History

For the greater part of recorded history, this rocky archipelago—an erratic collection of barren ocean rock—was politely ignored by the rest of the world. A handful of farmers living in walled villages, such as Kat Hing Wai, spent their days quietly watching the rice grow, fishing, visiting the temple and playing mah-jong. It was too hot in the summer, dank in the winter, and without any horseracing, things were pretty ordinary. Then the British arrived.

Hong Kong burst onto the world stage when a pragmatic English naval officer raised the Union Jack on the shores of Western District on January 26, 1841. Captain Charles Elliot had established the perfect base for the British Empire's most profitable colonial operation: selling drugs.

Ever since Marco Polo's jaunt along the Silk Road in the 13th century, traders had dreamed of the riches to be made from China's untapped resources. The Imperial Court in Beijing, however, wanted nothing to do with these hairy barbarians and granted them only limited trading rights. The British, though, forced to raise cash for their rapidly expanding empire, turned to the one commodity the Chinese wanted but did not produce: opium, or "foreign mud".

Beijing, objecting to the vast quantities of dope flooding into their country, hit back against the drug czars, destroying thousands of opium chests. To protect this highly profitable operation, the British retaliated with customary force, and thus provoked The First Opium War (1839-1842).

More a squabbling skirmish than full-blown war, the incident resulted in the Treaty of Nanking (1842), a diplomatic manoeuvre that ceded Hong Kong Island to the British for all eternity. Kowloon was grabbed in 1860, and further jousting and jostling led to more treaties and more embarrassment for the Chinese Emperor, culminating in the July 1, 1898 Agreement that leased a swathe of land—the New Territories, stretching from Mai Po Marsh to Sai Kung—to the British for 99 years.

99 years? Well, the clock was set for the end of colonial rule, but few colonialists would have cared, glancing up at the Clock Tower on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, that the countdown to the handover had begun when the ink was still wet on the lease. Not when there was money to be made.

Hong Kong was not an overnight success and, after mutual agreement between the British and the Chinese ended the opium trade in 1911, the 1920s and 1930s saw steady progress rather than stellar expansion. Shanghai dominated East Asian trade throughout the period between World War I and World War II, and Hong Kong remained a relatively quiet backwater. The British had busied themselves transforming their new acquisition into an extension of merry England, building such works as the Government House (1855), and the Zoological and Botanical Gardens (1864), and continued into the 20th century, building colonial mansions up and down Victoria Peak, allowing families of traders and civil servants to escape the humidity of the summer months and enjoy the beautiful views of Victoria Harbour.

So how did Hong Kong get to be so rich and powerful? In a word: communism. During the early years of Mao's revolution (1949-1950), thousands of talented industrialists, manufacturers, and bankers fled Shanghai and set up business in cramped Kowloon quarters. The population exploded, and soon Hong Kong became a major industrial centre where fortunes were made in textiles and construction. The population of residential areas such as Mongkok rocketed, while Causeway Bay, Wanchai and Central established themselves as centres of commerce and finance.

Even though rapid expansion and growth meant much of the colonial heritage was lost in the desire to build bigger and more impressive tower blocks, many places of historical interest remain, including the Colonial Duddell Street Steps, Former French Mission Building, Noonday Gun and Statue Square and the Cenotaph. European heritage, though, is just part of Hong Kong's past. Things were quiet before the British sailed into port, but there is an abundance of spiritual sites, such as the Man Fat Monastery and the Man Mo Temple, built before or during colonial rule. In particular, on the Outlying Islands, there are temples, shrines, historical nooks and crannies, eager to be explored.

Fast-forward to a wet July 1, 1997, when the British handed Hong Kong back to China, thus honoring the original 1898 lease. The Union Jack, first raised by Captain Elliot a century and a half before, was returned in driving rain to an emotional Chris Patten. With a prince, a president and a prime minister in attendance, the sun finally set over the British Empire. The last governor beat an honorable retreat, leaving Hong Kong to steer its own course into the new millennium.

So what does the future hold for this once barren, remote, useless ocean rock? Well, it still ranks as the top financial centre in the region with the most open markets and the most inviting tax breaks; boasts an expanding economy, specialising in textiles, clothing, tourism, and electronics; holds one of the deepest container ports in the world; and possesses an airport—Chek Lap Kok—twice the size of JFK, capable of handling 35 million passengers a year. Not bad.