Lunar New Year is fast approaching, and little has changed for Hong Kong’s foreigners over the years, with the festival’s inconvenience and expense a source of wry amusement for some, irritation for others.

Lying on almost the same latitude, Calcutta was the inspiration for many building design features in Hong Kong, including deep verandas, high ceilings, chick blinds and shutters.

Being confined in hotel quarantine in Hong Kong is nothing compared to the hotel internment endured under Japanese occupation. And Penny’s Bay is paradise compared to the Stanley camp internees were moved to.

World War II-themed memoirs and stories of colonial life have given way to accounts from policemen and those clearly written in response to earlier works to ‘set the record straight’.

Soil dug from the bottom of fish ponds, known as Canton mud, was prized by gardeners for its fine grains and good drainage. Plants such as ink orchids, water lilies and lotus thrive in it.

Flashy decorations, snow-covered Christmas trees and Santa Claus – they’re part and parcel of the Hong Kong festive season now, but how did the city celebrate the Christian festival in the past?

Chinese-American photographer Francis Wu specialised in black-and-white portraiture, while his evocative images of Hong Kong are a poignant reminder of days gone by.

Chinese eggs collected from countless villages fed a Shanghai factory that exported 4-gallon cans of them to the UK. After 1949, Hong Kong sold preserved eggs to North America – those from Communist China were banned.

Recent deaths in Hong Kong’s road-racing black spots highlight an issue that has been a problem since the 1920s, with feeble attempts to stop it doing little.

Private museums, their curations reflecting the interests of their patrons, blazed a trail across 19th century Asia for the publicly funded ones that followed – like the one at Hong Kong’s first City Hall, opened in 1869.

Political cartoons once captured the spirit of the times, but in Hong Kong they are a dying art. Is it any wonder when the city’s leaders are so uninspiring?

Goose-stepping disciplined services in Hong Kong – it couldn’t be true, could it? But it was. To stay sane these days, add the works of George Orwell to your copy of Alice in Wonderland, a wit might say.

Hong Kong’s heritage is a victim of the city’s success, killed off by massive urban renewal and soulless revitalisation projects which are hardly tourist magnets.

Nepalis in Hong Kong celebrate Dussehra every October – and what a party it was when the Brigade of Gurkhas was in Hong Kong in full force.

Anniversary of the Wuchang uprising that led to the Republic of China was always a cause for raucous celebration in Kam Tin in Hong Kong’s New Territories, its roads bedecked with Nationalist flags.

With political participation becoming pointless in Hong Kong, as it was until the 1950s under colonial rule, it is illustrative to see which sorts of people still hanker after public office.

Hats were usually chosen for practical reasons in Hong Kong – take the ones sedan chair bearers wore, their pattern indicating the dialect they spoke.

Mid-Autumn Festival is a reminder of a time when everything was seasonal, and everyone looked forward to celebrating with mooncakes, lanterns and other traditions.

Beatrix Potter-esque books set in the English countryside were completely meaningless to children born and raised in East Asia – who read books set in more familiar surroundings.

A young English stockbroker, new in Hong Kong in the late 1960s, burped loudly after a Chinese banquet, thinking it was good manners. However, times had changed.

Macau had long been a backwater, so when opportunity arose in the 19th century many ‘local Portuguese’ – in fact largely Eurasians – left for Hong Kong and Shanghai.

From the Professional Teachers’ Union and Civil Human Rights Front to groups pushing niche projects such as conserving former military installations, Hong Kong civil society is in retreat.

One of the world’s shrewdest interpreters of Chinese Communist actions and intentions, Hungarian Jesuit priest Father Laszlo Ladany gave his ‘10 Commandments’ for other analysts in 1982.

Hong Kong food hawkers are a dying breed, their demise a loss for the city’s culture. The recent shambolic launch of food trucks in their place was doomed to fail, as stifled by red tape as the hawkers are.

The handover of Hong Kong to China loomed large, as did the last governor, Chris Patten, in the run-up to 1997. A new airport was built, and BN(O) passports arrived.

Anecdotes are not data, but gather enough of them and they tell a story. Hong Kong is seeing the flower of its youth leave – permanently – and there is no point officials denying it.

What are the essentials you would take if you had to flee for your life? Probably not the silver hair brush and jade necklace one Hong Kong resident grabbed in December 1941 when the Japanese invaded.

Quarantines, cancelled flights and complicated routes are the new normal for travellers, echoing some of the difficulties faced during wartime.

A decorated officer who fought alongside the Chindit guerillas against Japanese soldiers in Burma during World War II, ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert taught your columnist a lesson on a visit to Hong Kong, where he had also served.

Whether offering a ‘home from home’ or facilities unavailable in tiny gardenless flats, private clubs have been popular in Asia since the 19th century.