I'm not sure if this topic has been posted before, but I have noticed it mentioned in the Lammazine and I would like to get a consensus (seeing as it's dubbed 'Democracy Wall') on what this wall should be.

Personally, I think that the current appearance is a far cry better than the old state, with the left over bits and pieces of paper and tape etc. I was greatly annoyed this morning to see someone had tarnished the new wall with some posters stuck on with packing tape - so much so that I removed them (exercising my rights on the democracy wall). I was not alone in being annoyed. Though the old notice board scenario may have, in some opinions, lent character to the wall, I'm not sure about the impression of 'community' left on visitors (or residents) as opposed to an impression of unkempt and dirty.

True, more can be done to to improve the current appearance (more on that below), but with so many locales around the island being used as impromptu notice boards with signs just being left up long past their sell-by dates, coupled with all the construction work going on, my feeling is that the place is starting to look a bit like a ghetto. The clean, stark new 'Democracy Wall' can give a better first impression than another ragged, unkempt 'notice board'. I also don't think graffiti welcome signs are the way forward either.

It is my belief that, in line with many of our resident's attitudes towards beautification and 'greening', the wall can be landscaped - though I'm not sure what the government's stance on this would be. We have a Lamma resident who is an expert in vertical green walls who might be able to assist in putting together a feasibility proposal to submit to the relevant departments as well as advise on the implementation. A more simple solution would be to plant creepers at either the top or the bottom and let nature do the rest, with minimal maintenance.

As things stand, though, I think the current appearance preferable to the old one - there is no shortage of notice boards and I don't believe having the wall back as one will change the fact that notices will be stuck up where the sticker chooses.

Thoughts?

Quite disagree.

I much prefer that it be used as a medium of communication as it was.
Now it's a plain, grey slab.

I frankly don't care what impression this gives to visitors.

The view of the village from the pier is pretty damn ugly regardless; the grotty shoreline, illegal and broken down extensions into the harbour, etc.


Really? Where?
Aside from government ones which civilians aren't allowed to use.

As mentioned in the Lamma-zine story about the repainting of this wall, the local powers-that-be are actively looking at ideas how to beautify the wall, actually repeatedly encouraging ideas from ANYBODY in the community about the future of the wall.

Living Lamma is channeling ideas to Chairman Chan (Rural Committee chairman, District Councilor) and what I've seen so far include ideas from a green wall to "professional" graffiti and/or artworks, plus a limited part of the wall as an official noticeboard, cleaned off weekly to keep it relevant.

The brand-new coat of paint doesn't seem to be up to this as it's already damaged again after removing some posters over the weekend, peeling off some of the brand-new paint where posters have been peeled or scraped off. A better, more permanent surface that can resist putting up and removing posters repeatedly will be needed (if posters will still be allowed in the future at all, which is a big IF).

We'll have another meeting with Chairman Chan next week about the wall and other locally hot topics. Of course, which idea, if any at all, will ever be implemented, needs to be seen, but the ball is now back in our court.

More ideas, please, as concrete and detailed as possible, ideally even with some ideas about costs (there are actual govt. budgets for things like this).

_________________
Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

The informal noticeboard served a useful function for the community. Which was removed because someone thought it looked "untidy", without any attempt to gauge what the community wanted. Or maybe some realtors disliked people directly advertising rentals? Who knows, there was no warning, just one day they started stripping all the notices down.

Well, call me cynical, but now all they're asking is what colour to paint it.
Who cares. Black, white, polka dot.

Too bad they never ask for input on anything that actually makes a difference.

More precisely; they do "ask" for input quite often, before filing it away and proceeding with their original plan. The pretences at consultation that they have no intention of paying attention to, just to try to give their decisions legitimacy, are simply insulting.

I'll cheerfully withdraw this rant if they do allow people to freely post notices again.

I totally agree with Alan, (yes I do have these ocassional moments

What do we have now? An incredibly boring blank grey wall.

