Introduction

Rumours of Hong Kong’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. More than 10 years after its handover from Britain to China, this entrepreneurial, irrepressible and singular trading city is booming again.

After plagues real, financial and political, normal service has resumed. This tiny territory is punching well above its size and weight once more, only these days with a self-confidence it never had under its former masters. Hong Kong has never been busier. Nor has it ever felt as comfortable with its status, as a part once again of its original motherland but separate, too, largely governing its own affairs and much better off for it. Almost 7 million people call a territory of 1100 sq km home, squeezing onto only 10% of the available land space. A flood of mainland and international visitors, meanwhile, crowds in to see what all the fuss is about. Multitudes seek standing or sitting room here, bringing with them smog, odour, clutter and clatter.

Hong Kong means different things to different people. For some it is the view from the Peak by day or Hong Kong Island’s skyline by night as the skyscrapers flush their neon rainbows, competing like tetchy cuttlefish to out-display each other. It can be about a lingering morning of tea and bite-sized dim sum, or a multidish Chinese banquet. Others – hikers, birders, climbers – say nothing beats the Hong Kong countryside for its beauty, facilities and accessibility.

It is all these things, of course; a city of teeming streets and empty wilderness, dazzling modernity and traditional observances. Brash, buccaneering and Westernised, yet conservatively minded and Chinese to its core, Hong Kong surprises, delights and confounds with its cheerful contradictions and energetic inconsistency.

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