KNOWN AS THE SMILING tiger, Sir Denys Roberts spent 26 years at the heart of Hong Kong's colonial administration. Now, returning after more than a decade away, he feels a little lost in the urban jungle.
Raising his trademark bushy eye-brows, the man who spent nine years as Chief Justice said he was bewildered by the building boom in Central since his departure and found himself stranded in Queen's Road last week.
But 77-year-old Sir Denys, who epitomises a veteran colonial administrator, believes Hong Kong has not lost its way since the handover. 'One of the things that surprises you is that there is so little change in outlook. People think very much as they used to back then. There is little intervention from the mainland . . . it is quite remarkable how restrained they have been.'
Sir Denys has spent the past 2.5 weeks at the Court of Final Appeal, where he has been sitting, for the first time, in his capacity as a non-permanent judge. In his chambers at the Judiciary's flagship building, he branded protesting students 'a headache', and hit out at the last governor, Chris Patten, for almost 'pushing China too far' in the run-up to the handover.
One of the few changes which has not impressed him is the Court of Final Appeal building, which has one small courtroom and has been criticised for being too cramped. The judge, who is credited with establishing a string of new courts during his reign as Chief Justice in the 1980s, said: 'This really is a bit tight for a court. It is not ideal.'
He previously sat as a judge in the building in the early 1980s, when the old Supreme Court, now home to the Legislative Council, was being renovated. 'The Mass Transit Railway had gone under the old Supreme Court building and a couple of pieces had fallen off and nearly killed judges. So we moved here.'
The political and legal landscape has been transformed since the days between 1962 and 1988 when Sir Denys held the positions of Solicitor-General, Attorney-General, Chief Secretary and Chief Justice, earning his reputation as the 'super-bureaucrat'. But what has struck him most on his first return to the bench since sailing away on the Canberra in 1988 is how much has remained intact.