![]() For months, tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets enveloped commercial hubs. This time, clashes between the police and protesters severed any filaments of trust. ![]() In 2019, millions of protesters marched on Queen’s Road and other avenues, just as they had done in the past to thwart unpopular government restrictions. The past three years have compressed time. ![]() The business establishment, drawn from the elite of Shanghai, London and Mumbai, among other cities, felt secure in the rule of law.įor more than a decade, Beijing largely abided by this political accommodation governing Hong Kong, called “one country, two systems.” The deadline of 2047, when Beijing would take full political control, seemed suitably distant, even if Hong Kongers have a habit of angling with forward intent. At the High Court, on a stretch of Queen’s Road called Queensway, judges wore wigs in the British fashion. In the first few years after the handover, legislators reveled in a power they had lacked for most of British rule, in a building designed by architects responsible for a part of Buckingham Palace. Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times 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. To had been there, Queen’s Road and its narrow alleyways had been a global crossroads. 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.Īs long as Mr. For all the permanence of the road’s landmarks, its people were less grounded, with scant control over the city’s future. 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. Named for Queen Victoria, the road traced the shoreline of an avaricious colonial power. 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. 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.įor the noodle maker To Wo, the city offered hope of a better life than the one he fled in China.Īt age 20, Mr. 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. 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. The storm held no greater meaning for To Wo, who ran the noodle shop with his family. Some people took the deluge as an omen of Communist control, others as a purifying ritual to cleanse Hong Kong of Western imperialism. ![]() 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. 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. 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. ![]()
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