A new mood is brewing in Asia. If rapid development was once the mantra, heritage and identity are the buzzwords today. During the go-go years, governments rushed to build modern skyscrapers; developers amassed huge fortunes. In the sea of money, intellectuals crying out to save corners of Asia’s past seemed like curmudgeonly–even dangerous–opponents of progress. With greater prosperity, Asian professionals started to feel nostalgia for the past. After the financial collapse of the late 1990s, many Asian planners started to seriously rethink their goals. Lecturing from the West stirred a backlash of Asian pride, a sense that Asians should find their own way instead of copying the foreigners. At the same time the middle class started voicing new values: quality of life, urban conservation, the environment and respect for history. “There is a great grass-roots movement going on across Asia and a growing desire for a sense of place,” says Graham Brooks, Sydney-based chairman of AusHeritage, which advises on cultural projects around the region. When they meet this July, Asia’s foreign ministers will publish their first declaration on preserving the region’s heritage.
For the most part, citizens are out ahead of their governments. In Hong Kong grass-roots groups are fighting–with only some success–to save the few remaining ancient Chinese villages in the New Territories from the wrecking balls of unsentimental developers. In Beijing citizens are trying to block plans to tear down the courtyard houses that link China to its past. In Penang, the old trading port where Malaysia’s British masters once mixed with rich Chinese merchants and Arab spice traders, volunteers at the Penang Heritage Trust have saved some old temples and other buildings and sparked public interest in conservation. But more than half of the grand Eastern & Oriental Hotel, built in 1885, has been destroyed, and most of the rest is being redeveloped. Just before the recession hit, the Heritage Trust failed to save the 19th-century bungalows next door, because developers wanted to build a “heritage hotel” in their place.
But democracy is beginning to challenge the developers. In Bandung, the art deco Indonesian city that was built by Dutch colonists in the early 20th century, architects have been fighting for years to save some of the country’s most elegant buildings. Today with a new democratic government in Jakarta, builders are more responsive to citizens’ concerns. A new ordinance requires builders to get permits before tearing down structures. When the city’s Heritage Foundation, a grass-roots group, discovered last February that a bank planned to tear down an important deco building, architect Dibyo Hartono wrote to the newspaper. In response, the bank stopped the project and consulted the foundation about how to restore the building. “Now I’m not afraid to write,” says Dibyo. “Before, the government and developers didn’t care; now there is a reaction–that’s reformasi.”
But how to preserve the past while promoting progress? Twenty years ago Singapore architect William Lim was called a subversive for criticizing tall buildings. But when the city’s hands-on leaders realized tourism would drop if they tore down all the old buildings, they launched a campaign to recreate the past. Planners turned the once-bustling Boat Quay into a yuppie watering hole and set rules for the controversial restoration of Chinatown shop- houses. Architects give the city high praise for saving the historic buildings. But even some fans say the government and developers turned parts of the city into a pastel Hollywood set. “Conservation is about memories,” says Lim. “It’s very dangerous if you reinvent or distort those memories too much.” Critics say the restoration is too commercial. “Our changes are all part of the evolution of the city,” says Liu Thai Ker, a driving force behind Singapore’s face-lift. The Raffles Hotel owners renovated their elegant hotel–and added a shopping mall that pretends to be part of the original.
The Hong Kong architecture students know they can’t bring back what’s lost. Instead, they are incorporating the spirit of their past into plans for a more high-tech, service-oriented future. Unlike the older generation, who saw colonial buildings as reminders of shameful memories, the students aren’t hung up on the fight against the West. “Hong Kong was a colonial place,” says Tam, who believes in preserving Hong Kong’s remaining colonial buildings. “That’s not our entire identity, but it should be part of it.” Now–if they could just persuade those developers.
