Hong Kong, seen by many as one teeming metropolitan agglomeration, in fact has distinct urban districts – each with their own character; and, amidst the crush of sky-seeking buildings, there are telling and rewarding aspects from the past to be seen. (This has been shown well by the historian Jason Wordie, whose Streets books capture the diversity of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, and their stories from the past.) Thus, amidst the new some of the old remains, though far less than might be assumed for so affluent, and seemingly educated, a city.
 
Many of the fine Victorian and Edwardian buildings that appear in Hedda Morrison’s photographs in the 1946 – 47 section ‘Central District’ were demolished in the 1960s – when, indeed, population pressure and a severe shortage of office space rendered this close to inevitable. However, later there was far less reason for the obliteration of the past – or for the loss of such valuable urban heritage. The government body tasked with heritage preservation, the Antiquities and Monuments Office, was set up in 1976; yet its charter was so vague, and permitted allowing of so many loopholes, that the indiscriminate demolition of heritage sites for ‘essential’ development continued almost unabated. When the venerable and striking Hong Kong Club, shown opposite, was taken down in the early 1980s there was a public outcry. Yet, over the future years, Hong Kong’s direction shifted hardly at all. Indeed, when in the late 1990s it was proposed to demolish the once superb Tiger Balm pagoda – seen in the 1946 – 47 section ‘Eastern Districts’ – barely a significant voice was heard in opposition.