People often lament changing times because change usually comes at the expense of things they have grown to like and find hard to imagine doing without. Alas, it is difficult to resist change, and even harder to turn back the clock.
The exception proves the rule, as the saying goes, and one change of sorts has added a happy footnote to a story of the times in Hong Kong. Earlier this year, soaring rents forced the famous Tai Cheong bakery to close its shop in Lyndhurst Terrace after 51 years. The news caused such an outcry that anyone who did not know of the bakery soon learned that, according to former governor Chris Patten, it made the best egg tarts in the world.
As we report today, the bakery was back in business yesterday in Lyndhurst Terrace, although not in its former tiny premises. The new shop is bigger and better. We await the next visit by Lord Patten, due back here next month, for his verdict whether the same is true of the egg tarts. But it is safe to say that the proprietor and his many devoted customers have saved a Hong Kong icon from becoming just a memory of bygone days, even if they have not exactly turned back the clock.
This is just one example of the pressures on our urban culture that arise from the power of property in our economy. Such pressures underscore the importance to our dense population, starved of urban open space and deprived of access to most of the harbour coastline, of the recreational and cultural value of our rural areas.
An outstanding example, the fishing village of Tai O in the northwest of Lantau Island, known as the 'Venice of Hong Kong' because of its stilt houses, is also a victim of change. A group of young architects is trying to revive old times with a plan to save the village's unique heritage and tourism potential.
Settled more than 200 years ago by one of the earliest groups of immigrants to Hong Kong, the Tanka people, Tai O's traditional sources of income - fishing, salt production and salted products - have been in decline for decades.