Hong Kong
They have moved the Star Ferry. How could they move the Star Ferry? The view of the harbour from my room at the Ritz-Carlton should be one of the great sights of Asia. But it is a building site of land being messily reclaimed and another corner of the ‘perfumed’ harbour getting paved over. I was here only six months ago but now Queen’s Pier has gone, the Star Ferry Pier has gone and those iconic green-and-white ferries have been shunted out to where you catch the boats to the outlying islands. Visitors to Hong Kong will never again ride the Star Ferry looking for the ghosts of William Holden and his Suzie Wong. But how can you complain about change in Hong Kong? It is like whining that the Arctic is a bit parky.
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‘I’ll have a dry sherry,’ someone murmurs at the bar of the Hong Kong Club, a sentence I haven’t heard since, oh, Frinton in 1974.
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