The heritage of public hygiene : establishing Hong Kong’s public toilet-cum-bathhouse as an inclusive and community-based cultural heritage

Abstract

This research is about Public Toilets-cum-Bathhouse in Hong Kong, and the author wishes to focus on establishing Hong Kong’s Public Toilet-cum-Bathhouse as a community-based cultural heritage and cultural tradition. The history of Public Toilet and Bathhouse in Hong Kong can be traced back in the late nineteenth century. It is one of the government policies to improve sanitary condition and to prevent the spread of epidemic diseases, such as small pox, cholera and bubonic plague. Following the improvement of living and public health standards in Hong Kong, the public conveniences are now mainly provided in different venues or location. The government is no longer the main provider of public conveniences nowadays. In the 2019-20 Budget, the Financial Secretary announced that the government would allocate about $600 million to refurbish its Public Toilets by phases in the coming five financial years (i.e. 2019-20 to 2023-24). Why spend this amount of money on something that is increasing not relevant to modern Hong Kong society? Further, is Public Toilet, especially those with Public Bathhouse, still needed, and should the historical ones be considered as Hong Kong’s urban heritage? This dissertation shall answer the above research questions by reviewing Hong Kong’s current grading system for historic buildings that has been adopted by the Antiquities Advisory Board since 1980. The grading system focuses on the identification and assessment the best or key exemplars for a range of heritage building types, based primarily on historic and aesthetic values. The issue of this assessment approach is that, for community-based historical building types of a utilitarian nature, such as the public toilet and the public bathhouse, they would be deemed to be of insufficient historic and aesthetic significance for conservation. This dissertation proposes an additional focus on the application of social value on historical building types whose heritage significance and relevance lie in its historical service to the community by taking reference from the criteria of the social value in The Burra Charter.