A Last Glance Before "97"--Impressions of Hong Kong

Hong Kong's nights belong to romantic travellers.

Standing by the Tsimshatsui ferry pier, looking across to Hong Kong Island, with the lights sparkling on the buildings high and low and the stars sparkling above them, the scene seems part real, part imaginary. No wonder the Japanese call Hong Kong the "City of Enchantment."

Even by day, the impression Hong Kong gives is of kaleidoscopic variety, a blend of traditional and modern, old and new, Chinese and Western.

Hong Kong, so open and tolerant-in Cantonese they call it wen sik-"looking for food," meaning everyone together trying to make a living. Someone has said that in this society, in which two-thirds of the population are immigrants from all over, everyone-whether you came earlier or later, whatever the color of your skin-so long as you don't spit in the street or sit uncouthly on the ground in the MTR, you're a Hong Konger.

But Hong Kong may also be one of the most oppressively crowded places on Earth. On 400 square miles of land, there live over six million people. "Land here is not beloved native soil, it's a commodity, pure and simple," is how one Hong Kong author puts it.

Hong Kong is also a metropolis which is "on the move" every minute and every second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Towering skyscrapers vie with each other to stretch into the heavens, and loop after loop of raised expressway, twisting through the air, tries to challenge the limits of urban space. Whether by day or by night, many people are not sitting at home, but are moving through the city's buildings and streets, on foot or in buses, trains or the MTR.

Hong Kong is also a place of prosperity built by ordinary working people. Whether on the docks or in the streets, the sight of people rushing busily to and fro, beavering away at this or at that, is one of the many images of Hong Kong, and of the Chinese.

Hong Kong, City of Enchantment, Pearl of the Orient; place of opportunism and of opportunity. A beautiful girl with a thousand different faces-you never tire of looking at her!

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Tsimshatsui

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Aberdeen

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Causeway Bay

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Heng Fa Chuen Estate

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Hong Kong Island by night.

For the crowds on the double decker buses, July 1 is not a beginning, nor an end, but just one more station on the road of life.

Tsimshatsui.

Aberdeen.