including a hunger strike by May Je) and other activists, the URA and the government went on to demolish the street as planned.
Trivia
The famous poet and translator Dai WangshuDai Wangshu
Dai Wangshu was a Chinese poet, essayist and translator active from the late 1920s to the end of the 1940s...
established a short-lived bookstore in Lee Tung Street in the early 1950s.