"I want to go out! I want to walk in the City of Sound, Mr Johnston!" yells Emperor Puyi a fifteen-year-old who has not been beyond the walls of the Forbidden City since he was two. Bernardo Bertolluci's 1987 Academy Award Winning The Last Emperor's major theme is that Puyi may have been titled an emperor but lived as a prisoner to a system in which he was really just a pawn. Despite having forcibly abdicated at the age of six, Puyi continues to hold title and be confined to his palaces well into his late teens – the teeming life of China taunting him from afar.
Somehow I thought of Puyi and how he could hardly have imagined Hong Kong as I walked in what is truly the City of Sound. I can think of no city – certainly not in Asia, but arguably nowhere – as full of life, energy and beauty as Hong Kong. When friends asked what my plans were for my day in Hong Kong, the answer is always simple – walk, eat, shop – in that order. I walked more than 15,000 steps between 8:40 and 2:30 and that's despite riding three trains, taking one boat and one Uber. If there is an opposite of Ko Samet where the beauty is in doing little to nothing, then Hong Kong is it where the beauty is actively being part of it.
I could write prolifically about everything I love about Hong Kong – all of the best parts, what makes it special, how everything works right down the most incredible looking currency in the world. Only I've done all that before – feel free to take a look, there's ten days of posts on it.
My friend Leanne who spent an extended period in Hong Kong in 2003 and fell in love with the city asked me if it all changed. My answer was that it had changed as any city develops and changes, but that fundamentally, Hong Kong remains what I have always known it to be.
I also realized, the question we ask – the question I asked in my 2011 blog posts – isn't simply how the city is evolving, but has it CHANGED under the Chinese? And usually, first and foremost, we mean is Hong Kong becoming autocratic and suppressed? Are people losing their rights and freedoms? Is the unique and astonishing organic synthesis of British and Chinese culture (including British capitalism and Chinese mercantilism) that resulted in unimaginable financial success and first world standards at a time when Japan was the only other place in Asia to have them (and I use place because Hong Kong is not a country).
We rightfully worry that Britain's unintentionally phenomenal colonial experiment will degrade under tightening Chinese control and laws meant to suppress dissent. Americans in particular believe that liberties, civil rights and fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech are essential to a thriving Liberal society and moreover, that only Liberal (not in the left-right political sense) societies truly thrive. And our British friends are pretty much right behind us with this stuff.
There's just one problem in the popular narrative around Hong Kong: it was never free and Liberal. Not truly. In order for one country to "own another country" as Sennen phrases it when talking about imperialism (which he has strong feelings against), there has to be some kind of oppression and authoritarian control. The British Empire may have introduced some of their best ideas to their colonial subjects, but they also didn't give most of their overseas subjects the same rights as the people of the British Isles. The British did bring their legal system to Hong Kong and many other places – which has a significant value – but democracy of any kind in Hong Kong did not really exist until the later years of colonial rule.
In the years leading up to the 1997 hand-off of Hong Kong, the British worked quickly and diligently to create and expand democratic and Liberal institutions. The Chinese cried foul. The deal they signed with the British in late 1984 was for a Hong Kong with far fewer individual liberties than the one they eventually received. In fairness, the British wanted to leave a legacy of an essentially freer, more western-style Hong Kong than they one they actually ran for the roughly 140 years prior to handover negotiations.
So has Hong Kong changed? To some degree, yes. Fears of a repressive China interfering in traditionally capitalist and freer Hong Kong have caused multiple waves of wealth and brain drain. Many of the scions of Hong Kong capitalism have relocated to Britain and elsewhere. Leading up to the 1997 hand-off and after Britain stopped taking applications for Hong Kongers to relocate to the UK, Singapore happily opened its doors, trying to take bring in a windfall of wealth and talent. More recently, Britain, Taiwan, the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore and other countries have welcomed Hong Kongers heading to the exits.
Has Hong Kong changed? Physically, it has some new buildings and an increasing number of construction signs display the names of Chinese financiers and contractors. There's also a lot more Mandarin being spoken. I noticed as people boarded my flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong how many of them had mainland Chinese passports.
Has Hong Kong changed? Not in its vibe on the street or in its overall culture. I lived in Taiwan and have traveled to China. I know the Chinese aesthetic and vibe. Hong Kong still has its British-infused culture. It also has all of the Western brands, luxuries and comforts it has had or been pursuing for decades. Life on the street and the standard of living remain essentially the same. So does its interesting pockets of multiculturalism. Many people aren't aware that Britain brought objects from other parts of its empire to Hong Kong including large communities of Sikhs, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs and Nepali Gurkha soldiers who served the UK. Then of course there remains a robust expat population from around the world including British who stayed on with Hong Kong, becoming permanent residents.
Hong Kong is also a cosmopolitan city. It calls itself Asia's World City – and that's very true. It has arts, culture, cuisine and a lot of Michelin stars. Hong Kong has a philharmonic and art museums. Because it avoided the Cultural Revolution – and perhaps also because its people were in many ways cut-off from Mainland China for so long – Hong Kongers have become guardians of traditional Chinese culture, maintaining beautiful temples, traditional practices and art that China – or at least its leadership – at one point forsook. In some ways Hong Kong is more Chinese than China.
Has Hong Kong changed? Not in the sense that its people have never been able to shape their own destiny. Keep in mind when Britain took Hong Kong as a concession from the Qing Dynasty in 1840, there wasn't a lot there. The British – very late to the party in having overseas possessions in the Far East – were interested in a good natural harbor to develop into a port city. It was a formula that worked – take a good, undeveloped harbor and if you build it, they will come. They did this with Bombay (now Mumbai), Singapore and Hong Kong. The only real choice Hong Kongers had was when their ancestors decided whether or not to migrate to British Hong Kong. Once they were British subjects, they were not equal citizen. However, in most cases, they had more economic opportunity that where they had come from – largely the nearby Guandong (Canton) area of China – and perhaps most importantly, their families were outside the People's Republic of China when it formed. They unknowingly escaped the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward. Whatever inequalities they may have experienced in British Hong Kong, people certainly had more rights and liberties than they would have experienced in imperial or communist China.
Will Hong Kong change? Inevitably. While it's not yet clear just how much or in exactly what ways, it seems likely to have less autonomy than the handover treaties promised. China has figured out that Britain isn't going to come and repossess. But does China want to integrate Hong Kong into its inner-fold and make it more like Beijing, Shanghai (itself a former colonial possession of multiple countries), Hangzhou and Shenzhen? Maybe, maybe not. It seems like China's first concern is not tolerating dissent from Hong Kongers. Whether it goes further than that is yet unclear – and likely undecided.
For all of that, whatever Hong Kong is, I still love it. After almost 13 years since walking Hong Kong, I can still find my way around. I can even still sniff out great dim sum and make my way through the small streets of Kowloon like I just walked them yesterday. I forgot how truly beautiful Hong Kong is – especially the islands and "outer boroughs." So much of Hong Kong is green and not all of it is like densely populated and energized Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.
Then of course is the food – of which I have already opined though it can never be understated. What a culinary combination are Thailand and Hong Kong. I often think of a friend who used to say, "I regret that I have only one stomach to give." So true. There were a lot of difficult choices and missed opportunities. We all know what happens with one night in Bangkok, but what about the poor soul who has only one day in Hong Kong?
