Hong Kong & Macau - The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia on a Budget - page 118

HONG KONG

Metres
1000

Shenzhen

CHINA

500
200

Pearl
River
Delta

Tai Mei Tuk

Plover Cove
Reservoir 0

New Territories

N

Yuen Long

Tai Po

Kam Tin

Pak Tam Au

Tai Mo Shan

Tuen Mun

Sai Kung
To w n
Po Lam

High Island
Reservoir

Tsuen Wan

Sunny
Bay

Kowloon

Hong Kong
Disneyland

Hong Kong
International Airport

Yau Ma Tei
Sheung Wan 3

Discovery Bay Tai Au Mun

Tiu Keng
Leng

Tsim Sha Tsui

Tung Chung Central Wan Chai

Chai
Wan

Mui Wo

Hong Kong
Island

Tai O

Victoria Peak

Aberdeen Tian Tan

Buddha Pui O

Repulse
Bay

Yung
Shue Wan

Lantau

Ocean
Park

Shek O

Stanley

Sok Kwu Wan

HIGHLIGHTS
Victoria Peak
Star Ferry
Outlying Islands
Dining scene

Cheung
Chau

Lamma

0 10

kilometres

tiny backstreet holds a surprise. South of
the main city, on Taipa and Coloane , are
beaches, parks and quiet villages where
you can sample a unique cuisine blending
Asian, European and African influences.

1841 British naval landing party plants the Union Jack at
Possession Point on Hong Kong Island.
1842 The Treaty of Nanking cedes to Britain “in perpetuity”
a small offshore island called Hong Kong, opens five ports
to foreign trade, abolishes the monopoly system of trade
and exempts British nationals from Chinese law.
1856-1860 Second Opium War: after more blockades
and a march on Beijing, China cedes Britain the Kowloon
peninsula and Stonecutters Island.
1898 As the Qing dynasty declines, Britain secures a
99-year lease on one thousand square kilometres of land
north of Kowloon, known as the New Territories.
1907 The drug trade is voluntarily dropped as Hong Kong
merchants switch from trade to manufacturing.
1941-45 Japanese forces occupy Hong Kong along with
the rest of eastern China.
1949 As mainland China falls to the communists,
many merchants, particularly from Shanghai, move to
Hong Kong.
1966-67 With the Cultural Revolution in full flow on the
mainland, pro-Red Guard riots break out in Hong Kong.
However, there is little support from Mao's regime and
they fizzle out.
1984 The Sino-British Joint Declaration is signed. Britain
agrees to relinquish the territory as long as Hong Kong
maintains a capitalist system for at least fifty years.
1988 The Basic Law is published as the constitutional
framework for the one country, two systems policy.

CHRONOLOGY
HONG KONG
4000-2500 BC The earliest inhabitants of the Hong Kong
area are Neolithic hunter-gatherers and fishermen.
214 BC Region is conquered by Chinese emperor Qin Shi
Huang and incorporated into imperial China for the first time.
1000-1400 AD The Five Clans - Tang, Hau, Pang, Liu and
Man - build their walled villages in what is now the
New Territories.
1557 Dutch and French traders come to the region,
following the Portuguese traders in Macau.
1683 British East India Company establishes a base in
China's Guangzhou province, and trades for silk, porcelain
and tea.
1773 British shiploads of opium arrive from India and
demand for the drug explodes in China.
1839 The first Opium War starts. Commissioner of
Guangzhou, Lin Zexu, forces the British to surrender their
opium, before ceremonially burning it.
1840 A naval expeditionary force is dispatched from
London; it blockades ports and seizes assets up and down
the Chinese coast for a year.