Travel: Timeless island

‘Hong Kong is the most Chinese city on earth,’ says my old friend Jo McBride, who has lived there for more than 30 years. That may come as a surprise to those who knew the place as a resolutely British enclave of colonial officers, traders and bankers — of whom, long ago, I was one — and to more recent visitors reassured by the hands-off regime of Beijing’s stooges in the 15 years since they took over from our last governor, Lord Patten.

So hands-off, indeed, that most tourists still think of China as one destination and Hong Kong as another: a stateless stopover and giant shopping mall that constantly reinvents itself to the whims of global demand. If you’re really there just for handbags and gadgets at discount prices, you’ll barely need to step out of your hotel and you certainly won’t need a guidebook: fancy brand names are all around you. But (having paid the concierge to get you a visa) you might have more fun taking a day trip over what still feels like an international border to Shenzen to buy cheap fakes — and observing the stream of cash-rich mainlanders heading the other way to buy the real thing.

Of course shopping is essential to the Hong Kong experience. There’s a particular pleasure in having shirts and suits made to measure in 48 hours; on my most recent visit I tracked down my bargain-basement tailor from the 1980s, Paul Yui, now on the seventh floor of the Yip Fung Building in D’Aguilar Street (‘You put on weight?’ he greeted me, as ever). Even better, because you’d never do it at home and the difference in comfort is remarkable, is to have shoes or fancy evening slippers made at the little Mayer shop in the arcade of the Mandarin Hotel.