|
Administrator 管理員
 
|
1#
大 中
小 發表於 2007-5-4 07:52 AM 只看該作者
economist.com MONDAY
Monday
[size=-1]“NOT longfrom now, archaeologists traversing China’s Pearl River delta willstumble onto the ruins of what was once one of man’s most gloriouscivilisations. ‘How could this have been allowed to happen?’ one willalmost certainly ask.”
[size=-1]In the deadhours between doze and arrival on the 12-hour flight from London toHong Kong, I am struck by this quotation on the back of my paperback,Frank Welch’s “A History of Hong Kong”. Fred Shapiro’s over-the-top,apocalyptic blurb for the book captures the gloom and embarrassmentfelt by many in the 1990s about the fate of Hong Kong during thatfraught gap between the Beijing massacre of June 4th 1989 and theterritory’s shift from British to Chinese sovereignty on July 1st 1997.Ten years on I am coming back to pick my way through the ruins andwrite about how Hong Kong is doing.
[size=-1]I am alwaysexcited to return here. A few days in Hong Kong en route to a year’sstudy in Beijing and Nanjing were my first taste of Asia, back in 1976.I have a photograph I took then from the Star Ferry between Hong Kongisland and Kowloon, the peninsula on the mainland side of the harbour.
[size=-1]Now landreclamation has made the Star Ferry’s shuttle journey rather shorter.Hong Kong is reverting to the mainland in more ways than one. In fact,on going to the empty space that was the old Star Ferry terminal on theisland, I am at first confused by some building work underway acrossjust a few yards of water. It is not, however, Kowloon, but the newterminal. A few protesters are hanging around the adjacent Queen’sPier, on what is its last day before it, too, faces demolition.
[size=-1]The old inHong Kong has always been discarded ruthlessly. “Hong Kong will belovely when they’ve finished it”, people used to joke, knowing thatreconstruction was a way of life. But recently a heritage movement hastaken root, seeking, against the odds, to cling on to bits of the past,even ones, such as the pier, with no obvious architectural charms.
[size=-1]My old photoshows what I thought then was a spectacular skyline (rendered all themore spectacular by a lurid purple sky—not a natural feature but theresult of damage to my film, which in those days could not be developedin China and had to be posted abroad). The bits of the skyline thatremain are dwarfed by newer towers—Norman Foster’s functionalmasterpiece for HSBC’s headquarters; the adjacent sleekly aggressiveBank of China tower; the silver glinting candle of IFC2. Hong Kongstill stands, with New York, as one of the great twentieth-centurycities.
[size=-1]I rememberhaving been shocked in 1976 by the cramped overcrowding of the tawdriertenements in Kowloon. Even the smooth waters of local Britishcomplacency had been ruffled two years before when an ex-policeman,Walter Easey, wrote a pamphlet called “Hong Kong: A Case to Answer”which attacked the cruelty, inequity and corruption of life in HongKong, and the lack of basic democratic freedoms.
[size=-1]Over theyears I kept coming back to Hong Kong—as a banker in the early 1980s,as a journalist seeking R&R from Beijing in the late 1980s andearly 1990s, and then as a resident BBC reporter. I became, like manyof my fellows, less preoccupied with the shame of Britain’s pastmisdeeds than with admiration for its achievements; and filled withanxiety or gloom about Hong Kong’s future under China.
[size=-1]I rather envyMr Shapiro: I do not remember having put the admiration and the gloomquite so well. But maybe that made me less wrong. My first impressionsare, as many old friends who have been here throughout tell me, thatvery little has changed.
[size=-1]The airportat Chek Lap Kok, a project intended in the 1990s to symboliseSino-British co-operation over Hong Kong, but in practice a proof ofthe two countries’ inability to agree about anything, operates withspeed and efficiency, two of Hong’s Kong famous attributes. My hotel isin Causeway Bay, a fine place to study a third attribute: congestion.Crowds and crowds of people bustle among brightly-lit shops andrestaurants.
[size=-1]The only notethat jars slightly with my memories is that I recall many Hong Kongpeople as being, well, brusque. Too busy getting on with life, manyseemed to have jettisoned courtesy as an optional extra. Yet in myfirst hours here, shopkeepers, waiters—even a taxi-driver—aremeticulously polite. Twice people on the MTR, the underground railway,alert me to my bad habit of leaving my shoulder bag gaping open. HasHong Kong gone soft? Or is it that, after a decade spent largely amongLondoners and Punjabis, my standards have changed?
[size=-1]========================================================================
[size=-1]http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9098919#tuesday
|
