A RARE ALCHEMY
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threatening to engulf this tiny corner of China which history had temporarily vouchsafed to British governance. That it never did so was due as much to the good sense and resolution of the Hong Kong populace as to the steadfastness of our administration and the efforts, behind the scenes in Beijing, to avert the danger.
Crisis mainly external, mainly arising from causes beyond Hong Kong's control has never been long absent or far removed from the life of its people. Whether induced by political change, economic circumstance or natural phenomena, the risk factor is inherent in the conditioning of the Hong Kong temperament, as much to be taken into account as the daily meteorological forecast. People who live in a typhoon belt learn to build strong shutters. They know how to contain the damage and, if necessary, to rebuild and start afresh.
Change dramatic change - was thrust upon Hong Kong soon after it emerged from the Japanese occupation of World War Two. America imposed a trade embargo upon China for intervening in the Korean War, and Hong Kong, which had lived by the China trade, had to seek other means of survival. This it did through rapid industrialisation, to produce just about every product that not only America but any quarter of the world might need, or be induced to buy, even if hitherto ignorant of its existence.
Vivid among my early impressions of Hong Kong were scenes of hastily built flatted factories, erected by the government to house the thousands of little entrepreneurs staking their hard earned and often meagre capital on their ambitions to manufacture better, faster - and cheaper than their rivals. A stroll through the streets of San Po Kong or Sham Shui Po meant dodging the lorries, the baling trucks, the handcarts and the jostling, high-spirited labourers who knew what the word 'labour' stood for and were not afraid of it.
Meeting the boss of any of these factories, I would be persuaded that the arrangement was only temporary, that he would soon outgrow these rented premises and move to his own establishment. Meeting his staff, I would sense that their arrangement with him was only temporary, that they would soon acquire enough experience and capital to invest in their own factories.
Where, I wonder, have they since dispersed? Those bright, those energetic, incurably hopeful men and women with their unquenchable ambitions who typified and still typify
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- our population. What fortunes have they made, and possibly lost, and made again? The spectacle I witnessed then was of apparent chaos, but it worked, and from those tiered factory tenements emerged a prodigious flow of the thermos flasks, hand-painted porcelains, shoes, textiles, torches and plastic flowers which preceded the computers, quality garments, watches, cameras and highly sophisticated electronic components of today.
I quickly grasped the fact that where others spoke of returning home, the Cantonese of Hong Kong spoke of returning to work. The colloquial phrase faan gung (I) has precisely that meaning, placing the emphasis on the epicentre of their existence.
This concentration on the workplace, and on work itself as the very meaning of life, accounts for the appearance of Hong Kong and the manner in which it has evolved. If the concept of 'home' was transposed into the workplace, then that other location where one snatched a few brief hours of rest had to be as close by as possible, to reduce the amount of time taken up in travelling that could be more profitably employed in productivity.
Hence the emergence of what I regard as the most remarkable urban development in the world remarkable because it has responded to the dictates of the populace, rather than