My family and I were lucky to be in Hong Kong at an ideal time.
The troubles with Mao and communism were over, and the threat of what would happen in 1997 was not a real worry.
The ‘colonial expatriate’ had a good life.
Sure Hong Kong was overcrowded, dirty, noisy, dangerous in places and hot.
But it was lively, exciting and unpredictable.
Where else on earth can the skyline change from this
Old Hong Kong
to this
Where as described in my novel, The Hong Kong Circle, the population can rise from 600,000 at the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945 to 2 million by 1950, to 6 million when we lived there in the 1970’s to over 7 million today.
Where a small place can be termed the fifth most important city in the world (after New York, London, Paris and Tokyo).
Where it is one of the world’s leading financial centres
and where for example the Hong Kong Cricket Club could change from this when I was a member in 1974, when they had a pitch and an old club house right in the ‘Central’ (business) area of Hong Kong.
to a modern club with all sorts of facilities at Wong Nei Chong Gap. A place where I had my characters fighting the Japanese just before Christmas 1941 in my novel.
Their web site Hong Kong Cricket Club describes the current facilities.
A far cry from when they opened forty years ago and where my three children eventually, and with much laughter and derision, taught me how to dive and pick up coins from the bottom of the Club swimming pool.