It was with a neat turn of history's wheel that a descendant of Lin Zexu, the Qing dynasty Imperial Commissioner who destroyed the opium in Canton, should deposit the Joint Declaration to the United Nations on June 12, 1985.
Ling Qing was then China's permanent representative to the United Nations as part of an impressive career that began as a student activist in Yenching University while Beijing was occupied by the Japanese.
Now a thin, dapper man of 75, he lives with his wife, a former ambassador to Sri Lanka, in a modern apartment a stone's throw from the old British Legation in the centre of Beijing.
From there, he is directing what he calls a nationwide movement to honour the memory of the man whose acts set in motion the Opium War and the transformation of Hong Kong island into a British colony.
'He had many achievements to celebrate but this campaign is all to do with the return of Hong Kong,' Mr Ling said.
The little house in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, where Lin Zexu was born is being restored and turned into a museum and a public park. Fujian television is showing an 18-part series on his life from July and bookshops nationwide are offering new editions of Lin Zexu's collected works.