Business as usual : cultural mapping of a shopping street of a historical market town : the case of San Hong Street in Shek Wu Hui

Abstract

Shek Wu Hui (石湖墟) is the traditional market town area of Sheung Shui. Its history can be dated back to over 300 years ago.1 After its re-establishment after the complete fire destruction in the 1950s, its new market town layout arrangement has more or less been retained since then. For a long time, Shek Wu Hui was where small businesses clustered. Due to its location far away from the city centre of Hong Kong, these businesses mainly served the local residents in the neighbourhood. The small retail businesses underwent fairly gradual changes. But that was the case until mid-2000s. In 2003, Individual Visit Scheme was implemented, allowing citizens from selected cities in Mainland China to visit Hong Kong. Since Sheung Shui is the first town to come across in Hong Kong after crossing the Lo Wu border control point, it has become an increasingly popular place for mainlanders to purchase commodities, and later the parallel trading activities start to soar. With the influx of visitors and the increase in parallel trading activities, itis observed that the retail businessesin Shek Wu Hui have undergone rapid changes. This leads to the key research questions for this dissertation: what is the historicalidentity of Shek Wu Hui as a market town, and has it been able to retain this historical identity despite the changes in the retail businesses? In conservation, the heritage significance of a place includes its social value, which is measured by the collective attachment to the place by people, especially the stakeholders. As someone who grew up in the Shek Wu Hui neighbourhood, the author has much attachment to the place. This is the personal reason behind the motivation to carry out this research.

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