Tin Sing
天星
Saturday evening after running an errand in Tsimshatsui, I decide on the spur of the moment to take the Star Ferry back to Central instead of the MTR. I haven't crossed the harbor on the tin sing, the Star Ferry, since the old ferry pier on the Central side was shut down in mid-November.
At around 8pm on a crisp, clear night, the promenade in front of the Tsimshatsui ferry pier is alive with people: tourists posing, children playing, fishermen fishing, lovers smooching. The life of a city playing out against one of the most stunning backdrops in the world.
Yeah, I know, this is the picture that every Hong Kong tourist takes. But who can resist? I took it from the same spot where so many Hong Kong visitors snap this scene, standing by the windows in the waiting area of the Star Ferry pier building on the Tsimshatsui side.
The Star Ferry is, hands down, Hong Kong's most famous tourist attraction. National Geographic Traveler, voted it one of the "100 Travel Experiences of a Lifetime" in one of their recent issues. It's also, I'm pretty sure, one of those "1000 Things To Do Before You Die". It's an icon.
As a first time tourist in Hong Kong, I developed a crush on the ferry, like everybody does. The pleasure of crossing Victoria Harbor on those vintage old green and white boats didn't fade over time as I settled into being a Hong Konger. Unlike so many of the world's tourist experiences, the Star Ferry has legs.
Ride it ten times or a thousand, when it pulls away from the dock, you can feel a weight lift from your chest. You've escaped from Hong Kong, your boss, your heartbreak. For about seven minutes, it's just you and the ocean, silvery skyscrapers and big mountains. And, on those (increasingly rare) clear days, a jade-green sea, a blue sky.
There is a simple reason why the Star Ferry has been an international tourist attraction for decades: It is not for tourists. It is serious public transport. For more than 100 years, the Star (and its predecessors) have been ferrying Hong Kongers of all stripes, from businessmen to laborers, back and forth between Kowloon and downtown Hong Kong island. Even after the subway train was built beneath the harbor, the ferry stayed afloat. It is cheaper than the MTR--only about 10 cents USD if you ride the lower deck--and often faster, since it lets you off, at both ends, in a more convenient location of the city.
Well, it used to. Last November, the Hong Kong government shuttered the 49 year old Star Ferry terminal in Central, part of their master plan to build a freeway and a long horizontal shopping mall along that side of the waterfront.
Now there's a brand new Star Ferry Pier on the Hong Kong island side, in a different location to the west of the original, about 800 meters walk from the nearest convenient pedestrian link in--you guessed it, a shopping mall.
I'd stopped by to see the new building some weeks before, so I was prepared for this bargain-basement Disneyland. Tearing down the lovely old Star Ferry terminal was a really bad idea. But if the government was so sure this had to be, they could have paid tribute to the legacy of Hong Kong's great transport hub and dared to construct an imaginative piece of contemporary architecture, something with style that might have brought a fresh perspective to the harbor and made civic spirits soar. Instead, they opted for a tacky looking faux-historical simulacrum, a "replacement" for the original that won't fool anybody, tourists or locals:
Like I said, awful. As I boarded the ferry on the Tsimshatsui/Kowloon side, I was gearing up for the letdown of arrival. But what I wasn't prepared for is how much more than a great old building the Star Ferry has lost since the move to the new terminal.
To start with, since the pier has moved to the west, the ferry now takes a different course, angled towards the IFC building. It used to take a straight shot into the most architectually thrilling part of Hong Kong's skyline, where I.M. Pei's Bank of China and Norman Foster's HSBC building tower over the lone remaining vestige of old Hong Kong, the Legislative Council building. Now that classic view is off to the side, and you're heading away from it.
Arrival on the Hong Kong side is also a letdown. At the old Central pier, you disembarked into a sidewalk-level area busy with taxis, vendors, mini-buses, the occasional rickshaw, and a perpetual Falun Gong demonstration. Now, at the new pier, you get off and there is....nothing but an 800 meter walk to civilization.
The big new building and clocktower are situated in-between the two long piers that stick out into the harbor, and they were completely deserted when I disembarked on a busy Friday night. No strollers, no fishermen, no smoochers. Going into the building requires a conscious decision to do so since it is not part of the pedestrian connection between the pier, the IFC mall and the streets.
Even stranger, the new Star Ferry building is set above the street level, on a raised knoll and a concrete platform. I imagine that's probably so it can be connected with some yet-to-be-built raised walkway that feeds into the future shopping mall. But raising the building isolates the little concrete strip of waterfront access at ground level that's sandwiched, like an afterthought, between the two piers at the front.
