in a territory governed by people whose sole qualification for the job is unflagging loyalty to Beijing and a handful of real-estate billionaires operating solely from a principle of short-term self-interest, the solutions presented to us
have fallen woefully short of even the most meagre expectations.

To me, the 10-year anniversary of what we westerners refer to as ‘The Handover’ is a time for some bittersweet nostalgia. Bittersweet because, while people’s worst fears have not come true, for many the past 10 years represent a slow downward trend, a litany of ineptly managed disasters that yield little cause for optimism for the future.

I arrived in Hong Kong in 1995 and was immediately swept up in the wave of speculation concerning the upcoming handover of sovereignty from the UK to China. As an American, I came from a country that violently kicked the British out and then chose to engage in a two-century-long romance with all things Anglo, most mystifyingly our love affair with the British royal family. However, I knew it would be a different experience for Hong Kong. My first clue was when I discovered that most of the local people I met referred to this event as ‘The Return’ and not ‘The Handover’.

But whatever pride people were taking in a return to the ‘mother country’ was tempered with fear about what steps mother planned to take. Some people were predicting that on July 1, 1997, we would see the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army rolling down Nathan Road in a show of force.

Newspapers breathlessly watched as Britain debated awarding a UK passport to any HK Chinese who wanted one, and when they decided against it, the inference was that the British were abandoning their children to a future of degradation and torture.
The question people asked each other was if they had “insurance”, which meant “Do you have a second passport?” The answer was frequently yes.

Some of those dual passport holders were so scared that they made a point of leaving Hong Kong before June 30 and re-entering on their second passport, hopefully ensuring that they could exit again should the worst occur. So many Hong Kongers moved to Vancouver that some joked the city should be renamed Hongcouver.

The calendar moved forward in the relentless way it does and eventually June 30, 1997, was upon us. For most expats, it was simply another night to go out and party. And party we did. It was neither a celebration nor a wake. It was simply another night to stay out late, drink and not worry about having to be in the office the next day. I know I was there because, like the 1960s, I can’t recall much of what I did that night. The rain was pouring down – a bad omen, some said – and I know we started off the evening at the Hard Rock Cafe, back when there was still a branch in Central. I have zero recollection of anything after that, so I think that means I had a good time.

Fast forward 10 years. Can anyone really claim to be surprised by the changes that have taken place since then?
With 20/20 hindsight, it’s easy to see that those pundits who predicted that the changes would be slower and more insidious were correct. At the time, the prevailing wisdom was that, at worst, China would choose to boost Shanghai (a ‘Chinese success’) over Hong Kong (a ‘British success’). In retrospect, I’m not quite certain that China’s approach was quite so Machiavellian. As Hong Kong moved from being a manufacturing centre of cheap goods to a financial capital, one of its chief raisons d’etre was that it served as a gateway to China for foreign businesses. As China continued to open up to the world, this reason would fade.

It would be up to Hong Kong and Hong Kong alone to find a way to reposition itself in the 21st century. However, in a territory governed by people whose sole qualification for the job is unflagging loyalty to Beijing and a handful of real-estate billionaires operating solely from a principle of short-term self-interest, the solutions presented to us have fallen woefully short of even the most meagre expectations.

I’m not going to enumerate the failures here. Not only would such a list end up filling the entire magazine, others have already done it better – ask your local bookshop for a copy of We Deserve Better: Hong Kong Since 1997 by Hemlock, Hong Kong’s self-proclaimed “most obnoxious expat”.

While some of the blame for this can be laid at Britain’s doorstep – the ‘common wisdom’ that the Brits are responsible for creating a civil service that only knew how to take orders and not actually solve anything themselves – more than anything else it’s something that you see all around the world; that the masses have forgotten true patriotism means individual thought and the freedom to criticize one’s government rather than blind obedience to decisions made by a handful of people in their own self-interest. This failure to question authority, to even position said questions as ‘unpatriotic’ leads to every possible type of stagnation and de-evolution.

So at this point you might well be asking, if I’m so convinced this is such a horrific place, why am I still here? Why don’t I pack my little gweilo carpetbag and go back to where I came from? I won’t deny that those are reasonable questions.

The answer is that I try to live in the real world. And the real
world sucks. No place is perfect, at least none that I’ve yet encountered. Donald Tsang may make a lot of stupid decisions but at his worst he hurts us economically – compare that to George Bush and his advisors, whose actions, no matter what light you
want to cast them in, have resulted in the deaths of hundreds
of thousands.

And for all its problems, Hong Kong remains a great place to live, at least for me and for many others I know. You can still find almost anything you want here at almost any time of day or night. And it’s still safe to walk down a dark street at four in the morning. And it will always be just a few hours away from some of the other most interesting places in the world. And I still have the freedom to express myself publicly in this fashion. Hong Kong. It ain’t perfect. But it’s my home.