Keep historic mail boxes in service, experts urge

The city's colonial pillar mail boxes are facing retirement after decades of service, but experts said the best way of conserving them is to keep them in service.
According to Hongkong Post, a total of 86 pillar boxes - cylindrical mail boxes built like a pillar which first appeared in the era of Queen Victoria - have been removed from streets over the past decade.

They were replaced either due to wear and tear or because they were too small to meet the growing demand, a spokeswoman for Hongkong Post said.

Three pillar boxes are on display at the Postal Gallery in Central and the Museum of History in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Most of the other retired pillar boxes are kept in a storeroom in Kowloon.

"As more are to be removed, we are now talking to local museums to seek ways to preserve them," the spokeswoman said.

However, Lee Ho-yin, director of the University of Hong Kong's architectural conservation programme, said these iconic items deserved to be repaired and kept in use in proper places. "The significance of these pillar boxes has gone beyond its practical function, as they have become a part of Hong Kong's history," he said.

Of the 58 pillar boxes still in use across the city, the oldest belonged to the era of the King George V - from 1910 to 1936 - the Hongkong Post said.

Each pillar box was made in cast iron and directly imported from Britain. It also carried an embossed crown and had an engraved cipher on it to mark the era it was produced.

Cheng Po-hung, an adviser to the Museum of History, said these old pillar boxes had left him and many other Hongkongers with a lot of memories about the past.

"Unlike today's young people depending on e-mails, we used to contact our friends and family members by written letters," said Mr Cheng, himself a stamp collector. "It was always a kind of sweet expectation when I dropped a letter into the pillar box. I bet many Hongkongers of my age have similar feeling as mine.

"It would be sad if all of them disappear from our life one day."

He suggested the government put some of these old pillar boxes in housing estates, serving as a decoration as well as a letter container.

His view was echoed by Professor Lee, who also stressed the best way to preserve the boxes was to keep them in use, like many other items of historic value.

"They will remain alive while in use, much better than being visited as an historic exhibit in a museum."

A city needed to preserve some ancient buildings and facilities so people could understand its development history, he added.

"It would be hard for people to adapt if a city changes too fast. After our city lost so many things in a short period, I hope this would not happen to the pillar boxes again."

It was a shame when those whores of a thousand years at the PO (or whatever PC minded patriot in charge of colonial icon white-washing) decided that all the red mail boxes should be painted that awful green colour .