At least in the past,.... people would pass the 'untidy/unkempt' wall and take a look at the posters, and whilst contemplating the opportunity to buy something and/or join an active group to help to beautify Lamma,, take a keep fit class,.... etc... etc... (even tourists being fascinated and taking photo's in front of the wall) and they would walk on and be completely oblivious to the next few meters along the path... which involve constant construction outside the bakery and then the rubbish bins, whilst dodging VV's on a narrow path.

It was a helpful 'Info Wall' as well as a distraction to the ugliness that follows along the path.

I miss 'scanning the wall' each morning on the way to work. it was a 'community wall as far as I'm concerned and I found it very helpful, as did others.

At least there was some bloody character.

I suppose we could call in the Powers that be on the Island, .. and give a big construction contract to a company here, and pay huge amounts of tax payers money to 'install' leaves. That would most probably mean more VV's on the path.

As for 'unkempt and untidy'... yes it was,.. but in a controlled manner that did benefit the community. And also showed that this is a diverse community with a whole range of things to do here, and help in. This is why I wanted to make this place my home.

Take a walk around Lamma and take a look at illegal dumping, illegal structures, the constant millpond outside the Yan Yan store...... and If you want to taIk 'man made ugly rubbish,.. I could go on and on.

Whether you call it 'Democracy Wall' (although that seems rather redundant now though) or Lamma Community Wall...... it was what makes this place different.

And I would like it back please.

Let's Have a 'vote' on who on the Island would like 'Democracy Wall' back.....

let's take a census' from the Lamma Island community. Simple.

I can make some 'flyers' to a hand out, and out the ferry peir.. or a petition for the reinstallation of our 'Wall'

I'm happy to help with the 'flyers' and Posters....(I will of course need someone to help with Chinese Translation)

I'm going to go 'tabling' at the ferry pier one day to find out just what is the lamma residents would really like to see on this wall.

I cannot agree more with Tigger and Alan!

First of all, to what extent can Chairman Mao, oops, no, Chairman Chan represents the public opinion on the wall?? As far as I know, Mr. Chan's District Councilorship is a non-elected position (he got it simply because he's on the Rural Committee). As to how democratic the Rural committee is, well, they're in bed with the DAB (the pro-Beijing Party) in general and together they form a strongly undemocratic force in Hong Kong.

So here's an unelected person telling us that the Wall was not aesthetically pleasing. As Tigger pointed out, there are million dumps and piles on the island that are way worse. And, around the time the Wall was stripped and repainted, the rural committee erected at a very prominent place a huge billboard with questionable aesthetics celebrating the anniversary of the founding an authoritarian regime.

So the aesthetic police on the island don't like the Democracy Wall. Why? Because the Wall allows everyone to post things there, because it's about freedom of expression, because the wall is for those who cannot afford a giant billboard equip with fairy lights around it.

They need to tear it down because they can't control it. Just like they did with the Democracy Wall in China. Because, if you'd allow the Democracy Wall, then democracy will come. Oh my, they certainly won't want it.

To end my comment here, I suggest we all put up a sign on the wall one day which says,

This is the Democracy Wall
It belongs to the PEOPLE
Do YOU get it?



P.S. And I'd be more than happy to help out with the Chinese translation of flyers and posters.

I prefer the old way.
Spontaneous order is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos; the emergence of various kinds of social order from a combination of self-interested individuals who are not intentionally trying to create order through planning. The evolution of life on Earth, language, and a free market economy have all been proposed as examples of systems which evolved through spontaneous order.

I agree with all these feelings about the wall and have said so in many Lamma-zine stories what a great community resource it was and how much I liked it the way it was.

