YP Letters: Marking 20 years since Hong Kong handover

I CALLED at the Impressions gallery in Bradford recently to see its latest exhibition The Queen, the Chairman and I by Kurt Tong, an award-winning photographer.

The exhibition marks the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China from British 
rule.

Hong Kong is a place of 
great beauty, the former Labour MP and Chancellor Denis 
Healey, a keen photographer, described the view over Hong Kong from the peak as one of the wonders of the world in his autobiography The Time of My Life.

Margaret Thatcher once said she would never surrender sovereignty, but was persuaded otherwise.

Ceding Hong Kong to Britain was seen as humiliation with no benefit to the Chinese, its loss of sovereignty put it at the mercy of foreign powers. When the Peoples’ Republic of China 
was proclaimed in 1949, as 
many as 100,000 people a month fled to Hong Kong and in the 1980s and 1990s the economy boomed.

The exhibition takes a fresh look at Chinese culture. Kurt Tong will give a talk on January 21.