‘Everything in Hong Kong, Has Changed’: A Road to Reinvention
HONG KONG — On the day that Hong Kong was returned to China a quarter century ago, the noodle maker of Queen’s Road worked as he had done for days and decades before, mixing flour and water into sustenance for a city filled with refugees from the mainland. To satisfy the diverse tastes, he made tender Shanghai noodles and Cantonese egg pasta, slippery wonton wrappers from China’s south and thick dumpling skins beloved in Beijing.
When the five-starred flag of the People’s Republic of China replaced the Union Jack on July 1, 1997, it rained and rained, the water rising fast along Queen’s Road and its tributaries. Some people took the deluge as an omen of Communist control, others as a purifying ritual to cleanse Hong Kong of Western imperialism.
The storm held no greater meaning for To Wo, who ran the noodle shop with his family. Mr. To still had to work every day of every year, feeding dough into clanging machines and emptying so many bags of flour that everything was dusted white, even the shrine to the kitchen god.
“I was busy,” he said. “I didn’t have a lot of time for fear.”
In the 25 years since the handover, the only constant has been change, both defined and defied by the people of Queen’s Road, Hong Kong’s most storied avenue. All around them, a city has been transformed: by the dizzying economic expansion of mainland China threatening to make this international entrepôt unnecessary, but also by the crushing of freedoms by Hong Kong’s current rulers, who have filled jails with young political prisoners.
At age 20, Mr. To escaped privation in southern China to settle on Queen’s Road, the first thoroughfare built by the British after they seized Hong Kong as spoils from the Opium War.
Named for Queen Victoria, the road traced the shoreline of an avaricious colonial power. As the institutions of empire — banks, trading houses, schools, places of worship — sprouted along it, Queen’s Road was evolving, each influx of new arrivals reshaping its character. For all the permanence of the road’s landmarks, its people were less grounded, with scant control over the city’s future.
In 1997, the Chinese government promised Hong Kong significant autonomy for 50 years to preserve the liberties that made it a global financial capital, not to mention one of the most thrilling metropolises on the planet.
As long as Mr. To had been there, Queen’s Road and its narrow alleyways had been a global crossroads. There were financial houses built on fortunes from the opium trade, gold shops promising solid investments for survivors of political turmoil, European luxury labels and merchants of shark’s fin and herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine.
https://tnewstimes.com/2022/06/30/world/everything-in-hong-kong-has-changed-a-road-to-reinvention/
When the five-starred flag of the People’s Republic of China replaced the Union Jack on July 1, 1997, it rained and rained, the water rising fast along Queen’s Road and its tributaries. Some people took the deluge as an omen of Communist control, others as a purifying ritual to cleanse Hong Kong of Western imperialism.
The storm held no greater meaning for To Wo, who ran the noodle shop with his family. Mr. To still had to work every day of every year, feeding dough into clanging machines and emptying so many bags of flour that everything was dusted white, even the shrine to the kitchen god.
“I was busy,” he said. “I didn’t have a lot of time for fear.”
In the 25 years since the handover, the only constant has been change, both defined and defied by the people of Queen’s Road, Hong Kong’s most storied avenue. All around them, a city has been transformed: by the dizzying economic expansion of mainland China threatening to make this international entrepôt unnecessary, but also by the crushing of freedoms by Hong Kong’s current rulers, who have filled jails with young political prisoners.
At age 20, Mr. To escaped privation in southern China to settle on Queen’s Road, the first thoroughfare built by the British after they seized Hong Kong as spoils from the Opium War.
Named for Queen Victoria, the road traced the shoreline of an avaricious colonial power. As the institutions of empire — banks, trading houses, schools, places of worship — sprouted along it, Queen’s Road was evolving, each influx of new arrivals reshaping its character. For all the permanence of the road’s landmarks, its people were less grounded, with scant control over the city’s future.
In 1997, the Chinese government promised Hong Kong significant autonomy for 50 years to preserve the liberties that made it a global financial capital, not to mention one of the most thrilling metropolises on the planet.
As long as Mr. To had been there, Queen’s Road and its narrow alleyways had been a global crossroads. There were financial houses built on fortunes from the opium trade, gold shops promising solid investments for survivors of political turmoil, European luxury labels and merchants of shark’s fin and herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine.
https://tnewstimes.com/2022/06/30/world/everything-in-hong-kong-has-changed-a-road-to-reinvention/
