A Facelift and the Body: The Production of Space in Mui Wo

This article offers a critique of the government’s plan to give a ‘facelift’ to Mui Wo, Lantau Island, bringing forth two ‘moments of space,’ namely the ‘perceived’ and the ‘lived’ which, together with the ‘conceived’, presuppose the body, based on Lefebvre’s (1991) triadic concept of production of space. In modern society, the body no longer plays an important role in our perception of and relations with the world. Refuting body-mind dualism, this article explores how the body weaves our imagination and establishes our subjectivity, possessing the potential to call into question interchangeable, spectacular space. Using Lefebvre’s concept of spatial production, this article argues that bodily practices in the context of Mui Wo constitute a potential challenge to the hegemony of planned space.