Did it start with Bergson or before? Space was treated as the dead, the fixed, the undialectical, the immobile. Time, on the contrary was richness, fecundity, life, dialectic. … For all those who confuse history with the old schemas of evolution, living continuity, organic development, the use of spatial terms seems to have the air of an anti-history. If one started to talk in terms of space that meant one was hostile to time. It meant, as the fools say, that one “denied history”…
\n— Michel Foucault, “Questions on Geography” [1]
\nThe year is 1934. …..
\nLet’s take a stroll on Hollywood Road on Hong Kong Island. Here we are at Possession Point 水坑口, where you can take the No. 5 bus to Tai Hang 大坑 (Causeway Bay). You see passengers waiting for the bus off Hollywood Road, at Possession Street 水坑口街 and Lascar Row摩羅街 (nicknamed Cat Street), on the southeast side of a square, a busy open-air market during the day, also a recreation ground with a flamboyant night life for the ordinary people. But today we are walking instead of taking No. 5.
\nPossession Point 水坑口, the heart of Taipingshan Town 太平山 [Map 7]
\nPossession Street was formerly called Possession Point, a prime historic site of Hong Kong’s colonial history – for it was where the British troops first landed to claim its colonial sovereignty in 1842. At that time, what was immediately named the Possession Point after the British take-over was right above the harbor shore marked by Queen’s Road 皇后大道. Through almost a century’s urban development and sea reclamation, by 1934, the spot was separated from the harbor shore by three busy roads, Queen’s Road, north of it, Des Voeux Road 德輔道, and then Connaught Road 干諾道, the current thoroughfare closest to the harbor shore. [Photo 7]
\nAlthough the place has always been remembered for being the British naval contingent’s first landing point on January 26, 1841 where they hoisted the first Union Jack, for many years the area has been better known for its night life, thus called the “Dai Dat Dei”大笪地 in Cantonese, meaning “a big patch of land,” or the Big Public Square in recent translations. Every evening, storytellers as well as fortune-tellers gathered. Street-hawking barbers offered cheap shaves and hair-cut. Hawkers’ stalls were selling all kinds of prepared Chinese food or food prepared on the spot. Many others just went there to present whatever trade they were doing.
\nOn the slope above the square, on the southern side of Possession Point, there used to be the Chong Qing Theatre, also called Chong Qing Yuan 重慶園. Before 1909, it was called Tung Hing 同慶, known as for being the first theatre in town, founded in 1867. It was not just a theater for live Cantonese opera, but also a kind of token community hall for the Chinese. In 1869, for example, a special Cantonese opera program was presented to the Duke of Edinburgh to mark the colony’s grand reception of its British sovereign. [[1]] On the south side of Hollywood Road across from the “Dai Dat Dei,” on the east side of Po Yan Street 普仁街, the premise used to be the Pok Lok Theatre, a three-story building with shops on the ground floor owned by Ying Kit of Nam Pak Hong, a collective of import-export firms for Chinese delicacies gathering on Bonham Strand文咸街. China Mail (English newspaper 德臣西報, also 中國郵報 and 德臣報) reported a fire that broke out in a carpenter’s shop (no. 181 Hollywood Road) on the theater’s ground floor. As a result, the interior of the theater was destroyed. St. Stephen’s Church and the dispensary attached to Tung Wah Hospital [Dong Hua yiyuan 東華醫院] behind the theater were both in danger. The site had to be cleared, while the entire colony would have only two theaters left – Ko Shing 高陞 and Tung Hing – until reconstruction was completed.
\nIn the early 1910s, traveling exhibitors of moving pictures from the United States and France often came to the Possession Point area to screen their program in temporary, rented premises. On October 22, 1902, for example, the Chinese Mail 華字日報 reported that Hei Loi Yuen 喜來園 was showing moving pictures. On December 5, 1907, the Chinese Mail reported that the Jebsen Company had hosted a “French moving pictures” program in a premise at No. 16, Possession Street. [[2]] At that time, Chong Qing Theatre was also occasionally used for moving picture presentation, but did not last long before closing down.
\nIn contrast with the current situation in 1934, in the beginning of the 20th century, the Possession Point was once the gathering place of the Chinese rich and famous: for it was where the “big houses” clustered. The so-called “big houses,” da zhai 大寨 in Cantonese, were big prostitution houses with licensed Chinese prostitutes for the local upper-class Chinese. For those who couldn’t afford it, there were the “small houses,” si zhai 細寨, on the other side of Hollywood Road up the hill slope, with a much lower price range. Together the “big” and “small” houses attracted many restaurants and other related servicing businesses. In 1903, however, in order to capitalize on a reclaimed area from sea that had been left unused for many years, the government massively relocated the “big houses” to Shek Tong Tsui 石塘嘴 in the Western District 西環. …(more on making space for the expansion of the business district, cleaning up… and using the relocation to develop a piece of new reclaimed land…) The days of “wind and moon” [fengyue 風月, meaning exotic, romantic encounters] on Hollywood Road around Possession Point are over. In the 1930s, the task of using prostitution, related business activities and rich men’s capital to help develop unused land seems complete. Now the government has already sent out an ultimatum, ordering all Chinese brothels in bustling Shek Tong Tsui to close, thus bringing into full effect the final illegalization of prostitution activities to complete by June 30, 1935. As a matter of fact, the rich Chinese customers of the “big houses” have had a special grace period most people had not enjoyed – for owners of European and Japanese brothels in Central and Wanchai, the decreed issued on June 30, 1932, took effect immediately with a complete ban..
