I haven't quite lived half your life in Hong Kong but, since 1957, at first the rolled bundle and now the heavy folded pages of the SCMP have landed on my doorsteps in Conduit Road, Repulse Bay, Tsuen Wan, Yuen Long, the Peak, Pipers Hill, Tai Po, Tsing Lung Tau and now finally on an outlook over the steep wooded hills of Tai Tam reservoir. It has been always reliable, always there through riots, floods and revolutions.
For those of us that have lived here long, it seems as though we have lived many lives. We have seen the buildings of Central laid waste and rebuilt not once but twice (where are they now, those shaded colonnades with their proud flags of shipping lines?). It has never been dull, with always the SCMP to guide us with its sensible opinions written by sensible men. 'The common word exact without vulgarity, the formal word precise but not pedantic,' as T.S. Eliot said. That has been and remains its enduring contribution.
Now each morning I turn eagerly to the inside back page to read the contributions to the local and global debate, to the restless surge of opinion. Of course, it now has to pander to fashion with sometimes blindingly colourful full-page ads and to pay its way with its daily volume of situations vacant. It is less restrained, more colourful, with its huge photographs of the agony of footballers, fires and floods. I sometimes sadden, with the felled trees, that I am unable just to buy the bits I want, but this is the wasteful way of the world.
Now at its century not out innings, I wonder what it will be like in 2103, and wish it well.