17-11-2020
While new buildings are faceless, old buildings have a soul and smile. It was said the old buildings sang and new buildings have no music in them. While ordinary businessmen were ambitionless, a cultural tycoon had a dream. When the senior had no art in them, a young hero already used arting up to rule his kingdom. Let me tell you the great stories of the 68-year-old State Theatre in North Point of Hong Kong Island and its new master Adrian Cheng(鄭志剛) who deserves Hong Kong’s applauding recognition.
In Hong Kong, property developers are richer than the rich as land is scarce in our city. Very few developers however understand the almighty dollar that glitters is not gold. What should glitter is that a city, through their developments, contains art and culture: a spiritual accomplishment and that Hong Kong can retain a wonderful richness of our past, not just collective memories of the beautiful things that are gone, but the actual historic preservation, being the great endeavour which seeks to conserve buildings of cultural significance. Adrian Cheng is the rare exception who knows a city cannot shimmer without art; and art is also the important opportunity for a business to help the public know what an enterprise is like and become smitten with it. Art promotes emotional interactions and can foster all kinds of warm relationships with the organisation. Apart from the impact on corporate identity and substance, art and culture are a good way for a business, being the member of a community, to contribute to the social, spiritual and economic well-being of Hong Kong. Adrian knows the above inside out.
Adrian is my admirable friend who is a critical expert in art. At about 40 years of age, he is the young heir to his late grandfather Cheng Yu-tung’s multi-billion business conglomerate New World Development. He himself founded K11, a first-class property brand representing the daring approach to combine art museum and shopping mall into a solid work. Adrian majored in East Asian studies at Harvard University and later spent about a year in Japan studying Japanese culture.
An eager pursuit for perfection is the most leading cause of industriousness in artists, and also in an exceptional ‘businessman artist’ like Adrian Cheng. He probably loves sunrises and hates sunsets. He enjoys working round the clock. He is the driving force—for himself and his company teammates in respect of making art a fusion of property dreams.
In 2020, New World Development, to fulfill the dream further, announced that it embarked an unrivalled architectural conservation project for an old theatre, the culturally shining State Theatre, formerly called Empire Theatre, in North Point which is the eastern part of Hong Kong Island. This 68-year-old film and concert theatre was opened in 1952 by a Russian Jew Harry Oscar Odell. International and local renowned musicians, singers, choirs and opera groups like Peter Pears, Isaac Stern, Vienna Boys’ Choir and Teresa Teng all proved their artistic importance there. The venue sorrowfully ceased activity in 1997, and now looks sad.
In the 1950s, the sea water in North Point was a vivid turquoise blue. From the stylish dwelling houses on the slope of lush greenery, one could see the blue sky with puffs of clouds that looked like cotton candy. The Chinese Civil War in the 40s forced many moneyed persons to leave Shanghai, the richest city in the Mainland, and they settled in North Point of Hong Kong. North Point was developed as ‘Little Shanghai’. Shanghainese brought with them along King’s Road a string of trendy restaurants, dance clubs, beauty salons, department stores and amusement parks. Against this background, there was a demand for a prime and classy theatre in which concerts, dramatic performances and films could be delivered.
Built in 1952, State Theatre, as the iconic entertainment hall of fame, had an ‘advanced’ electric-power escalator taking the audience to the 1300-seat auditorium. The theatre building also possessed 2 charming characteristics. The State Theatre features a captivating ‘parabolic exoskeleton truss’(拋物線型桁架) at the roof that supports the entire structure. It looks like a dinosaur spine. This reinforced concrete arch beam roof and its vertical hangars remain unique to the world’s cinema appearances. The theatre also features a distinctive curved façade with a beautiful relief mural(蟬迷董卓) by the late Chinese artist Mei Yutian(梅與天)(about the ancient legend of a beauty seducing a cruel official) as well as small square windows with projecting concrete frames which are typical of the 1950s modernist architecture.
I miss being a child in the 1960s and there are a lot of personal good memories. “One day in your life, you remember a place, you come back and you look around…”. When I went back to North Point a few weeks ago, what I missed was not the area itself but my childhood. As a boy, I ate a lot. I ate 6 times a day and 4 were snack times. I was committed to eating small bites of cheap food sold by the street hawkers outside State Theatre, no matter how much stomach capacity it required. There was a mouth-watering variety from the food found outside the theatre: fish ball, egg waffle, marinated duck gizzard, grilled squid and poached peanuts. Those North Point snacks remembered me somehow.
I am sure Adrian will not put back these hawker carts to the revamped State Theatre. Most certainly not, we would not re-invite the great artists who once performed in the Theatre as most are not alive. I am confident that because of Adrian, I will be, after a few years, able to walk into State Theatre which will show us that architectural beauty as well as cultural vibrancy will not perish in Hong Kong!
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