Complaining about the new sterile grey wall will not bring it back to its former great community function. But negotiating with the ones who have this power *might* potentially bring it back if we can find a compromise of making it look more attractive. The powers-that-be always hated the "shabby, dirty" look of it, not hating the posters themselves or their contents, but the "mess" they generated when falling off or falling apart in the rains and the damage to the wall when scraping off the posters. That's what they say and no complaints from our side will change their minds, I think.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a democratic system yet and the best we can hope for is finding a compromise with the people who can basically just ignore our pleas if they want to. But as they're actually repeatedly asking for ideas - they wouldn't need to do that at all as they're not elected but fully in charge - I think it's worth the time to negotiate with them to find a compromise acceptable to both sides, allowing posters back without letting it get too "messy". Ironically, the posters on the wall and fence just opposite, where the posters have moved to nowadays, including mine, looks much more "messy" than the Democracy Wall ever did.

Or we can just continue complaining and the posters will continue to be taken down as soon as they're going up. But maybe they'll tire of doing that daily and we could wear them down by flooding the wall with posters? Probably not.

In the meantime, posters are always welcome in our forum - our "virtual Democracy Wall" - and they'll stay up there for as long as you like. Some of them even make it onto the home page as part of stories, generating more feedback and results than on physical walls.

_________________
Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

Hey, how about a new "crazy idea" and use that giant billboard for posters temporarily??

National Day is over and it's still up, so we could "recycle" it as a nice temporary billboard. All that bright red would make a nice background for any posters and the "fairy lights around it" would illuminate it at night and attract more attention to the posters!

But the powers-that-be might take such "guerilla postering" very badly, maybe even try to punish "unpatriotic" posters in some form (for example applying the existing $1,500 littering fine for "unauthorised" posters which has fortunately never been applied on Lamma yet, as far as I know).,

But replacing that billboard with a generic white background, as it's expired now, making it into an official "Poster Wall" and making the "Pai Lau" semi-permanent by extending the current official permission... Much easier to stick up and remove posters on that plasticised, weatherproof surface. Cleaning it once a week would keep the posters fresh/current and the entire billboard looking "not messy". I wonder if there's ANY possibility of making that happen...

Let's explore that, just for the heck of it. We might learn something about what it actually takes to get an official Poster Wall (or several) established in YSW.

_________________
Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

I agree that the community needs a notice board. I sold and bought a lot of second-hand stuff posted on the wall, and attended events after seeing flyers on the wall.

The current grey wall doesn't serve any purpose at all. It's a metaphor for the lack of genuine community engagement on important issues that affect all those who live on the island.

If the District Councillor and Rural Committee really listened to what Living Lamma proposed, they would have set aside an area where people could post their flyers and messages, and turned the rest of the wall into a vertical garden, or at least planted some creeping plants.

I want to make it clear that Living Lamma is NOT behind the decision of painting the wall grey. We were asked to provide ideas for the wall, which we did.. We support the idea of a community wall where anybody can paste notices. The current look of the wall is a far cry from what we proposed.

Fair enough. If that's the consensus and that consensus goes beyond the posters on this webiste to include the Community that is held so dearly, so be it.

I have a few questions: if any member of the community is entitled to put posters up on the wall, are similar rights extened to any other member of the community to remove said posters? Are the posters posted on the wall to be moderated? What is allowed and not allowed to be posted on the wall? If I were to post something considered by some to be distasteful, are those members of the community allowed to remove the posters? What is considered distasteful and by whom?

if you are offended by some distasteful notices, nothing stops you from removing them. But how do you define distasteful?

Personally i have never been offended by notices on the wall. i have seen pictures of some pretty ugly sofas for sale, and ads pasted by some dodgy school looking for English teachers...but hey, i am neither an arbiter of taste, nor an English teacher.
Democracy can be ugly...but authoritarian governments are even uglier. Theocracy anyone?

I entirely agree with all of the anti-grey-wall commentators. They make many good points, and I hope I am not just repeating them here.

First of all, who says the "old" wall was shabby? I'd like to know the decision-making process that led to the wall suddenly being stripped and repainted and to new posters being removed after the wall was painted. No notice was given of this at all, and even now, there is no notice stating that nothing is to be posted there, under whose authority or according to which law. I don't even know the legal status of the wall-- public, private, under whose jurisdiction?

