Hong Kong

The islands and the peninsula were farming, fishing and salt-making country on the southern edge of the Chinese empire, with a Qing-era walled town at Kowloon and pirate anchorages among the outlying islands. That changed after the First Opium War, when China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in 1842. Kowloon followed in 1860, and in 1898 the New Territories were leased for 99 years — the clause that eventually set the timetable for the handover.

Britain ran the place as a free port. Trade with China, then shipping and banking, drew merchants, labourers and refugees, and the colonial city spread along the harbour with praya reclamations pushing the shoreline outwards. Japan occupied the territory from 1941 to 1945, a period of severe hardship in which the population fell sharply. Afterwards, waves of refugees from the Chinese civil war and from Mao's China arrived in enormous numbers, living at first in hillside squatter settlements; the fire at Shek Kip Mei in 1953 pushed the government into building public housing on a scale that still shapes the city.

Textiles, plastics and electronics made Hong Kong an industrial exporter, and from the 1970s manufacturing moved across the border into Guangdong while the city turned to finance, logistics and services. The Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 set the terms of the return, and on 1 July 1997 Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of China under the Basic Law, with its own currency, immigration and common-law courts. The decades since have brought the Umbrella Movement of 2014, the protests of 2019, the National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020 and a further local security law in 2024, and an emigration wave of several hundred thousand residents.

Hong Kong culture is Cantonese and Han Chinese at its core, with a local identity shaped by a century and a half apart from the mainland: the common law, English in officialdom, Christian schools beside Taoist temples, and institutions from horse racing to the Star Ferry. Chinese tradition is strong and practical — ancestral rites, feng shui consulted before a building goes up, incense coils burning in temples, and a calendar of festivals from Lunar New Year to the Tai Hang fire dragon dance.

The city's cultural reach has been far larger than its size. Cantopop filled Chinese-speaking radio from the 1970s, and Hong Kong cinema — the action films of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, the art films of Wong Kar-wai — travelled worldwide, though the film industry has contracted. M+ and the Palace Museum in West Kowloon have given the city large-scale public collections for the first time.

Everyday manners are brisk rather than cold: queues are orderly, service is fast, tea is poured for others before oneself, and thanks for it are given by tapping two fingers on the table. Long hours, tiny flats and an intense focus on property and money are softened by the rituals of yum cha, night markets and weekend hikes in the country parks. Press freedom and the rule of law were long regarded as the city's defining strengths; both have narrowed sharply since 2020, and political subjects are handled carefully in public.

About 7.5 million people live in one of the most densely populated territories on Earth, most of them in high-rise flats among the world's smallest and least affordable; subdivided flats house the poorest, and public housing estates house close to half the population. Yet much of the land is country park and nature reserve, so the hills and the coast are never far from the towers, and a ridge walk can start a short bus ride from the financial district.

The economy runs on banking and finance, trade and logistics, professional services and tourism, the last now dominated by mainland visitors. Cantonese is the home language for most; the population is ageing; and the emigration wave after 2020 has been partly offset by arrivals from the mainland. Many households employ live-in domestic workers from the Philippines and Indonesia, who gather in their thousands in Central and Victoria Park on Sundays, their day off.

Daily life leans on the MTR and the Octopus card, on eating out almost every day because kitchens are small, and on a rhythm set by the working week, the racing calendar and, in summer, the typhoon signals that can grant a sudden day off. Crossings to Shenzhen for shopping and meals have become routine again, and housing cost remains the dominant grievance.

Hong Kong is one of the high points of Cantonese cooking. Yum cha — tea taken with dim sum — is the social meal, at its best in a loud hall in the late morning: har gow prawn dumplings, siu mai, cheung fun rice rolls, and baked or steamed char siu buns. Siu mei, the roast meats hanging in shop windows, run to char siu pork, soy chicken and roast goose, served over rice. Wonton noodles, claypot rice, congee and steamed fish are the everyday staples, and dai pai dong stalls turn out stir-fries with the scorched flavour known as wok hei.

The cha chaan teng, or tea restaurant, is the city's own invention and its comfort food: milk tea strained through a cloth sleeve until it is strong and smooth, pineapple buns with a slab of butter, macaroni in soup with ham, thick French toast, and yuenyeung, coffee and tea mixed together. Bakeries sell egg tarts and cocktail buns; street stalls sell egg waffles, curry fish balls, stinky tofu and roasted chestnuts in winter.

At the other end are hundreds of high-end kitchens, a large number of Michelin stars, and every regional Chinese cuisine along with Japanese, Korean, Thai, South Asian and European food, a legacy of the city's role as a crossroads. Seafood is eaten at the harbourside in Sai Kung and on the islands, chosen live from tanks. Hotpot in winter and typhoon-shelter crab in the night markets are the meals people gather around.