\nhttp://hkcitylife.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=105_267_268&product_id=1044
\nWhat more or less remain unchanged in the area around Possession Street are the tenement buildings in the surroundings where the Chinese population settled. A pacifying name, Taipingshan town, meaning “the town of the hill of peace,” is applied to this residential area, roughly referring to the area on the landward side of Queen’s Road, rising up the flanks of the Peak, covering Tai Ping Shan Street, Hollywood Road, East Street, West Street and the Lower Lascar Row. [[3]] In the earliest colonial days in the 19th century, laborers who made their living carrying loads flocked to the area to make home in shanty huts. It has been a predominantly working-class town of lodging-houses, workshops and small business of all kinds, often small sites with mixed usage. Access was impeded by steep slopes and flights of steps, and property mixed and poor in condition. [[4]]
\nNow in 1934, the “Dai Dat Dei” is a clearly demarcated place of leisure for local residents. It is the morning of April 20. The square is in a flux. A brand new pavilion and stone chairs stand in the midst of many ambiguous, half-complete constructions and unfinished stalls of unified measurement. It is a couple of minutes after 11:00am. A few motor cars arrived outside the square. Doors open and there emerge a few Europeans and some well-dressed Chinese elders. They walk into the Big Public Square and stroll around, fathoming the space. They are discussing how to distribute water faucets and trees in the square and their precise location, which parts of the square should be rented out and which parts not and so on. These planners include the Secretary for Chinese Affairs華民政務司, Alan E. Wood, and his deputy, as well as representatives of the Chinese community, the 54-year-old Dr. Robert Kotewall 羅旭龢博士, Dr. Tso Seen-wan [Cao Shanyun 曹善允博士], Chau Tsun-nin [Zhou zhunnian 周埈年], Li Yau-tsuen [Li Youquan 李佑泉] and so on.[[1]] The project of reconstruction is to correct the chaotic situation of the “Dai Dat Dei” where hawkers’ stall sizes were irregular, and many corners were left without cleaning for a long time, leading to serious sanitary problems, as was reported. A new main entrance will soon be assigned on Hollywood Road, around the street corner of Possession Street on its northwest (?). [華僑日報 WKYP April 21] Open bid for monthly lease of the stall space will begin in the morning of May 11. All applicants are required to specify the usage of the stall. Only two stalls, no. 47-48, have been marked out to allow the setting up of eateries, whereas Stalls no. 22 and 46, installed with kitchen facilities, will be used for food catering service for all other Dai Dat Dei stall occupants who are not allowed to cook. [華僑日報 WKYP May 5; 2:4]
\nThe innocence of Dai Dat Dei as a “cleaned up” space for daily leisure and small business will not last long. For four months, the place seems to have become the target of heavy surveillance. A news article reveals that Dai Dat Dei has become the hang-out place for “idlers of mixed, ambiguous background” [xian za ren deng 閒雜人等]. Cops in uniform as well as plainclothes of the Chinese nationality are sent to the area. At around 2:00pm in the middle of the watch on September 18, a certain man is stopped, found with propaganda leaflets, and confirmed to be “a member of XXX party,” as the report puts it. The unspeakable name, most local people would know, is the word “Communist.” A similar case occurs the same day on the Kowloon side in Mongkok near Shantung Street 山東街 and Argyle Street 亞皆老街. [WKYP September 19; 2:2] Political surveillance, as seen here, suggests organized search operations by the police department rather than accidental uncovering. [more on political background…]
\n[1] Kotewall, Tso, Chau and Li were all decorated Non-official Justices of Peace.
\n[1] Cheng Po-hung [Zheng Baohong] (ed.), A Century of Hong Kong Roads and Streets (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2000), p. 92
\n[2] The two reports in Chinese Mail were cited in “Chronology of Cinema Events in Hong Kong: 1896-1950,” Early Images of Hong Kong & China, proceedings of the Hong Kong International Film Festival (year?), pp. 131-2.
\n[3] Carl T. Smith, A Sense of History: Studies in the Social and Urban History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Educational Publishing Company, 1995), pp. 42-7.
\n[4] Leeming, p. 58.
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[1] Michel Foucault, “Questions on Geography,” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 70.
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