West Kowloon: Hong Kong’s Soft Power Push

Hong Kong has always been a place where new buildings and skyscrapers are constantly added to the skyline. However, it is now in the middle of a major construction boom, even for Hong Kong standards. Currently, at least two megaprojects are taking shape in Kowloon, a part of the territory right across the harbor from Hong Kong Island. First, there is the redevelopment of the former Kai Tak Airport, the city’s main international gateway which was closed in 1998 when a new airport was opened further away from the downtown area. Kai Tak’s prime location is the main reason for the ongoing construction, which has so far added vertical housing estates, office towers, a cruise terminal, and an MTR (metro) line, among others, to the city’s ever-expanding infrastructure. Next year, a brand-new sports stadium is slated for completion at what used to be the northwestern end of the old airport.

Meanwhile, on the southwestern corner of Kowloon, another large-scale construction project has been under way for more than a decade. Dubbed the West Kowloon Cultural District, it was first proposed in 1998 as an answer to the perceived lack of cultural attractions in the city. In 2001, an international design competition for the new district garnered a lot of attention with world-renowned architecture firm Foster and Partners declared the winner. I remember reading about it in a second-hand English magazine back when I was still living in a small city in West Java, at a time when the internet was still a novelty for most Indonesians.

However, due to public criticism, the design was scrapped four years later. Subsequently, the Hong Kong government held public hearings and formed a consultative committee which allowed a more transparent process in gathering feedback before the project could move on to the next phase. Eventually, in 2011 a revised masterplan, also by Foster and Partners, was selected from three submissions. And a few years later, construction began on what is arguably one of the city’s most ambitious urban redevelopment projects to date.

It is probably unsurprising why Kowloon was chosen as the location of the new cultural district. It was already home to two prominent institutions when the city was still a British colony: the Hong Kong Cultural Centre that was inaugurated in 1989 (also where I watched The Nutcracker last Christmas), and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, which relocated from Central to its current location in 1991. But this latest endeavor that would dramatically change Kowloon’s skyline probably begs the questions: why build more? And why on such a grand scale?

A visitor sitting next to a fragment of what used to be a tower built for the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, with the views of Hong Kong’s skyline to his left

A sofa designed by Ohashi Teruaki in the 1980s incorporating different patterns of Indonesian batik

For a long time, Hong Kong has been known as a global financial center alongside cities like New York and London. Even after its handover from Britain to China in 1997, a high degree of autonomy was still enjoyed by the territory, including the rights to keep its own currency and to exercise its own judiciary system, separate from that of the Communist Mainland’s. However, the unprecedented protests against the government in 2019 which saw hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers taking to the streets for months, and the authorities’ heavy-handed response to them which culminated in the implementation of the Beijing-made National Security Law in 2020 forced multinational companies to rethink their future in the city. Some have since relocated their regional offices to other business hubs in Asia, like Singapore. And as if things were not bad enough, Hong Kong imposed a harsh zero-Covid policy during the pandemic that further drove people away.

In hindsight, the city’s decision to develop the West Kowloon Cultural District seems to be a good call, for Hong Kong probably needs to start to anticipate a future where it will no longer be an attractive business hub. Making it a cultural hub will probably help to ensure its relevance, its own raison d’être, so that when its supposed autonomy expires in 2047, it won’t become just another Chinese city with no real competitive advantage. But Hong Kong is not the only city in the region with ambitions to be a prime destination for those who seek world-class cultural offerings. Kaohsiung in Taiwan, among other cities, also shares the same aspiration. So, what makes the West Kowloon Cultural District stand out?

Its location right at the heart of the city is arguably one of its biggest draws, for it provides visitors with a front-seat view of Hong Kong’s iconic skyline. However, obviously it is what’s inside the 40-hectare district that will truly determine whether this expensive undertaking will become a success or not. While many of the cultural venues have been completed, a few others were still under construction. We took the MTR to Kowloon station and navigated our way through the maze that is Elements, a mall sitting right underneath the International Commerce Centre, Hong Kong’s tallest building. Once we managed to find the exit, a mammoth structure that looked like an inverted T came into view. This was M+, a Herzog & de Meuron-designed contemporary art museum touted as one of the largest in the world. Although it is not the first cultural venue completed within the new district – that title goes to the Xiqu Centre at the eastern end which was specifically built to host Chinese operas and other traditional performances – it certainly steals the spotlight.

