Last week, 30 years since I arrived in Hong Kong from Australia, I indulged in some personal nostalgia about the city I thought would be a temporary base on my way to somewhere else. (Sound familiar?) I commuted from a residential area that did not exist in 1978 - Discovery Bay - to places that now exist only in memory. The Dickensian red brick Sailors' & Soldiers' Home in Hennessy Road, Wan Chai, now The Wesley Hotel, was my first address in Hong Kong. Whenever the American fleet was in, the doorman would pad along the polished linoleum corridors whispering urgently to the female residents to 'lock your doors'. While 30 years is relatively recent for real old-timers, it afforded a glimpse of old Hong Kong in Central. Historic and 'haunted' Murray House, now reconstructed in Stanley, was in its original location, now the Bank of China site. Fringing Statue Square was the charming colonial era Hong Kong Club building, now a 1980s office block. Behind it was modern Sutherland House - where the Ritz Carlton Hotel later stood and is now no more - which housed the Foreign Correspondents' Club. Hong Kong was truly the epicentre of international media in Asia. Around the FCC bar was a generation of seasoned war correspondents and photographers who had covered recent conflicts in Indochina and were on call for the region's next hot spots. China-watching members pursued their mysterious craft over Saturday afternoon drinks as Deng Xiaoping consolidated his control of post-Mao-Zedong China. John Le Carre's espionage thriller The Honourable Schoolboy, for which Hong Kong and the FCC provided a colourful backdrop, had recently been published. Other essential books for the newly arrived included James Clavell's Tai Pan and Robert Elegant's Dynasty. In non-fiction, the 'must reads' were Myself a Mandarin by former New Territories special magistrate Austin Coates and, of course, Hong Kong: Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time by Richard Hughes, the 'doyen' of foreign correspondents. The end of Hong Kong's borrowed time as a British colony did seem far away in 1978. From Stanley to Shek Kong, there was a palpable British military presence and culture. Navy patrol boats were tied up in the heart of town at the Tamar Basin (now reclaimed). Set back between Central and Wan Chai was leafy Victoria Barracks (now Pacific Place and Hong Kong Park). The word 'Royal' was everywhere - the police, the jockey club, the yacht club. So were red mail boxes and stamps bearing the Queen's image. Under (then) Sir Murray MacLehose, who had been governor for six years, British Hong Kong was still building for the future. One of my first assignments as a South China Morning Post reporter was to investigate rumours that ceiling plaster was falling onto the wigs of judges in the Supreme Court (now the Legislative Council) building because of excavations below for the MTR. Hong Kong was a full-blown manufacturing centre, with pollution to match in many districts. After my first ride on the top deck of a bus to Tsuen Wan my face was dappled with soot. I learned to close windows, even though they were the only 'air conditioning' for most buses, trams and taxis. In the New Territories, I was astonished to find a genuine rural Hong Kong, with water buffalo, rice paddies, pig farms, fish farms and duck ponds. There was also a glint of cold war danger in the word 'frontier' that appeared on road signs further north, where British and Gurkha troops patrolled. The term 'Red China' was still commonly used. Few westerners were able to visit the mainland from Hong Kong. When they did, they 'went in' and 'came out', mostly by rail to the Canton Fair. While no longer sealed, China in 1978 was still alien, mysterious and frightening to many in Hong Kong. The Union Jack fluttering at the border stirred powerful feelings that history had made this a very special place. Jackie Chan was being hailed as Hong Kong's new kung fu movie action star, Lap Sap Chung, the cartoon litterbug, was everywhere in the 'Clean Hong Kong' campaign, the Rugby Sevens were still in their infancy, the Connaught Centre (now Jardine House) was the tallest building and the SCMP still relied on typewriters and telex machines. More than 2 million of today's Hong Kong people had not yet been born. Before resealing this personal time capsule, I am embarrassed to disclose my biggest surprise upon arriving that foggy day in 1978: I had no idea it would be so chilly. In ignorance, I came with a suitcase of clothes more suited for equatorial Singapore than sub-tropical Hong Kong. Shivering through my first week, I realised I had a lot to learn about my 'borrowed home'. Three decades later, in a Hong Kong that is ever more complex, some things never change. Sarah Monks is a contributing editor who first worked for the SCMP in 1978
