Despite the repeated promise of 'no change for 50 years', something in Hong Kong will still have gone for good after June 30. As a photojournalist for 20 years, Wong Kan-tai vows to record the fading traces of colonial Hong Kong.
Since last year, he has been snapping the things and people he thinks will not survive the transition to Chinese rule of the soon-to-be-former British colony.
'When everybody rushes to take all possible shots of Tung Chee-hwa, I would rather focus on Chris Patten,' says the 40-year-old. 'It's just like people taking pictures in front of a building which will soon be demolished.' In the past few months, foreign journalists have streamed into Hong Kong. Each of them will come up with their own interpretation of Hong Kong's unification with the motherland. But Wong will supply a crucial piece for this journalistic mosaic.
The return of Hong Kong's sovereignty, Wong says, has to be covered by Hong Kong people themselves, no matter how many foreign journalists come here.
'I'm not saying Hong Kong people are better than anybody else. But without our own participation the picture can never be complete. What do the Hong Kong people think about the whole issue? How do they feel? All these things have to be filled in by ourselves.
'Our photographic techniques may not be as good as them. But it's our identity, not our technique, that matters. After all, it's us, the Hong Kong people, who will be affected.' A former photographer for Wen Wei Po, Wong left the paper after the Tiananmen crackdown. He then spent four years studying photography in Japan. In 1990, he published Tiananmen '89, a collection of 63 photographs of the student movement in Beijing.