What I do know is that the "old" wall clearly served a purpose for the community-- just recall the number of posters. I personally did not mind that it was not always tidy. Lamma is not always tidy. Lamma is not Disneyland. If you want Disneyland, go to Disneyland. So who made the decision to suddenly, with no notice, take what was clearly serving a purpose for the community and destroy it?

If the issue was untidiness or Lamma’s “image”, as has been speculated (and remember, this is just speculation for the people behind the destruction of Democracy Wall have not said who they are or presented their case), then there were surely ways to address those issues aside from simply destroying the wall without notice.

True, there are posters hanging all over Lamma, but the wall served the particular function of being the place everyone coming to or leaving the island passed, so everyone could see whatever was posted there. I've never heard any visitor complain about the wall. On the contrary, I heard some say it was charming, part of the general charm of the relaxed atmosphere of the island-- refreshing after the over-regulation of every inch of public space in much of the rest of the city. And on the issue of untidiness, it’s not as if repainting the wall and not allowing people to post there has solved the problem—witness all the postings on virtually any scrap of empty space nearby—and those, to me, look worse than the old wall did.

On National Day, I hung posters of Liu Xiaobo-- currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for "inciting subversion of state order"-- and Charter 08 (the manifesto for a democratic, right-respecting China that he co-drafted-- on Democracy Wall to make a point. Right next to the pier is that hideous jingoistic billboard exhorting people to "celebrate National Day" and all along the pier are those flags with the same message. And who’s responsible for hanging those up, under whose authority—was that a democratic decision of Lammaites? Anyway, inspired by the exhortation, I celebrated by hanging the posters. Charter 08 and Liu Xiaobo represent a much more positive vision for China than the current dictatorship. And yet these posters were taken down and the billboard and the flags remain, even after National Day has passed and even though, to my knowledge, the posting of posters on that wall contravenes no law. There's much symbolism in the irony.

So who's taking the posters down and why aren't they even notifying us as to the reasons why?

I suggest a campaign: On one day, everyone who wants the Democracy Wall back goes and posts a poster on the wall. If those are removed, then we do it again. We will stop if the people behind the decision to ban posting on the wall come forward and explain themselves. Then we can actually discuss with them how to resolve the difference.

FEHD, it's defined as "littering", and they have the letter of the law on their side:



Presumably it's under some form of government control. They are certainly cleaning, painting and maintaining it. But we've never had a statement to clarify this.

Moved from duplicate thread:

Whats democratic about a wall dominated by Lamma animal activists. If you doubt this check out the top photo in the story about the 'Democracy Wall' that started this thread and count the number of duplicate copies of the same poster stuck up by these activists.

10 red posters advertising two mutts needing a home, 10 black posters advertising one mutt needing the same, three blue posters advertising a kitty cat plus various others advertising cats and dogs.

This site provides a more than adequate platform for these people to peddle their pets along with anybody else with some thing to sell/buy or event to promote.

Clean up the wall and clean up the dog shit!!!

On that day perhaps it was.
Other days you were as likely to see posters advertising furniture, music performances, prayer meetings, job offers, etc.



Not everyone on Lamma is a member of this forum. And realistically, forums are ephemeral, and this is basically dependant on the continued work and health of one person.

...build me up, buttercup

Alan, you mean yourself, as you're more active in moderating these days than I am?

I'm often busy running around these days trying to make enough cash to pay all our bills, not much time left every day for no-income hobbies like this forum.

Or did you worry about my "continued work and health"?
Well, my health has never been better than now, since moving to HK so long ago. As long as we have a small number of wonderful forum volunteers the "continued work" part should be fine as well for the time being.

Also, after 8+ years of this forum's survival, it's probably not "ephemeral" anymore, but one of the longest-lived forums in HK, methinks.


Well, back to the future of the Democracy Wall. We'll know more about the plans and attitudes of our powers-that-be after next week's meeting about this and other local hot topics... I'll keep you all up-to-date...

_________________
Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.