ADDED: Published 28 June
I agree 100% with Jason Wordie's "Land of Plenty", (Post Magazine, Then & Now, June 25). Fanling's "rolling open parkland, mature forest and golf course" with "a variety of recreational uses… [are] too valuable to be lost". Well said, Jason!
Fanling as golf course and public park. Or all as public park. Just not public housing.
I fully understand how desperately we need more public housing. Yet even if Fanling were turned over to new housing, it would solve only a vanishingly small percent of our needs. Do we really believe that the government can't find other places to build? All the brownfield sites around the New Territories, for example. I've seen these with mine own eyes as I've drive around. We're sometimes told that that option is "too difficult". Really? So because of some red tape, we will desecrate our most historic and most ecologically valuable asset?
Many of the proponents for public housing on Fanling appear driven by resentment. Resentment that 172 hectares of Hong Kong land is used by a "golfing elite", which we must, on that basis alone, destroy. Very well, then convert the whole area to public park. Jason sees Fanling as the Central Park of Hong Kong, the Hyde Park of Hong Kong, our very own Fanling Public Park.
In today's Post Magazine a little further along (p17) there is this quote: "The destruction of the [Beijing] City Walls was made a question of class struggle and they were pulled down". I lived five years in Beijing; I know the residents, to this day, deeply regret that decision. Let us not make the same mistake on the basis of our own "class struggle". Fanling’s beauties are our very own City Walls! Let's not destroy them, and rue the day we did.
In fifty years time what do we think our descendants will most value? A lovely swathe of park, with "old forest and edges, special plants…. extensive stands of mature trees … of unequivocal national significance", in the heart of Hong Kong? Or blocks of crumbling public housing?
Please, John Lee, please Hong Kong government, don't go ahead with the vandalisation of Fanling.
Pf etc....
