Remarks made as 300 protesters flock to Tuen Mun site said to have served as secret base for Sun Yat-sen’s plot to overthrow Qing dynasty a century ago
The Tuen Mun house believed to have served as the secret base for the Cultural Revolution of 1911 led by Sun Yat-sen could be declared a proposed monument “when necessary” so it could be saved from the wrecking ball, development minister Eric Ma Siu-cheung said. Ma made the remarks on Sunday as 300 people protested outside the Red House, calling on the government to immediately propose it be named a monument so the site’s new landlord cannot demolish the building as planned. The development minister said the government was in the process of contacting the landlord to study and discuss how the site might be “kept”. He added that “immediate follow-up action” would be taken, including declaring it a proposed monument, to afford statutory protection “when necessary”. The controversy stems from a widely held belief the two-storey house served as the base for Chinese republican revolutionaries in their plot to overthrow the Qing dynasty in the 1900s. In 2009, the Antiquities and Monuments Office classified the site a grade one historic building – the highest in the three-tier system. But the top grading does not alone confer statutory protection.
