A five-day weekend was declared, though no one closed shop. Retail sales were 30 percent to 40 percent above the usual. Important people had flown in from all over the globe. I saw the back of Margaret Thatcher’s head in my hotel lobby. On July 1 (“Dependence Day,” I guess) people who should have known better sent messages of cheer, fulsomely printed in the South China Morning Post: China has made important commitments to maintain Hong Kong’s freedom and autonomy. —Bill Clinton Hong Kong can be an even better place in which to live and work. —Madeleine Albright I feel pretty relaxed about it. —George Bush Skyrockets splattered in the evening skies. The British Farewell Ceremony for 10,000 invited guests had featured not only bands from the Scots Guards, Black Watch, and various other men without pants, but also the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and (I saw this) a dance troupe with performers dressed as giant deutsche marks, enormous circuit boards, and huge powdered wigs. At the other end of the lifestyle continuum, there was a One Nation Under a Groove 11 P . M . to 9 A . M . rave. In between were thousands of parties, from impromptu expat booze-ups in the Wan Chai lap-dancing district to dinners with courses incalculable by abacus at Hong Kong mogul David Tang’s China Club. Here the whole food chain was ravaged, from depth of sea slug to bird’s-nest height. The China Club is decorated colonial style in big-wallah mahogany, except the walls are covered with Mao-era socialist-realism art, and the waiters and waitresses are dressed as Red Guards. Meaning? I have no idea. I also have no idea why my hotel kept giving me handover gifts: a bottle of champagne, a coffee-table book about Hong Kong titled Return to the Heart of the Dragon (less ominous-sounding in Chinese, I gather), and a silver mug bearing crossed British and Chinese flags, and inscribed: Resumption of Sovereignty to
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