The Telegraph – Online

It was supposed to be for a year. That’s such a Hong Kong cliché, I hesitate to write it: when I arrived in 1993, the colony (the word had fallen out of favour by then but the Union Jack still flew in its most remote corners) was full of people who’d never intended to stay. I don’t just mean the backpacking expats who came for a week and lingered. Most of the Hong Kong Chinese population had fled across the border from the mainland after Mao came to power in 1949. They thought they’d be going home soon, but they never did.