Visible or not? A Comparison of Historic Areas Conservations in Colonial Chinese Cities

Colonial towns and ports are important urban landscapes for their pivotal role in the colonial enterprise. The colonial origin, that may make these places contested, as well as additional difficulties for conservation, affect the visibility of the former historic landscape and ports. This paper compares the historic port areas of four former colonial cities in a Chinese cultural context: Hong Kong, Macao, Qingdao and Taipei. These four cities share a background of East - meets - West colonization, but have followed different trajectories, both historically and administratively. Fieldwork and interviews with professionals were used to shed light on obstacles for conserving the colonial remains in general and the colonial port in particular. All four cities have policies in place that guarantee heritage conservation, both of individual buildings and historic areas. Whether this is applied to the colonial port depends on the position of the port in the global network and on appreciation of non-elite heritage.