Inside Out | Hong Kong: a feisty city on ‘borrowed time’
The rambunctious and impudent bravado is today barely perceptible. Self pity seems widespread. So is fear of the future
Rambunctious. Remember that word? That was the Hong Kong as seen in the 1970s by Richard Hughes in his immortal “Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time”.
It was the Hong Kong I arrived in, and was so inspired by. It was so different from the mean, miserable and cynical UK that I so eagerly fled.
Today, I have the rare opportunity to begin a new column for the SCMP. In broad terms it will aim to understand and describe the Hong Kong that has been home for over 30 years. It will explore the forces that are changing Hong Kong, both from the outside in, and from the inside out. – hence the name of the column.
Its people are different from China but are in the process of forging an identity as part of China
Needless to say, the Hong Kong of 2015 is not the Hong Kong of 1978 – the Hong Kong that Richard Hughes absorbed and described so perceptively. The full quote from his book is worth recalling: “Hong Kong is .. a borrowed place living on borrowed time… (it) is an impudent rambunctious free-booting colony, naked and unashamed, devoid of self-pity, regrets or fear of the future…”
Hong Kong is still arguably on borrowed time: until the “one country, two systems” transition period to 2047 comes to an end, so it will remain a city riddled with counter-intuitive anomalies. It is indelibly influenced by 150 years of neglectful British colonial rule. It and its people are different from China but are in the process of forging an identity as part of China.
Understanding and managing that process is proving difficult for Hong Kong people and its leaders. And it is frustrating leaders across the Mainland, who so often see Hong Kong as a petulant self-obsessed child lacking pride in the motherland and its achievements since 1978.
But much of what Richard Hughes described in the early 1970s has ebbed. The rambunctious and impudent bravado is today barely perceptible. Self pity seems widespread. So is fear of the future.
Sometimes, I fear Hong Kong has lost the unapologetic entrepreneurship that was perhaps the inevitable driver for refugees from Mainland chaos, and has instead become middle class, middle aged and managerial.