When you stand right before it, M+ might appear to be a large, imposing behemoth. However, upon closer inspection, the façade looks as though it was covered in bamboo, an homage to the humble grass that is often used for scaffolding in Hong Kong up to this day. We headed to the museum’s main entrance and walked underneath large lamps that were inspired by their much smaller counterparts still seen in many stalls around the city. Because of its emphasis on visual culture, encompassing design, architecture, moving image, and visual art, I have to admit that I had high expectations for this institution.

Inside, the main galleries on the upper floor offered different experiences. Artworks were displayed both in the usual manner (as they would in other museums) as well as in some unorthodox, innovative ways. Among those that stole my attention was a section where lifelike figures of old and frail world leaders moved around aimlessly and senselessly on their wheelchairs, colliding against each other like a parody of the world order. In another gallery, three headless figures that seemed to be holding hands were dancing endlessly in the middle of a bare concrete chamber, thanks to the fans that were placed at the foot of each of them. I found this strangely soothing. In the end, we spent two hours enjoying the various art installations and exhibits, and to my delight, the three-year-old museum really lived up to its lofty goal to be one of the greatest contemporary art museums in the world.

The view that never gets old

We knew we wouldn’t be able to see everything we wanted to see in the West Kowloon Cultural District in just one go. That’s why we budgeted a few days to visit this exciting new addition to the city. The day after exploring M+, we checked out another museum just a short walk to the west. Designed by local architecture firm Rocco, the Hong Kong Palace Museum was purposefully built to showcase some artifacts from the namesake Palace Museum at the Forbidden City in Beijing. The institution in the Chinese capital manages more than 1.8 million items, but only 1% can be displayed at any given time. 800 out of the entire collection in its repository – mainly from the Ming and Qing dynasties – were then transported to their new home in Hong Kong.

However, this was all kept under wraps, and when the project was announced by the city government, it caught everyone by surprise. In a seemingly regressive fashion, no public consultations were conducted. In 2022, just in time for the 25 years commemoration of the handover of Hong Kong to China, the new museum was opened. While I found the items displayed there impressive, it was hard not to link this controversial project to China’s bigger agenda to make the city’s residents more “patriotic” and less Western-leaning. It is a tough and sensitive topic that has dominated the daily discourse among the people, and will likely continue to do so for many more years to come. This, however, was not the highlight of my visit to the Hong Kong Palace Museum.

Sanxingdui is an enigmatic Bronze Age site in what is now Sichuan in China. Dating to the twelfth and eleventh centuries BCE (that’s more than three thousand years ago), the artifacts discovered in the area exhibits features unlike anything found in other archaeological sites in the country. Giant bronze masks with protruding eyes, highly imaginative sculptures of mythical animals, and complex patterns depicting the garments the civilization who created them might have worn are among the millennia-old relics once buried and forgotten that have been unearthed with excavations done as recently as 2022.

To our surprise, during our visit to Hong Kong last Christmas, the Hong Kong Palace Museum was having a temporary exhibition on Sanxingdui. And what a showcase it was! Every single item piqued my curiosity for the ancient Shu civilization that was responsible for creating such intriguing and unique works of art. An animation depicted how the houses, and probably the palace, of these people might have looked like. And behind a rather small kneeling figure draped in patterned clothing was an interpretative projection about the different motifs carved onto it, probably not too dissimilar with what the ancient Shu people wore thousands of years ago. Toward the end was a multimedia presentation of what may be among the most precious treasures of Sanxingdui: the bronze sacred tree. It took experts eight years to assemble the almost 4-meter-tall artifact. But its fragility means it cannot leave its current home at the Sanxingdui Museum near Chengdu in Sichuan. The video not only provided glimpses of the tree’s exquisite details, but it was also a teaser for people who are interested in learning more about this culture to visit the artifact’s permanent home in China. It was certainly enough for me to consider a visit to Sichuan one day in the future.

We left the museum feeling satisfied with what we saw. If this was any indication, myself and many other visitors would certainly be looking forward to more visits to the institution. It’s a step in the right direction for Hong Kong to put itself on the global map as a cultural hub. When cities and countries flex their muscles through cultural offerings instead of brute force, the general public will usually reap the benefits. And so far, the West Kowloon Cultural District seems to be serving its purpose well as a vessel for Hong Kong to project its own soft power ambitions.