I walked off the ferry and down the pedestrian path towards IFC, feeling bad, like I'd been dumped, or betrayed by an old friend. And then, insult to injury, I spotted this little piece of government propaganda on the construction barrier to the left of the walkway:
Woot lik, the first two Chinese characters on the sign, are two very heavy-hitting characters indeed. Woot means life, and lik means strength, power. Together, the life-power combination translates as vitality, vibrancy. The old Central Star Ferry terminal had the power of life, because it was useful to people. The new one doesn't have it, because it isn't. As a speedy and convenient funnel for passengers and pedestrians, a vibrant entry to Hong Kong's downtown, the design is a failure.
Woot lik, however, is not the point of the new Star Ferry Terminal. It's there to be a facade, and it's there for feel-good and face, to try to convince everyone--Hong Kong people, tourists, maybe even government officials themselves--that nothing, really, has been lost in the relentless juggernaut of property development.
But of course it has. You can't step off the Star Ferry in Central now without being reminded that nothing, not heritage or community feeling, nor even the gutting of a beloved, world-famous and revenue-producing tourism icon, is more important than selling Hong Kong's waterfront to the highest bidders.
Hi Daisann,
Thanks for your post about the "replacement" terminal. It looks awful and ugly. I looked up some more info and pixs at Wikipedia. Ah, it is sad to see what the old truly represented and the way it was built now it is gone. Sad. May be architecture of public building is just a simplistic reflection or representation of the people running the government at the time. A sanitized and theme-park like (thus cheap-looking) terminal is a great match for the current rulers of HK.
Kempton
P.S. Peter Gordon of The Standard has the following insightful observation in his Jan 3, 2007 column,
"The problem is the relocation of the pier to a place, several hundred meters away, where it no longer serves the needs of ordinary commuters and cross- harbor travelers. A transport system, iconic to Hong Kong, on which, if only for a short time, people from all walks of life rub shoulders while basking together in the magnificence of our glorious setting, will be reduced to something used predominantly by tourists."
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I'd go even further than that. I think he Star Ferry is purposely being re-purposed as a tourist ride. Plans are underfoot to move the bus terminals that connect with the ferry on the Tsimshatsui side, which will pretty much gut the useful connection on that side.
The same thing happened with the Peak Tram. Fifty or sixty years ago it was a commuter funicular railway taking residents and workers up and down the Peak. Now it is a pricey tourist ride.
If you "save" a building or a ferry or railway, but in the process of saving its physical existence, destroy its function, authenticity and soul, have you really saved it at all?
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it's a pleasure to read ur site. I am a native HKer, though I am not living in HK anymore. I also miss Tin Sing, not only the building, but also the location. Someone already pointed out that Tin Sing, Queen and city hall form one entity. Tin Sing has gone but let's hope the other two elements will be kept. I have the humble hope that if they are kept, one day we may see Tin Sing comes back to where it used to be. I also hope they won't build a mall that will block the view from city hall (tall building). I think this is now the only place, no entrance fee, that you can view the harbour from a higher level. The view is very very good.
I don't know whether anybody pointed this out before. I think the SAR govt is trying to remove the history of HK as a colony.
Queen's pier is a significant icon of Brit's reign. They may think this is to please the PRC leaders. However, we only remember the pier as an open area that we gather freely, enjoy the sea breeze. It also shows up in local TV series and movies from time to time.
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Glad you enjoy the site. I don't think the HKSAR is consciously trying to erase the traces of colonial Hong Kong. But what I think could make them nervous is that these traces are becoming a flashpoint for a Hong Kong identity consciousness among young people. The last few years have seen a lot of nationalist propaganda coming out of the HKSAR--like that intro to the evening news, the big fuss over the Chinese astronaut, and a lot of little things in the school curriculum. But things like the Star Ferry demonstrations remind people about what is special about Hong Kong, what makes it different from the mainland.
And that is not the politically correct feeling of the moment, at least from the point of view of the people at the top.
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Great site! It's really hard to fashion a blog to teach Cantonese. Not knowing too much about the ins and outs of setting up a web site, if you can "tag" audio clips to the cantonese words, that would make life much easier for foreigners to grasp the precise tone. This site also reminds of my uncle long time ago before he emigrated to the US. In the old days, you learn to speak English by translating English words into Cantonese phonetics. For example, "thank you" will sound like "tin que" or "flyover" in Cantonese, which was hilarious.
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Andy, your uncle is really hou lek!
I'm not exactly trying to teach foreigners to speak Cantonese--I'm not qualified for that! I am just having fun sharing some of the things I've learned about Hong Kong, China, and Chinese communities around the world by studying Cantonese.
I'd recommend anyone who really wants to dig into Cantonese to drop some serious change and devote a semester or two to the intensive program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/clc/new/en/
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You have hit it right on the head with the comparison to the Peak Tram. No one in government thinks the Star Ferry should remain a vital, important link in the transportation system. Multi-lane highways, however, are another matter...
Now wait...weren't the 1966 riots caused over a rate hike at the Star Ferry? Naturally there were a lot of issues, but the rate hike was the proverbial last straw.
When will the SAR govt. draw their last straw? They came close with Article 23 already...
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