Chapter 1: Review
THE CHANGING FACE OF HONG KONG
TODAY'S traveller, approaching Hong Kong by air, has an incomparable view. He sees a cluster of islands, scattered like pieces from a jig-saw puzzle, round the indented Kowloon peninsula. In the distance, broken ranges of hills rise from a green mosaic of fields, the farms of the New Territories. Further away still, stretching to the curved rim of the horizon, is the vast land mass of China. As the plane sweeps down to Kai Tak Airport, the twin cities of Hong Kong come into view. One is the island city of Victoria- a long fringe of crowded buildings backed by steep green hills, from whose flanks sprout groups of tall white apart- ment blocks which, from the cabin window of the plane, look like sugar cubes. On the other side of the harbour, where the traveller will land, is Kowloon, a city laid out for the most part in neat rectangles, its skyline broken by many high buildings. Just before the plane touches down the traveller catches sight of a strip of soil, granite and tar- macadam projecting from Kai Tak Airfield into the sea. He has had a first view of one of Hong Kong's great modern constructions-a new runway, 8,000 feet long, which has been reclaimed from Kowloon Bay.
On the short taxi-ride from the airport to central Kow- loon, the traveller sees more evidence that he is moving into a whirlwind of construction, demolition and reconstruction. Round the perimeter of the airfield itself workmen are busy razing small hills and carving them into granite blocks for use in the seawalls of the new runway or in the airport's terminal buildings. Kowloon's main artery, Nathan Road, is a vista of bamboo scaffolding, slung round new buildings
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