Ever since that rain-soaked night 15 years ago when Hong Kong quick-stepped its way both back and forward in history, residents of this 'barren rock'' have faced the same question with monotonous regularity when they travel abroad: 'Has the place changed much since the handover?'
In most cases the questioner is simply making polite conversation; others who are more engaged but largely ignorant expect tales of tanks, secret police or, at the very least, the death of the English language. Then there are the tricky ones, the ones you dread most, who genuinely want to know the truth in its full and byzantine complexity.
At this point you reach for the not-inconsiderable lexicon of the man most people agree was the architect of the Hong Kong we have today, late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.
Thanks to Deng, in a conversational sleight of hand you can turn a stiff discussion about political change into a much more relaxed chat about the real stuff of life in this remarkable city: what ordinary folks like us do, as those who think they run our lives bluster on about filibustering and ramble endlessly over reinterpretation.
Diminutive, chain-smoking, giant of modern Chinese history he definitely was. But Deng was obviously also no slouch when it came to life away from politics.
While the merchants of doom, including the infamously downbeat issue of Fortune magazine, which declared 'The Death of Hong Kong' - only to revive the corpse five years later, went about their business, Deng reassured us in his own inimitable style that 'horse racing and dancing would continue to be prominent fixtures in Hong Kong'.
Clearly, his words had a deep political and cultural significance, as Michael Degolyer of the Hong Kong Transition Project points out: 'The horse racing reference was a pointed political point that the institutions which were widely seen as running Hong Kong - the government, HSBC and the Jockey Club - and not necessarily in that order, would continue to thrive.