Time Travel • Hong Kong

Going up the Peak is an enjoyable artistic experience that drew the attention of Yip Yan-chuen. Yip’s landscape paintings transformed graphic elements of traditional Chinese ink paintings to present urban landscape with a modern point of view. The artist’s choice of modern colonial constructions as motifs in the three paintings above presents how natural landscape is altered by human activities, with a purpose of constructing a cultural landscape connected to Hong Kong history.

From the lonesome lady in the pavilion and distant buildings on the top of Keung Fa Kan, to the tranquil view of Cheung Chau and jolly travellers stepping across the stream, Yip presents the diversified interactions among natural landscape, architecture and human activities on the Peak and areas nearby.

Sung Wong Toi, literally the Terrace of the Song Emperor, has been sanctified because the last two Song dynasty emperors stayed here when fleeing from Mongol capitals. Symbolizing Hong Kong’s orthodox relationship with dynasties of ancient China, it had been admired and commemorated by writers and artists from the 19th to 20th century. 

Paintings of Sung Wong Toi often feature a large irregular boulder with a stone railing, which was built with the donation from a Chinese tycoon after scholars had successfully persuaded the government not to develop over this historical site

Yet, the area was still destroyed during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. In the 1950s, it was further levelled to make way for the expansion of the Kai Tak Airport. A block was cut out from the boulder and was relocated to a new Sung Wong Toi Park. Since then, we can only find its original form in old paintings and photos. If you visit Sung Wong Toi today, you can only see a rectangular block.

The two works above were painted long after Wu’s work. Despite being created before and after the giant rock was destroyed respectively, both depict the old Sung Wong Toi with only the boulder standing against a background of the sea and without the “paifang” and the village of the two emperors. Both artists were highly skilled in traditional ink painting and dedicated to developing a new language of ink and brush.

Quoted publicly by government officials, the classic 70s Canton pop song “Below the Lion Rock” has a profound symbolic significance to the collective mentality of Hong Kong people. Apart from once being the home to the poorest and witnessing the socio-economic advancement of the city, the mountain has also become a popular hiking destination since the 30s; while in the 60s, it became popular with Hong Kong artists.

As a keen hiker, Yip’s views of the mountain correspond to hiking trails, as if the artist was turning his excursions and day-to-day observations into a concerto of geometric colour blocks. In Squatters, the Lion Rock stands tall in the background, while wooden huts, yards, and factories huddle under the valley, staging people walking their dogs, raising children, and chatting with their neighbours in a monotonous small world. In Staff Quarters on Lung Cheung Road, Yip abandoned linear perspective and put together the silhouette of Lion Rock, buildings, and people into a pleasant landscape. The Idiot Pagoda stands next to the peak of Lion Rock against the fading red of the dusk. The striking dynamism of the image evokes the naive vitality of the pagoda builders from the 50s who called themselves “idiots.”