A Brief History In the popular mind, the history of Hong Kong, long the entryway to China for Westerners, begins in 1841 with the British occupation of the territory. However, it would be wrong to dismiss the long history of the region itself. Archaeologists today are working to uncover Hong Kong’s past, which stretches back thousands of years. You can get a glimpse into that past at Lei Cheng Uk Museum’s 1,600-year-old burial vault on the mainland just north of Kowloon (see page 38). In 1992, when construction of the airport on Chek Lap Kok was begun, a 2,000-year-old village, Pak Mong, was discovered, complete with artifacts that indicated a sophisticated rural society. An even older Stone Age site was discovered on Lamma Island in 1996. While Hong Kong remained a relative backwater in early days, nearby Guangzhou (Canton) was developing into a great trading city with connections in India and the Middle East. By a.d. 900, the Hong Kong islands had become a lair for pirates preying on the shipping in the Pearl River Delta and causing a major headache for burgeoning Guangzhou; small bands of pirates were still operating into the early years of the 20th century. In the meantime, the mainland area was being settled by incomers, the “Five Great Clans”: Tang, Hau, Pang, Liu, and Man. First to arrive was the Tang clan, which established a number of walled villages in the New Territories that still exist today. You can visit Kat Hing Wai and Lo Wai, villages with their walls still intact. Adjacent to Lo Wai is the Tang Chung Ling Ancestral Hall, built in the 16th century, which is still the center of clan activities. The first Europeans to arrive in the Pearl River Delta were the Portuguese, who settled in Macau in 1557 and for several centuries had a monopoly on trade between Asia, Europe, and South America. As Macau developed into the greatest port in the East, it also became a base for Jesuit missionaries; it was later a haven for persecuted Japanese Christians. While Christianity was not a great success in China, it made local headway, evidenced today by the numerous Catholic churches in Macau’s historic center. Intermarriage with the local Chinese created a community of Macanese, whose culture can still be seen in Macau’s architecture and cuisine. The British Arrive “ Albert is so amused,” wrote Queen Victoria, “at my having got the island of Hong Kong. ” Her foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, was not so amused; he dismissed Hong Kong as “a barren island with hardly a house upon it. ” Hong Kong Island formally became a British possession two years later in 1843. The British now had a base for the thriving trade they had carried on from Canton. Trading conditions, however, were not easy. The attitude expressed by Emperor Qianlong at Britian’s first attempt to open trade with China in 1793 continued to prevail: “We possess all things,” said the emperor, “I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures.” Moreover, China would accept nothing but silver bullion in exchange for its goods, so Britian had to look for a more abundant commodity to square its accounts. Around the end of the 18th century, the traders found a solution: Opium was the wonder drug that would solve the problem. Grown in India, it was delivered to Canton, and while China outlawed the trade in 1799, local Cantonese officials were always willing to look the other way for “squeeze money” (a term still used in Hong Kong). In 1839 the emperor appointed the incorruptible Commissioner Lin Tse-hsu to stamp out the smuggling of “foreign mud. ” Lin’s crackdown was indeed severe. He demanded that the British merchants in Canton surrender their opium stores, and to back up his ultimatum he laid siege to the traders, who, after six tense weeks, surrendered over 20,000 chests of opium. To Queen Victoria, Lin addressed a famous letter, pointing out the harm the “poisonous drug” did to China, and asking for an end to the opium trade; his arguments are unanswerable, but the lofty though heartfelt tone of the letter shows how unprepared the Chinese were to negotiate with the West in realistic terms. A year later, in June 1840, came the British retaliation, beginning the first of the so-called Opium Wars. After a few skirmishes and much negotiation, a peace agreement was reached. Under the Convention of Chuenpi, Britain was given the island of Hong Kong, and on 26 January 1841, it was proclaimed a British colony. The Opium Wars The peace plan achieved at Chuenpi was short-lived. Both Peking and London repudiated the agreement, and fighting resumed. This time the British forces, less than 3,000 strong but in possession of superior weapons and tactics, outfought the Chinese. Shanghai fell and Nanking was threatened. In the Treaty of Nanking (1842) China was compelled to open five of its ports to foreign economic and political penetration, and even to compensate the opium smugglers for their losses. Hong Kong’s status as a British colony and a free port was confirmed. In the aftermath of the Opium Wars, trade in “foreign mud” was resumed at a level even higher than before, although the major traders, by now respectable and diversified, stopped their trading in 1907. Opium-smoking continued openly in Hong Kong until 1946; in mainland China the Communist government abolished it when they came to power in 1949. Commerce and Wealth The first governor of Hong Kong, Sir Henry Pottinger, predicted it would become “a vast emporium of commerce and wealth. ” Under his direction, Hong Kong began its march toward prosperity. It was soon flourishing; with its natural harbor that attracted ships, Hong Kong leaped to the forefront as a base for trade. Both the population and the economy began to grow steadily. A surprise was the sizable number of Chinese who chose to move to the colony. In the meantime, the opening of Hong Kong was the last blow to Macau’s prosperity. Inroads had already been made by the arrival of the Dutch and Macau’s loss to them of the profitable Japanese trade. From then on, until its 1970s comeback with electronic and other export goods, Macau sank into obscurity. Despite the differences between the Chinese majority and the European minority, relations were generally cordial. Sir John Francis Davis, an early governor, disgusted with the squabbling of the English residents, declared: “It is a much easier task to govern the 20,000 Chinese inhabitants of the colony than the few hundreds of English.” There were a few incidents: On 15 January 1857, somebody added an extra ingredient to the dough at the colony’s main bakery — arsenic. While the Chinese continued to enjoy their daily rice, the British, eating their daily bread, were dropping like flies. At the height of the panic, thousands of Chinese were deported from Hong Kong. No one ever discovered the identity or the motive of the culprits. Conditions in the colony in the 19th century, however, did not favor the Chinese population. The British lived along the waterfront in Victoria (now Central) and on the cooler slopes of Victoria Peak. The Chinese were barred from these areas, and from any European neighborhood. They settled in what is now known as the Western District. It was not uncommon for several families and their animals to share one room in crowded shantytowns. So it is not surprising that when bubonic plague struck in 1894, it took nearly 30 years to fully eradicate it. Today in the Western District, you can still wander narrow streets lined with small traditional shops selling ginseng, medicinal herbs, incense, tea, and funeral objects. In 1860, a treaty gave Britain a permanent beach-head on the Chinese mainland — the Kowloon peninsula, directly across Victoria harbor. In 1898, under the Convention of Peking, China leased the New Territories and 235 more islands to Britain for what then seemed an eternity — 99 years. The 20th Century The colony’s population has always fluctuated according to events beyond its borders. In 1911, when the Chinese revolution overthrew the Manchus, refugees flocked to the safety of Hong Kong. Many arrived with nothing but the shirts on their backs, but they brought their philosophy of working hard and seizing opportunity. Hundreds of thousands more arrived in the 1930s when Japan invaded China. By the eve of World War II, the population was more than one and a half million. A few hours after Japan’s attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, a dozen Japanese battalions began an assault on Hong Kong; Hong Kong’s minimal air force was destroyed on the airfield at Kai Tak within five minutes. Abandoning the New Territories and Kowloon, the defenders retreated to Hong Kong island, hoping for relief which never came. They finally surrendered on Christmas Day in 1941. Survivors recall three and a half years of hunger and hardship under the occupation forces, who deported many Hong Kong Chinese to the mainland. A number of Hong Kong’s monuments were damaged during this time: St. John’s Cathedral was turned into a military club, the old governor’s lodge on the Peak was burned down, and the commandant of the occupation forces rebuilt the colonial governor’s mansion in Japanese style. At the end of World War II, Hong Kong took stock of what remained — the population was down to half a million, and there was no industry, no fishing fleet, and few houses and public services. Hong Kong Comes Back China’s civil war sent distressing echoes to Hong Kong. While the Chinese Communist armies drove towards the south, the flow of refugees into Hong Kong multiplied, and by the time the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949, the total population of Hong Kong had grown to more than two million people. The fall of Shanghai in 1950 brought another flood of refugees, among them many wealthy people and skilled artisans, including the Shanghai industrialists who became the founders of Hong Kong’s now famous textile industry. In the late 1970s Hong Kong became the conduit for China’s goods, investment, and tourism. It also found itself famous as a worldwide bargain shopping center. Housing was now in desperately short supply. Housing had always been scarce for Hong Kong’s Chinese. The problem became an outright disaster on Christmas Day in 1953. An uncontrollable fire devoured a whole city of squatters’ shacks in Kowloon; 50,000 refugees were deprived of shelter. The calamity spurred the government to launch an emergency program of public-housing construction; spartan new blocks of apartments put cheap and fireproof roofs over hundreds of thousands of heads. But this new housing was grimly overcrowded, and even a frenzy of construction couldn’t keep pace with the demand for living space. In 1962 the colonial authorities closed the border with China, but even this did not altogether stem the flow of refugees: The next arrivals were the Vietnamese boat people. Into the 21st Century As 1997 drew nearer, it became clear that the Chinese government had no intention of renewing the 99-year lease on the New Territories. Negotiations began, and in 1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which Britain confirmed the transfer of the New Territories and all of Hong Kong to China in 1997. For its part, China declared Hong Kong a “Special Administrative Region” and guaranteed its civil and social system for at least 50 years after 1997. Although China’s Basic Law promised that Hong Kong’s existing laws and civil liberties would be upheld, refugees began flowing the other way. The British Nationality Act (1981) had in effect prevented Hong Kong citizens from acquiring British citizenship, and thousands of people, anxious about their future under China’s rule, were prompted to apply for citizenship elsewhere, notably in Canada and Australia. The protests in 1989 in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square sparked sympathy marches in Hong Kong, and further increased tension with China. Some companies moved their headquarters out of Hong Kong. Ironically, as the handover approached, the British granted the Hong Kong Chinese more political autonomy than they had done since the colony was founded, including such democratic reforms as elections to the Legislative Council. Since the handover in July 1997, China has generally followed a hands-off policy. Many who fled have returned. What controls heartbeats in Hong Kong are the fluctuations of the Hang Seng Index, foreign currency exchange rates, and skyrocketing property prices. In short, the status quo prevails. Everybody hopes Hong Kong will remain stable, but everyone also has their doubts. In the meantime, the philosophy is to seize present-day opportunities in the thriving economy.