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>>>But re the Opium Wars : it wasn't the most sterling use of British imperial power from a moral point of view, but made a whole lot of sense from the 'sterling' point of view. The Qing were definitely not an enlightened regime with the best interests of its own people at heart but there isn't much doubt the opium trade was about as blatant an exercise of flexing military muscle in pursuit of economic gain as could be imagined.
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>>You ain't whistling "Dixie"!
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>>>That said, it was, by 19th century standards ( and everything that had come before ) pretty much within the rules of the game and did yield Hong Kong and the opening of the Chinese market through the Unequal Treaties.
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>>>I don't think taking Hong Kong was as much of a bad thing as giving it back <s> but in the long run, Hong Kong may be the poison pill for Mao's madness.
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>>A commonly held belief is that we only had HK till 1997 when we had to give it back. Actually it was ceded to GB "in perpetuity". It was the "New Territories" that were leased till 1997. However in returning the NT to the PRC it was realised that HK couldn't really thrive without them. This is because Hong Kong's new airport, shipping ports, reservoirs and other vital installations were (and are) all in the New Territories. Had only the New Territories been returned to China, it would also have been difficult to accommodate those New Territories residents moving to the Kowloon Peninsula and Hong Kong Island, never mind feed and water the island.
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>>I visited there in c. 1995 btw - a fantastic place - but one could see the encroachment and the inevitability of PRC even then.
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>Yeah, i know there wasn't much choice - PRC could have shut off the water at any point.

Not that we could have sent a gun boat to bully them into letting us keep it all anyway! :-)

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>One of my scariest memories is the first time I flew into the old Kai Tak airport there ( late 60s ) All your could see out the window next to the plane was water at the moment of touchdown. Weirdly close to buildings and mountains on the approach as well. Actually scarier than landing in the mountains in Laos in a Pilates Porter crosswind at night by torchlight.

I loved that coming in to land, practically looking in people's windows and seeing what they were having for supper :-). Sadly it's a phenomenon that nobody will ever again experience with the new airport.

During our roaming around Kowloon we visited onew of the old-style wharf areas, where there were loads of lobster and crabs in a market. You could select your crustacean then take it to one of the many restaurants to cook. Only every 10 mins or so there was this absolutely disgusting synthetic smell that I couldn't place. After a while I twigged that planes were coming over at the same frequency and that it was presumably unburnt a/c fuel and exhausts :-)