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Published on 07/28/1997 All articles from this issue

By Joanne Griffith Domingue

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Town Crier Staff Writer

Los Altos residents share observations of historic hand-over earlier this month

Inside Hong Kong

Editor's note: At the Town Crier's request, Los Altos resident and Hong Kong native Vivian Lee kept a journal during her June 19 - July 15 visit to Hong Kong. She, her husband and two daughters, traveled there to be with family and friends to experience the hand-over of the Crown Colony to China. Lee, a Stanford graduate and former journalist in Hong Kong, shares her observations and reactions with Town Crier reporter, Joanne Griffith Domingue.

The royal insignia is gone, and so is the word "royal" from the names of things. At midnight on June 30 the Royal Hong Kong Police turned into just the Hong Kong Police.

And the Hong Kong British Crown Colony became the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People's Republic of China, when it was officially handed over to China.

The first thing the police did was take "the (old) emblem off their hat(s) and put on the new one," said Vivian Lee, a Los Altos resident and Hong Kong native who had traveled with her husband and children to Hong Kong to spend the historic moment with family and friends.

Leftover emblems and other discarded royal trappings created one of the first results of the hand-over: a feeding frenzy for collectors.

Now "stamps, coins, anything with a crown on it is a collector's item," Lee said.

"People pay big money for a set of Hong Kong stamps with HR2 - the royal insignia on it."

Lee, her husband Daniel, an engineer with Hewlett Packard and also a Hong Kong native, and their two daughters, Danielle, 8, and Gabriella, 2, spent four weeks in Hong Kong.

As one flag over Hong Kong changed to another on June 30, the Lees joined family and friends at an "End of Era Party," eating Dover sole, beef Wellington and bread and butter pudding.

Then they "rushed home to watch the ceremonies on TV."

In June, before Lee traveled to Hong Kong, she "had a lot of doubts about Hong Kong being handed over to China.

"After I went back, my understanding grew a lot more.

"I felt sad that the British were going," she said. Lee had grown up singing "God Save the Queen" and is grateful to the British for "the legacy they left us: good courts, good laws, incorruptible judges, high quality civil service, a free press, good education."

Under British leadership Hong Kong grew into a world-class city.

But Lee acknowledges that many feel "a lot of national pride in seeing Hong Kong return to China. I think it's justified to feel pride in having your own territory back.

"Here's the tricky part - integrating the different values, Hong Kong British values, with China.

"Hong Kong people cherish their way of life. It's a hot topic with everybody debating if this way of life will last. You have to be positive," she said.

"Will it continue? That's the question," she said.

Lee was born in Hong Kong. After riots in her native city in 1967, a "spillover from the Cultural Revolution in China," she said, "many felt it a good idea to send their children abroad to school."

Her brother was sent to Canada, cousins went to England and Switzerland and Lee began prep school in Massachusetts.

From there she attended Stanford where she met Daniel Lee, also at Stanford, a graduate student in electrical engineering.

After graduating in 1975, Lee returned to Hong Kong and worked as a journalist. Daniel Lee never went back except to visit. After several years and a long-distance courtship that generated "huge phone bills - no e-mail then," the Lees were married in Hong Kong and moved to the United States.

In 1986 they bought their home in Los Altos, which they kept and rented during Daniel Lee's five-year assignment to Japan with Hewlett Packard.

Daughter Danielle was born in Japan and came home to Los Altos fluent in Japanese. She attends a Japanese immersion school in Sunnyvale and does her school work in Japanese. At home she speaks Chinese with her parents. And she chats in English about her view of the hand-over.

She liked staying a long time in Hong Kong and the two consecutive nights of fireworks.

Both Lees believe it is important that Hong Kong preserve the legal and civil system in place that enabled Hong Kong to grow into the premier city it is today.

Daniel Lee said he is "bullish" on Hong Kong's future.

He sees Hong Kong being "very different under the new system. A lot of work needs to be done. The (new Hong Kong) leader needs to develop a trust with the Hong Kong people as well as with the Chinese government," he said. "The next six months will set the pace for the next few years."

For his family and friends in Hong Kong, "I'm not worried for them."

But Ruth Chu is.

She and her husband own Chef Chu's restaurant in Los Altos. Their son, Larry, 24, a recent UCLA graduate, works in Hong Kong.

"The day before the hand-over, I told him, 'Watch what you are typing and e-mailing. Watch what you're saying. You never know who's taking notes.' I worry," she said.

Chu was born in Taiwan. In 1947 her parents had fled the Communists in Shanghai and escaped to Taiwan. Her view of the hand-over is forever influenced by her family's history, their stories about another time when Communist Chinese took over.

When Chu's son finished college, he had a job with Arthur Anderson in San Francisco. But first he headed to Asia for a backpacking trip before starting work in California.

He got to Hong Kong and never left.

"What a crazy boy," Chu said. "He had a job here, no job there."

Soon he had a job there and was telling his mother how much he loved Hong Kong.

But since the hand-over, "I'm always afraid," Chu said. "They (China) could change their policy at any time. I tell him to keep his eyes open."

Lee is more optimistic.

"The great majority of things have not changed," she said, with the hand-over. "That's why I'm hopeful. If the Chinese keep their promises of Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong, of a high degree of autonomy, of one country with two systems - those are the buzz words," things should work, she said.

"The Chinese government needs to sit back and look and keep their hands off. And they are doing it," Lee said. "I appreciate the self control they are having right now. It could be a lot worse. I believe it is up to the Hong Kong people to make their own future."

Lee believes all the ingredients are in place to make that possible: "The hardworking Chinese are there; the values are there; China is booming; and Hong Kong is very educated. There is no reason Hong Kong should go down the hill," Lee said.

"Unless." She paused.

"Unless the army does something inappropriate, the Communist Party does something inappropriate and the Hong Kong people are afraid to uphold their values."