Take politics out of the conversation on Cantonese and Mandarin, and use each language when needed

It may seem a strange thing to be saying in the current environment, but there was a time within living memory when most Hong Kong people paid little attention to politics. For most of us, the top priority was scraping together a living. For the tiny minority of movers and shakers, the prime objective was trying to build a business empire on this “barren rock with nary a house upon it”. 

Things began to change slowly in the late 1960s and early 1970s with growing affluence and the emergence of a community which saw Hong Kong as its permanent home, rather than as a jumping-off point for emigration. Attention then turned to basic issues like decent housing to replace squatter huts, education and dealing with the pervasive corruption.

One by one, these matters were addressed but politics was still pretty much a minority sport until the Sino-British agreement of 1984 on Hong Kong’s future. From then on, it gradually dawned on more people that we were going to have to play a greater role in running our own affairs. So we arrived at the Basic Law and the idea of Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong.