Hong Kong stands at the crossroad of vastly different worlds and is the meeting point of cultures where the profound wisdom of the east faces up to the youthful brashness of the west, where the tranquillity of a Chinese garden clashes with the exuberance of the stock market, where capitalism flourishes under communist rule and all come away richer for having interacted with the other.

To the discerning traveller, Hong Kong presents two faces – the old and the new in a harmonious interplay seen in street scenes where venerable old men in traditional attire shuffle alongside brisk paced young men in pinstriped suits, in the juxtaposition of ancient Chinese pagodas with high rise temples of commerce and trade. The chiaroscuro of contrasts in Hong Kong is limitless, as glittering malls sell designer wear cheek by jowl with traders hawking ready-mades, as laptops rub elbows with joss sticks in the space and grace of a home in Victoria Peak as it looks down upon the congestion of houseboats in Kowloon Harbour and in the smallness of an island that houses an entire world of international business.

Hong Kong is the ‘City of Life’ - the one place where Mammon is unashamedly worshipped, where the lure of lucre seduces even the most spartan, where entrepreneurs are ‘stars’, where energy and economic activity fuse together to create unimaginable wealth for the enterprising and where loss of ‘face’ is more painful than the loss of an empire.