Hong Kong

Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, sits on the eastern side of the Pearl River estuary around a deep natural harbour. It spreads across Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon peninsula, the hilly New Territories and more than two hundred outlying islands, of which Lantau is the largest. Steep wooded hills rise behind the towers, and much of the land is protected country park, so the city crowds the shore. Summers are hot, humid and stormy, with typhoons rolling in from the south.

Fishing villages and salt pans lined these shores for centuries under Chinese rule. Britain took Hong Kong Island in 1842 after the First Opium War, added Kowloon in 1860 and leased the New Territories for ninety-nine years in 1898. Japan occupied the territory from 1941 to 1945. Refugees from the mainland after 1949 brought capital and labour, and factories making textiles, toys and electronics grew in the 1950s and 1960s. Sovereignty passed to China in 1997 under the principle of ‘one country, two systems’.

Cantonese is the language of the street, of Cantonese opera, which UNESCO lists, and of a film industry that took kung fu cinema to the world. Families meet for yum cha, tea with dim sum, at weekends, and the Star Ferry has crossed the harbour since 1888. The economy lives from finance, trade and shipping: the banks and stock exchange in Central, the container terminals at Kwai Chung, trade to and from the mainland, and tourism.