SUN Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Emperor Hirohito may not be the names that immediately spring to mind when thinking of those who changed Hong Kong the most over the past 90 years.
But the revolutionaries who ruled China - or at least those parts of it closest to the territory's borders - after the revolution of 1912, and the Emperor of Japan and his local surrogate, governor Rensuki Isogai, would have the strongest claim to having done just that.
Isogai at least has a permanent monument to his importance in the form of Government House, which he rebuilt in a conscious blend of Western and Japanese styles on the foundations of the tumble-down colonial mansion he took over.
But the Japanese strutted the Hong Kong stage at a period when the South China Morning Post was unable to publish.
And while the influence of the Chinese leaders was felt in the vast waves of refugees that spilled across the border, in the unrest they whipped up in the 1920s and 1960s and the effects of their extraordinary social, economic and political experiments -to say nothing of the military crackdown of June 4, 1989 - it is the deeds and buildings of Hong Kong people and their British rulers that will be remembered here.
Throughout its short history, Hong Kong has been a city in permanent ferment. So many people have contributed to changing its face and character, in business, infrastructure and politics that a full list would be impossible to draw up.
One of the first and most prominent, however, must be Sir Matthew Nathan, a trained engineer and clear-headed economist who governed the colony with skill and imagination from 1904 to 1907.
