Commentary
Not all Hongkongers celebrate the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to mainland China on July 1. Some prefer the Hong Kong Festival on Jan. 26, the day that marked the beginning of British rule as the British navy landed on Hong Kong island in 1841. The tenth Hong Kong Festival, held this year in the U.K., celebrated the 182nd anniversary of the opening of Hong Kong. My two friends, Chung Kim-wah, Benson Wong, and I, representing Citizens of Our Time Learning Hub, an education platform for Hongkongers, held a talk on “What is Hong Kong?”
After Wong mentioned Hong Kong’s geographical features, I pointed out it is used in a number of popular songs in Hong Kong. For example, in the 1990 Pearl of the Orient by Taiwanese singer Luo Ta-yu, the lyric “The small river bends to the south” describes Hong Kong’s location at the mouth of the Pearl River. A 1969 song, Hong Kong Song, which is not as well-known as the former, repeats the line “Victoria Harbor, from the peak we can overlook far away” six times….