Every day, thousands of shoppers pour in from mainland China to return weighed down with designer carrier bags. Outside the main Chanel store, there is still a long queue at past 10pm.
One thing you won't see, though, however hard you look, is any trace of the People's Republic of China and the ideology that is so diametrically opposed to all this capitalism.
During our three-day visit of China tour deals, communism makes only one coy appearance.
After dark, the skyscrapers around Victoria Harbour put on a collective light show, underlining what regular guys these business people are.
The show is best seen from a luxurious junk named Aqualuna, in a rather non-Chinese way. Towards its end, the junk's piped disco track dies away and a solemn voice lists the creators of the spectacle: 'HSBC... Samsung... Hitachi... Canon... the Chinese People's Liberation Army...'
Next day, we travel, by Britishlooking double-decker bus, to the south of Hong Kong Island, where its best beaches are to be found for fantastic Hong Kong tour.
On the journey, we pass Repulse Bay, which commemorates a famous British naval victory against pirates in the early 19th century (nowadays, our mariners probably would just look on, wringing their hands and talking about risk-assessment).
Overlooking the bay, there used to be an old hotel, famous for its roast-beef-and-Yorkshire Sunday lunches. I once drank whisky sours there with legendary foreign correspondent Murray Sayle - he who once defined a journalist's most essential attribute as 'rat-like cunning'.
The end of the line is Stanley Market, a seemingly endless labyrinth of stalls selling such traditional Chinese goods as Def Leppard T-shirts and multicoloured backpacks.
Others display lingerie or tablecloths, with labels handwritten in English as they used to be in old-fashioned London stores: 'Very stylish'... 'Exceptionally popular'... 'Something a little different.'
Our hotel, the Mandarin Oriental in Connaught Street, is one of the island's strongest links with the past. Built in 1963, it was the first in today's worldwide chain of Mandarin Orientals - a brand that for me, in whatever country, always comes pretty near perfection.
When this one opened 50 years ago, as just the Mandarin, its 27 floors made it Hong Kong's tallest building. It was also the first hotel in Asia to offer en-suite baths with every room, prompting its bemused architect to ask: 'Is every guest going to be amphibious?'
The island now boasts two Mandarin Orientals within a short walk of each other, but only Connaught Street's has the wood-panelled Captain's Bar where far-from-home Brits can drink draught beer from their own engraved silver tankards just as they might in days gone by on Sunday mornings in Surrey's stockbroker belt.
In its Clipper Lounge - lined with black-and-white photographs of women from 1963 with beehive hair and men in mohair suits - Hong Kong's biggest deals are said to be done over English-style afternoon tea with scones and rose-petal jam.
The last time I visited Hong Kong for my best tours of China, my most memorable meal was fish-lip and crabs' egg soup on a ramshackle floating restaurant in Aberdeen Harbour. This time, it's a ten-course lunch in the Mandarin's exclusive Krug Room, prepared by German celebrity chef Uwe Opocensky and themed to the hotel's 50th anniversary.
Our dessert, recalling another notable construction from more than 50 years ago, is a chocolate model of the Berlin Wall. We feel thoroughly weird, demolishing this symbol of old-fashioned Western communism at the epicentre of the new-style Eastern kind.
Many Hong Kong Chinese feel nostalgia for the days of British rule, especially the older generation who sought refuge here from mainland China during the brutal Mao Zedong era.
I talk to Jimmy Lau, the Mandarin Oriental's immaculate 'concierge-ambassador', who arrived from Shanghai with his grandfather when he was a small boy and earned his first living as a child busker.
Our hotel, the Mandarin Oriental in Connaught Street, is one of the island's strongest links with the past. Built in 1963, it was the first in today's worldwide chain of Mandarin Orientals - a brand that for me, in whatever country, always comes pretty near perfection.
When this one opened 50 years ago, as just the Mandarin, its 27 floors made it Hong Kong's tallest building. It was also the first hotel in Asia to offer en-suite baths with every room, prompting its bemused architect to ask: 'Is every guest going to be amphibious?'
The island now boasts two Mandarin Orientals within a short walk of each other, but only Connaught Street's has the wood-panelled Captain's Bar where far-from-home Brits can drink draught beer from their own engraved silver tankards just as they might in days gone by on Sunday mornings in Surrey's stockbroker belt.
In its Clipper Lounge - lined with black-and-white photographs of women from 1963 with beehive hair and men in mohair suits - Hong Kong's biggest deals are said to be done over English-style afternoon tea with scones and rose-petal jam.
The last time I visited Hong Kong for my best tours of China, my most memorable meal was fish-lip and crabs' egg soup on a ramshackle floating restaurant in Aberdeen Harbour. This time, it's a ten-course lunch in the Mandarin's exclusive Krug Room, prepared by German celebrity chef Uwe Opocensky and themed to the hotel's 50th anniversary.
Our dessert, recalling another notable construction from more than 50 years ago, is a chocolate model of the Berlin Wall. We feel thoroughly weird, demolishing this symbol of old-fashioned Western communism at the epicentre of the new-style Eastern kind.
Many Hong Kong Chinese feel nostalgia for the days of British rule, especially the older generation who sought refuge here from mainland China during the brutal Mao Zedong era.
I talk to Jimmy Lau, the Mandarin Oriental's immaculate 'concierge-ambassador', who arrived from Shanghai with his grandfather when he was a small boy and earned his first living as a child busker.
Before Jimmy joined the Mandarin group 42 years ago, he tells me, he worked as an inspector for Hong Kong's energy supplier, China Power and Light, with a beat that included the notorious Walled City of Kowloon.
This was an area in the centre of Kowloon that officially belonged to China, but which it could not administer and which Hong Kong's colonial government dared not. As a result, it was completely lawless, a centre of the opium trade and safe haven for the Triads, the Chinese mafia.
Coincidentally, my previous Hong Kong visit was to write a magazine article about the Walled City. I remember how its unregulated buildings stood so close together that the streets were permanently dark, and residents on the top floors could step from one block to another via their windows. Hong Kong recent years makes contribution to China tourism.
It was bulldozed flat years ago, Jimmy Lau tells me, and is now a public park. From the hotel in Connaught Road, a short walk leads to Hong Kong's very own Soho in the foothills of the Peak. Those who don't fancy a steep climb can take the world's longest outdoor escalator.
In Soho's hilly markets, bargaining for a jade necklace or a carved wooden box, you might think you'd finally escaped Britain's lingering embrace. But not so.
Among the sizzling food stalls, one seems vastly more popular than all others, and its permanent queue is entirely Chinese.
This was an area in the centre of Kowloon that officially belonged to China, but which it could not administer and which Hong Kong's colonial government dared not. As a result, it was completely lawless, a centre of the opium trade and safe haven for the Triads, the Chinese mafia.
Coincidentally, my previous Hong Kong visit was to write a magazine article about the Walled City. I remember how its unregulated buildings stood so close together that the streets were permanently dark, and residents on the top floors could step from one block to another via their windows. Hong Kong recent years makes contribution to China tourism.
It was bulldozed flat years ago, Jimmy Lau tells me, and is now a public park. From the hotel in Connaught Road, a short walk leads to Hong Kong's very own Soho in the foothills of the Peak. Those who don't fancy a steep climb can take the world's longest outdoor escalator.
In Soho's hilly markets, bargaining for a jade necklace or a carved wooden box, you might think you'd finally escaped Britain's lingering embrace. But not so.
Among the sizzling food stalls, one seems vastly more popular than all others, and its permanent queue is entirely Chinese.
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