HKU Bulletin January 2005 (Vol. 6 No. 2)

4 5 For Love of the Past L oving i t to Death . That was the t i t le of a conference on sustainable cultural tourism that Professor David Lung Ping Yee of the Department of Architecture recently attended. It also sums up his attitude to his passion: preserving the past through buildings and landscapes. Professor Lung has worked many hours in an honorary capacity to promote the heritage of Hong Kong and headed research teams writing applications for World Heritage status for nearby cities. He is now enjoying the fruits of his efforts. Rural Kaiping, a watchtower-dotted hamlet off the beaten track in Guangdong, asked Professor Lung to help it apply for Wor ld Her i tage inscr ipt ion. The appl icat ion is now being scrutinised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and hopefully will win approval within two or three years. Another project, Macau, is clearing the last of UNESCO’s hurdles and, fingers crossed, could be placed on the World Heritage list this summer. World Heritage status brings financial support via tourism income to protect a site. In each case, Professor Lung was at t racted by the story that the architecture had to tell – of Macau’s centuries of interaction with the West, and of Kaiping’s interact ions of a different kind. “Kaiping is very beautiful, with all these Western-sty le watchtowers sitting in a rural landscape, but it wasn’t the archi tectural appearance that at tracted me. These bui ldings are physical evidence of the contribution of overseas Chinese,” he said. “The sons of Kaiping of the Si Yi region were working in gold mines in Australia and the United States at the turn of the 20th century and they couldn’t buy property or marry because of racism laws, so they spent their money in their hometowns. Since they had been in the West, they wanted to build something to show their status. You won’t find anywhere else like this.” That desire to preserve a slice of Chinese history, in Hong Kong as well as elsewhere, has been a strong motivator for Professor Lung. He served on Hong Kong’s Antiquities Advisory Board for 14 years and worked with other board members to compose a draft policy paper on heritage protection that became the bluepr int for the government’s publ ic consul tat ion on the issue. In 1999 he set up and helped to fund the Architectural Conservation Programme in his department, at a time when Hong Kong was suf fer ing a post-handover ident i ty cr isis, the government was showing keen interest in saving old buildings and there were few experts in the region in architectural conservation. The University provided $500,000 and another $1.3 million was personally donated by Professor Lung and his colleague, Assistant Professor Dr Lynne DiStefano, with income they earned from carrying out conservation studies for the government. They have set up a team that also includes Assistant Professors Lee Ho Yin, Ken Nicholson, Honorary Assistant Professors Ivan Ho, Chia Ing-Ping, Senior Research Assistants Euphamia Chow, Datta Poonom, Alexandra Sauvegrin McCellan and Postgraduate Student Sharif Imon. The academics plough their research work back into the programme, providing students with access to a r ich resource of Asian-based knowledge. “We bring our research results to the classroom,” Professor Lung said. The high quality of the programme, which offers Master’s, diploma and elective courses, has attracted praise and recogni t ion from internat ional bodies, including UNESCO, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the International Cent re for the Study of the Preservat ion and Restorat ion of Cultural Property (ICCROM) and the Getty Conservation Institute. The Getty Conservation Institute asked Professor Lung to help with the Engl ish t ranslat ion of The China Principles , a major international charter on heritage conservation. UNESCO and ICCROM, meanwhile, asked the team to help launch an Asian Academy to train professionals and government officials working in heritage conservation. “This was very important world recognition,” Professor Lung said. Delegates from Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Mainland China, Macau, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam attended the academy’s first field school in late 2003 for a two-week executive programme (a second session is now being planned). They used Macau as a training ground, with which Professor Lung’s team has had close contact. “China has a big vacuum in terms of the her i tage management knowledge needed to package local heritage sites Houses built in the 1930s with the proceeds of remittances from villagers working abroad. A house soon after it was built in the 1930s by Ling Lu with money he earned working in Mexico. COVER STORY