City 2 City: TP 2 HK
26-7-14
By: Joyce Wong
Last month I paid a visit to Taipei after having not been there for a decade. In terms of cityscape, not much has changed since ten years ago, but I was happily surprised and impressed by the city’s number of established heritage-turned-cultural hubs. With Hong Kong’s newly opened PMQ being the talk of the town this summer, especially since the arrival of Paulo Grangeon’s 1600 papier-mâché pandas, I thought it would be interesting to do a comparison of the two city’s arts and culture scene. My stay in Taipei was short, so this article does not attempt an in depth evaluation, rather it is a personal observation I have gathered from my travels.
Heritage Culture Hubs
I had the chance to visit two reinvigorated heritage sites during my time in Taipei, the first was Huashan 1914 Creative Park. The site used to be an alcohol factory built in 1914 during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. Production stopped in 1987 and after ten years of disuse, Golden Bough Theatre took over the venue for performance in 1997. The company was accused of appropriating national property, but with the support of the arts sphere, they successfully fought for the factory to become an art space. After various stages of development, the site officially became the Huashan 1914 Creative Park today.
The second heritage park I visited was Songshan Cultural and Creative Park. The space used to be one of Asia’s largest tobacco factories during the early 20th century. Its production contributed greatly to national wealth and after production stopped in 1998, it was declared national heritage three years later. In 2010, it was redeveloped into today’s culture park. Similar to Huashan 1914, Songshan is home to performance venues, exhibition spaces, Taiwan’s bookstore chain giant Eslite and also the Taiwan Design Centre, operational since 2004 in supporting the development of local designs, much like Hong Kong’s Design Gallery.
Both cultural parks are similar to Hong Kong’s PMQ in many ways, though with labels like Vivienne Tam, Bread N Butter, and JOYCE Boutique as tenants, PMQ does seem more commercial. With more space dedicated to shops rather than performance and exhibition venues, PMQ appears a slightly more consumerist venture than an art space.
Free Public Art
The parks both cover quite a lot of ground, housing bookstores, design studios, theatre stages, open-air performance spaces, and even a film museum. Walking around, the area seemed like an engaging and approachable leisure space for both audience and artists. People of all ages could be seen strolling around the park and street artists performed freely on the grounds.
There were also sculptures and graffiti on display.
Venues
It was also encouraging to see posters advertising student discount prices for renting performance spaces in the parks. Hiring a space which fits 200 to 300 people for a week costs only on average HKD$50-750 per week for students groups and HKD$140,000 per week for regular groups! Not to mention, many outdoor public spaces are free for street artists to perform.
All in all, in comparison to Taipei, it’s very encouraging to see the start of a similar parallel in heritage preservation and reinvention happening in Hong Kong as ushered, on a large scale for the first time, by the debut of PMQ. What organizations and artists will make of this new opportunity, and how the public will reciprocate their effort is definitely worth looking forward to. Whether PMQ can truly become “creativity’s new address”, only time will tell. I hope that eventually Hong Kong’s public appreciation and infrastructure for the arts can reach that which I saw in the cultural parks of Taipei.
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