The Other Handover

During the heyday of colonial rule in Hong Kong, the shorthand of speech was telling: "the Club" was the Hong Kong Club, and "the Bank" meant the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. The people who mattered belonged to the former and banked at the latter. And most of the people who mattered were either British or had very strong ties to the British establishment. Not a single Chinese person occupied a leading post in the government, and business was dominated by the big hongs, or trading houses, controlled by old English and Scottish families.

That cozy world tumbled...