Hong Kong is Cantonese for "fragrant harbor," a name inspired either by the incense factories that once dotted Hong Kong Island or by the profusion of scented pink bauhinias, the national flower (whose representation has recently replaced colonial insignias).
Hong Kong is on the southeast coast of China, at the mouth of the Pearl River. It consists of three main parts. The New Territories, taking up about 945 square km (365 square mi) of the Chinese mainland, are the northernmost and largest part. South of that is Kowloon, 9 square km (3½ square mi), actually a peninsula on the southern edge of the New Territories. Hong Kong Island, roughly 82 square km (32 square mi), is directly across the harbor from Kowloon. The name Hong Kong embraces all three regions.Hong Kong's land mass continues to grow through land-reclamation projects, causing Hong Kong Harbour to narrow. This expansion seems all the more remarkable when viewed in light of its modest beginnings: when the main island was ceded to the British after the Opium War of 1841, it consisted, in the infamous words of the British minister at the time, of "barren rock." Its primary value was its control of access to Guangzhou (Canton) and thus China's trade with the outside world, but as a piece of real estate, this island ended up proving highly profitable.
Hong Kong is 98% Chinese. Although the territory's official languages are English and Cantonese, the use of Mandarin (or Putonghua), China's official language, is on the rise. Among the non-Chinese living in Hong Kong, some 150,000 Filipinos make up the largest foreign community; most are women working as maids and nannies (amahs in local parlance), and can be seen socializing in Statue Square on their day off, usually Sunday.
Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. The British owned Hong Kong Island, but the New Territories -- the part of Hong Kong on the mainland -- had been leased from China in 1898. It was the expiration of this 99-year lease that necessitated Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
In hindsight, the handover looks anticlimactic. The rest of the world was always more apprehensive about Chinese rule than were most Hong Kongers, for whom business takes precedence over all other issues. It was the Asian crisis, which hit within a month of the handover, that became the real news of 1997 and the years that followed.
The SAR (Special Administrative Region) government pulled through the crisis, and today it is easy to forget the economy was ever imperiled. The changes wrought by the handover are mostly ones of increasing integration between the local and mainland economies, a process that has been under way for at least two decades.
Perhaps the greatest sign that Hong Kong is operating comfortably under Chinese rule is the fact that political debate has, for the most part, centered on such issues as chickens and pollution rather than the much-feared crackdown on individual liberty. The local press, though subject to some self-censorship, still thrives; international reporting, publishing, and broadcasting continue unabated. And most everyone makes time to check up on the stock market.
