After 35 years involvement with the travel and tourism industry I am now semi-retired and teaching English in China. Consequently, I have been visiting, or more recently passing through, Hong Kong for many years. However, I have now ceased to be the avid promoter of Hong Kong that I used to be.
My first views of Hong Kong were in 1968, from a room high up in the Hilton Hotel. When I first went to China in 2001 I spent a week with friends visiting new places and looking around old haunts in Hong Kong. Since then I have spent the time waiting to change planes to look around and assess progress and development. I have decided I don't like what I see.
I think three things epitomise my disillusionment. Walking round the Peak I was surprised to see how much of the harbour between Central and Kowloon had been filled in. It may not now be needed for lighters to have enough room to unload freighters, but it does not look like the magnificent waterway it once was. Why not finish the job and fill in the bit of water left?
Looking from Kowloon one day I realised the 'Temples to Mammon' had broken the mountain ridge line on the island. I had always understood there was a planning rule which forbade that.
However, the nadir was reached when my bus zoomed past what used to be one of the top hotels in Central and I saw its famous front facade bricked up like a disused warehouse. I understand entry is now off a side street. No matter how expensive the place, who wants to enter through the servant's door?
Now that the people of Hong Kong have found their voice, on July 1, about political involvement in the region, could they now try getting concerned about the environmental and aesthetic impacts on Hong Kong that new management and commercial interests are having?
