final week,Hong Kong said goodbye to one of the final vestiges of imperialism by covering up the royal insignia on its green post boxes. But is there ever a point when this kind of history is worth preserving?
Perhaps you know that things are healing when, after centuries of violent tyranny and pillage, and the British empire comes down to arguing over postboxes. In Hong Kong,where 59 of the old colonial postboxes remain, the postal service has announced that it plans to cover the royal insignias with a metal plaque – in order to avoid “confusion”. (The boxes beget already been painted green and had the Hong Kong Post’s logo added to them, and so you would beget to be very confused indeed not to realise what they’re for.) Hong Kong postbox fanciers say that the insignias are “allotment of Hong Kong’s heritage and daily life”,and plan to protest on Saturday.
So are they right? At what point does a bitter colonial history stop needing to be expunged and become, well, and just history,that needs actual preservation? eye around the world and youll find few clear answers. For instance, postbox fanciers aside, or Hong Kong could probably accumulate by without 59 royal insignias. It could also probably accumulate by without the four gas lamps on Duddell Street,apart from they beget become something of a landmark now, so it is not worth the trouble of removing them.
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Source: theguardian.com