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Essay Hong Kong, 25 years after
A N A N ATOMY O F E R A S U R E How a free and open Hong Kong became a police state
A
quarter of a century after Britain returned Hong Kong to China, the texture of the city, its sights and sounds, are little changed. In its thrumming wet mar kets, carp still lie under red lamps, fi shmongers extol ling their freshness. Shoppers worship the gods of purse and phone at upscale malls. Construction work ers sweat in the wet air, their jackhammers a rhythm section to the chimes of the trams. The topography of the island still makes the heart pound. Behind a cavernous convention centre that squats beside Victoria harbour, the jungled ridge run ning up to the famous Peak sparkles with lights from some of the priciest living rooms on Earth. A steep tram still pulls daytrippers up for the view. Far below, the iconic Star ferries chug across the busy harbour. On the territory’s mainland, a knuckleshaped mountain called Lion Rock stands guard over the more populous, less privileged conurbation of Kowloon. Slightly lower than the Peak, Lion Rock looms larger in Hong Kongers’ imaginations. A squatter settlement at
the foot of the mountain provided the setting for “Be neath Lion Rock”, a popular television drama which fi rst aired in the 1970s, celebrating the grit of a genera tion of Hong Kongers, most of whom had left China to escape turmoil and poverty. It told stories about strug gling to feed the family and building a future in a new home. Start singing its theme tune to a Hong Konger of a certain age and there’s a good chance they will join in: “Of one mind in pursuit of our dream/All discord set aside, with one heart on the same bright quest…/ Hand in hand to the ends of the earth.” It was the people beneath Lion Rock who had, by the late 1960s, made Hong Kong one of the world’s most important manufacturing hubs. Ching Cheong, who was fi ve years old when his family fl ed to Hong Kong in the 1950s, dreamed of returning to the main land as he grew up living off church provisions in a housing estate. The dream vanished when, as a teenag er, he saw corpses fl oating down the river from China, their hands and feet bound, victims of the Cultural
