Fifteen years after the handover, as a generation that never knew colonial rule grows up, Hong Kong people still face an identity crisis over their relationship with the Chinese nation.
Are you a Hong Kong citizen first or a Chinese citizen? Or something in between?
The answers vary widely and prevailing views can change, depending on whether events on the mainland are seen as favourable or unfavourable.
Hongkongers are also finding their long-held assumption of superiority over mainlanders eroding as the economic growth of some cities and the wealth of their citizens outstrip Hong Kong. But this doesn't stop the growing number of mainland visitors being dubbed 'locusts'.
One edge Hong Kong still does have is its freedoms, and that contributes to the 'love-hate' relationship that many have with the mainland - especially as some see those freedoms as being eroded.
'I can firmly identify myself as a Chinese. I have a deep feeling for the nation, but it doesn't mean that I have to love the regime at the same time,' says activist Daisy Chan Sin-ying, who was sentenced to three weeks jail for disrupting a consultation forum on Legislative Council by-elections in September.