ENG-1965 — Page 27

REVIEW

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abstaining on the grounds that a four-lane tunnel was insufficient and another voting against it on the grounds that the franchise had not been put out to tender. The franchise was subsequently accepted by the Victoria City Development Company.

With so much happening in the urban areas it is perhaps easy to overlook the rural New Territories. There too, however, many of the old ways are giving place to the new and within the last decade there has been a marked change in the farming pattern. Paddy was formerly the most important crop, but with the increased demand for vegetables it has steadily given way to market gardening. The average return from rice cultivation has become lower than that from other types of farming and as a result the area of land under two-crop paddy decreased from 20,191 acres in 1954 to 12,050 acres in 1965. By contrast the total area under market gardens increased from 2,250 acres to over 8,000 acres. The land is intensively cultivated and as many as six to eight crops may be raised in a year. Inter- planting is commonly practised by growing long-term crops together with short-term ones and climbing types with the dwarf varieties. It is estimated that about half of Hong Kong's total vegetable require- ment is supplied from local production.

This, then, was Hong Kong 1965: A community of nearly four million people drawn from many different parts of the world and social backgrounds, yet all intimately linked with the Colony's problems, its aspirations—and above all its achievements. Those who return to Hong Kong after an absence of two or three years remark with something approaching awe on the changes that they find; those returning after longer periods say they hardly recognize the places they once knew. They are talking, of course, of the out- ward things-the 20-storey hotels and office blocks, the housing estates, the spread of the urban areas into places where there was country quiet until only a few years ago. Casual visitors take away impressions of a maelstrom of energy and activity. They talk, with admiration occasionally tinged with envy, of all that is being achieved in Hong Kong, and in doing so they add a little more stature to the Colony's reputation as a place where all things are possible and, seemingly, no problem insoluble.

Those who stay longer soon begin, like the residents of Hong Kong, to take the outward signs of progress for granted. It is then that they first become aware of the essential element that makes such