HongKongers

In April 1975 I was in Hong Kong. It was British then and a fascinating city for a Canadian. Full of energy and human action. Today HongKongers feel they are a unique people who with their freedoms over a hundred years have built something special that needs no suppression of their dynamic spirit. 

 

We stayed in Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon and had a nice hotel right on Nathan Road. The old Kai Tak airport was only a narrow strip of reclaimed land that jutted from the main waterfront into Victoria Harbour circled by high buildings. The pilot flies over the tops and there was no glide path, so he has to suddenly cut power and drop between those skyscrapers, but crank it on again about half way down to get going and avoid being a splat! Then you look out the window and the wings seem over the water because the tarmac is so narrow. You appreciate the skill of airline pilots. 

 

And you soon discover the bus drivers' skill too as they race their double-deckers on a tortuous route through the city, narrowly missing overhanging awnings and surging crowds. Hong Kong may be British but it's not London,

You visit Hong Kong Island via the Star Ferry. When you want to cross from Kowloon you just run aboard and toss your money into a huge funnel and are never sure if they actually count it. 

You might see a rare Chinese Junk passing with orange sails, or witness people in the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter who live their whole lives in little sampans. Or go to the magical Tiger Balm Gardens and buy a little vial for aches and pains. And it works! 

Although the riches of Hong Kong were evident in the fantastic array of modern high buildings and Rolls Royces, the poor were visible too. Living in grey tents or a lean-to on the hillside with only a piece of corrugated tin for shelter, sometimes whole families eked out a living by making plastic flowers or little toys and dolls. Cooking in tiny pots. Julia Child once said the Chinese were the best cooks because they could make their food taste the same wherever they were in the world!

 

While we were there Chiang Kai-Shek died. April 5, 1975. He was the Nationalist revolutionary and military leader of the Republic of China from 1928 to his death in Taipei, on Taiwan island, the last stand of the free Chinese against the Communist hordes that still rule today. What was called Mainland China then, and wants now to eliminate Taiwanese democracy from China. Like Beijing has done with those brave HongKongers who resisted as long as they could. Taiwan may be the last of Free Chinese.

 

In 1975 you had to escape to Hong Kong from China. While we watched on the news of Chiang Kai-Shek's passing, the hillsides bloomed with the red and blue flags of the Republic lamenting the event. And it seemed that however poor those hardy people struggling on the slopes were, they loved their freedom more than cowing to the communist regime and needed to show it to the world.

 

Says something about their mettle, doesn't it?  

 

  

Note: In 1842 China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in perpetuity,  (Treaty of Nan King)  followed by the Kowloon peninsula (Convention of Peking) in 1860, also to the British in perpetuity. The lease was up on the New Territories only in 1997. Many China watchers feel the Brits betrayed the people of Hong Kong.