Letters | Colonial street names are part of Hong Kong’s history and nothing to be ashamed of

Readers oppose a proposal to remove street names associated with the city’s colonial past, disagree that quarantine rules for pilots are lax, and recount a bad experience with the public health care system

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Swimmers swim across Victoria Harbour during an annual race in Hong Kong on December 12. Place and street names that reflect the city’s heritage should be embraced, not abandoned. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:30am, 28 Dec 2021

During my travels, I have traversed Queen Elizabeth Walk en route to a recital at the Victoria Concert Hall in Singapore, enjoyed the view from the southern coast of Viti Levu driving along Queen’s Road towards Fiji’s capital Suva, and played golf at Royal Malta Golf Club near Albert Town in Malta (named after Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert).

These are all examples of independent republics that long ago ceased to be British colonies, but which have not bothered to embrace your correspondent’s petty and pointless suggestion that the Legislative Council should busy itself with the obscurantist activity of changing street names in Hong Kong (“Task for Legco patriots: tackle our street names”, December 25).

As former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew once observed, colonial street names are part of a place’s heritage and legacy, and not something to be ashamed of – even for a proud ethnic Chinese like Mr Lee.

They also tell the story of a city’s development, and how an area’s commercial and cultural composition has changed. Thus we are reminded that Mong Kok’s Sai Yeung Choi Street was once surrounded by vegetable gardens, and that Quarry Bay’s Tong Chong Street was home to the world’s largest sugar refinery, whilst Ferry Street in Yau Ma Tei and Ship Street in Wan Chai hint at the effects of land reclamation. The farmers, sugar mills, ferries and shipwrights have long disappeared from those locations, but that does not render those street names inappropriate.

Remembering that the primary purpose of street names is to enable the efficient location of an individual property by emergency services, delivery drivers, taxis, and the public, the mass renaming of streets and places would merely inflict inconvenience, disorientate vast numbers of people, and divert valuable government resources from much more important and beneficial projects. Hong Kong should stick to the pragmatism it is renowned for and avoid your correspondent’s petty virtue-signalling.

Nicholas Tam, Sai Ying Pun

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Letters | Colonial street names are part of Hong Kong’s history and nothing to be ashamed of