Over Hong Kong [antikvár]

A PREFACE TO HONG KONG by Sir David Akers-Jones The photographs in this book let the fleeting visitor, the long time resident and those who have not had the good fortune to visit Hong Kong, fly for a brief w/hile over the skyscrapers, the busy streets, the clustered ships, to swim in the imagination on silver-sanded beaches, to stand on rugged cliffs and to want to climb the wind-swept grass of the hills and mountains of Hong Kong. Hong Kong (it) — fragrant harbour — grew into the great city it is today because of its harbour. It gave shelter to sailing ships from the West one hundred and fifty years ago. and is still today visited by tens of thousands of vessels each year. So it is that the composition of many photographs in this book is held together by the w/aters of tfie harbour or the waters that wash the cliffs of the several hundred islands which dot the sea around Hong Kong. There can be no definitive book of photographs of Hong Kong: its skyline, after oniy a few years, is changed. In the centre of the city little now remains of the old arcades and covered walkways; the flags of shipping lines no longer flutter along the waterfront. Glass walls gleam in the sun, and in their glittering faces reflect tomorrow's world of instant communication and high finance. Piled high container boxes like toys wait for the eager ships which slip quietly in and quietly out, Foam follovi/s the fast ferries to Macau and up the Pearl River to Canton: and slowly through the harbour occasionally still, with leaning masts, patched brown-washed sails, a junk slips by imperturbably. Hong Kong—a home and homes for so many people. Fewer now in flimsy huts cling to crowded comers and impossible slopes; fewer now the fires, floods and landslides. Tower blocks, in tridents and quadrangles and webs of concrete, now more tidily contain the tens of thousands of families whose work and industry makes the city alive with ceaseless movement and whose homes light up the night with countless stars. Streets with pale jade bracelets sold on the side walks; a street, dosed to cars, full of cheap clothes for thrifty housewives: streets of birds and goldfish; streets of rice, tea, medicinal herbs, antiques for the unwary; cameras, radios, calculators in endless variety; colour and confusion of sounds and people ceaselessly hurrying: this is Hong Kong, Tower blocks like pale needles catch the light under grey douds, the yellow roof of a monastery catches the sun, mist hangs above and below the mountain tops as though commanded by the artist's brush. Hong Kong is not just all crowds and concrete, beyond the hills tíiat hem the harbour in are empty landscapes, hidden valleys, dark woods and deserted villages, and farms to feed the city: plenty of places to get away from it all. It is a place of movement and change, but behind the facade and the hurrying faces, people hold on to custom and tradition. Incense burns by the roadside, processions wend their way from villages past towering concrete to find the temple; and, while the pumps of the village fire brigade and a dragon head gather dust, the dragon boats race now more fiercely and numerous than ever before; and opera has found its way from the village yard into the concert hall. This year begins another cycle in the Chinese tradition: a cycle of sixty years. Sixty years ago Hong Kong was a trading port of a few hundred thousand people, small in comparison to Shanghai. In ten years time China will resume her sovereignty, but Hong Kong, its life-style and its systems, will stay for another fifty years. After that, 2047 will mark the end of another cycle. Throughout its relatively short history people have come to Hong Kong to trade, to live and to work. It has no resources except its people and its harbour and, while not a nation itself, tfiis tiny place now ranks thirteenth among the trading nations of the world. Apart from brief interruptions. Hong Kong has enjoyed long periods of stability and has made the most of this advantage to build up a living standard that is among the highest in Asia, allowing it to enjoy long periods of sustained prosperity. This makes for a lively community but fewer sensational headlines than most cities of comparable size. Hong Kong is a Chinese city; Chinese from all parts of China but speaking Cantonese as a common tongue. It is Chinese and cosmopolitan: people from all over the world mingle in the streets using English as a lingua franca. It is trade — nineteenth century trade with all its overtones of imperialism, its aggressions and its seamy side, its heroisms and its cruelties; and twentieth century trade with its jumbo jets, giant ships and great buildings — and it is people that have made Hong Kong a great city of the world, a modern miracle. With the resumption of Chinese sovereignty in 1997 Hong Kong faces another exciting chapter in its history. It faces it with realism, knowing that all the ingredients which have contributed to its prosperity in the past will be retained, but conscious that nothing quite like this transfer of sovereignty has ever happened before. But Hong Kong has accepted and overcome many challenges in its past and will do so in the future.