The Red and the Gold

communism and capitalism peacefully--and profitably--coexist in that exotic outpost of british colonialism: hong kong

Built on conquest and contraband, founded by men whose lack of moral principles would have endeared them to the Mafia, the British crown colony of Hong Kong is, in the purest sense of the word, a freak, a congenital malfunction of history and politics. Illegitimate by birth, it took to crime at an early age and, though it has been a loyal son--sending everything it can spare home to mummy in London--it has never gone straight. Having outlived the empire that created it, Hong Kong thrives as a blatantly capitalist colony, nine tenths of which sits on the mainland of the most Spartan Communist society the world has ever known.

With no natural resources to speak of, Hong Kong must rely on this theoretical adversary for food and water. More than 98-1/2 percent of its 4,000,000 people are Chinese, nearly half of them refugees from the mainland. They represent conflicting manners of custom and culture, they don't all speak the same language and there is traditional antipathy among regional groups. They are loyal to Chairman Mao, to Chiang Kai-shek or simply to China; rarely to the queen of England. Yet they live under the union jack and accept (continued on page 176)The Red and the Gold(continued from page 124) the rule of Englishmen appointed by the British government 6000 miles away. Other colonies have fought for independence and achieved it, but nobody fights for it in Hong Kong and none of the parties concerned--the British, the Hong Kong Chinese and the Peking authorities--would want it, anyway. The only ambition of its people, whether Chinese or foreign expatriate, capitalist or Communist, is to make money. That's what Hong Kong is all about; the only security it cares for is the sort you find in banks. In the rush for spoils, opposing ideologies are swept aside. Hong Kong is open for business with everyone, regardless of race, politics and all the other idle nonsense that inhibits the acquisition of money.

Wedded for life to the golden principles of fast profits, low taxes and minimal trade controls, this sunny, subtropical enclave of prosperity is unashamed of its past and unworried about its future. Perhaps this is the most remarkable thing of all, because, unlike other members of the international community, Hong Kong knows the date on which it is scheduled to die.

The British took the island of Hong Kong from China in 1841, declaring it a colony two years later. They had gone to war with the Chinese over the question of selling opium to the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, a practice that was contrary to the laws of China and to the better judgment of its emperor, who, at the time, ruled a nation that was estimated to have 10,000,000 to 12,000,000 addicts in its population. Over the years, the island colony was enlarged by various treaties from its original 30 square miles to its present area of about 400 square miles. Most of this is represented by the mainland's New Territories and 230-odd islands, the majority of which are little more than uninhabitable rocky lumps in the South China Sea. Kowloon, on the tip of the mainland peninsula, and Stonecutters Island, in the harbor, add another four square miles to the "permanent" colony of Hong Kong.

The biggest portion of the colony--the New Territories and their islands--is held by the British on a lease that runs out in June 1997. At that time, assuming the Chinese government allows the lease to run its full term, the colony will shrink almost to its original size. The mainland border, instead of following a 22-mile course over farmland and open countryside, as it does now, will cut through a city where, in some districts, the density of population is the highest in the world.

Nobody knows what China will do about Hong Kong, and most people in the colony respond to the question with profound indifference. The future is a long way off, they say, and the hell with it. Peking, meanwhile, finds Hong Kong useful for foreign exchange, political gamesmanship and trade. Last year the mainland earned around half a billion dollars selling food and consumer goods to Hong Kong.

A prevailing state of uncertainty reinforces the feeling of unreality a visitor soon acquires. He arrives expecting to find the inscrutable and instead discovers the outrageous: a Hilton hotel next door to a Communist bank with a neon sign praising Chairman Mao, both overlooking an English cricket field where gents in white flannels perform leisurely capers to the accompaniment of gentle snoring from the spectators. American warships are moored in the same harbor as high-sterned cargo junks that fly the five-starred red flag of the People's Republic; Russian merchant seamen hand out anti-British and anti-Chinese pamphlets on the streets; Indians and Pakistanis squabble about Bangla Desh in Kowloon tailor shops. Schemers, dealers, manipulators and connivers of every nationality, every shade of moral and political conviction, mingle in a bizarre concentration of outlandish talents all dedicated in various ways to the steady extortion of money and power.

Amid the prevailing climate of lunacy and legerdemain, the Hong Kong government steps delicately, aware that a wrong move could disturb the balance of things. It is especially discreet about China. The China policy of the Hong Kong government is to avoid at all costs any public admission that it has a China policy--a remarkable posture, a compromise between low profile and dignified crouch, that somehow works. To appease Peking, the government deports to Taiwan the Nationalist agents it periodically arrests in a glare of publicity. Much fuss is made in the press about their radio transmitters and secret documents, which, after careful scrutiny and selective confiscation, probably end up in the hands of the mainland authorities who, no doubt, told the British where to find the Nationalists in the first place. But one seldom reads about Communists being arrested in Hong Kong and thrown across the border.

Non-Chinese visitors are advised to stay out of the Walled City, which is an area of Kowloon near the airport; it is claimed both by the British and by the Chinese, and its 10,000 residents exploit this incongruity for everything it's worth, refusing to have anything whatsoever to do with the rest of the colony. "The blot on Hong Kong," as a local newspaper recently described the district, is a dank, dark and smelly warren of littered alleys and filthy tenements. Many of the homes have no running water and families dump their sewage in outside drains. Police patrol the district but rarely succeed in catching the fugitives who hide there or in curtailing traffic in heroin, opium, dog meat, juvenile sex partners and all the other commodities purveyed on its streets.

For most visitors, their introduction to the colony comes with the approach into Kai Tak airport, one of the most dramatic landings on earth. Green, rocky islands appear through the haze as the aircraft descends below the shreds of mist around the top of the Peak, the highest point on Hong Kong Island. In the harbor, an Australian aircraft carrier slips her moorings and heads east for the Lei Yue Mun passage to the South China Sea. Her crew lines the flight deck, each man facing outward in ceremonial order, tiny silhouettes against a shimmering pattern of sunlight on the water. Leaving the departing ship behind, the plane banks steeply to the left, loses more altitude and then follows a perilous-seeming course, skimming the roofs of tenement houses, dropping lower and lower over the congested mass of housing projects, apartment blocks and highways built almost to the edge of the apron, and landing on a runway that juts out into the harbor like a pointed finger.

The last time I arrived, a few months ago, on a Cathay Pacific flight from Tokyo, we landed to the accompaniment of a Brazilian samba on the cabin's music system. Hong Kong had changed a little since my last trip, but the quality of madness was as strong as ever, especially in Kowloon, which is the first part of the colony you see on the short drive from the airport to your hotel. The tunnel under the harbor from Kowloon to the Hong Kong side (residents use this distinction to avoid confusion among the mainland, the island and the colony as a whole) was almost ready. The English engineers who worked on its construction said it would probably be open three months ahead of schedule, which is the way they build things in Hong Kong--fast. There were a few more massage parlors and topless bars than before, but hardly any GIs. They stopped coming from Vietnam last October, when the U. S. Government gave up subsidizing R & R flights.

The bar girls are still there--by the thousands--sitting in booths near the jukebox, propositioning customers, giggling at the bar over a joke with mamasan while she picks the day's winners from the entries at Happy Valley race track. Take any turn off the lower part of Nathan Road and there'll be slim, dark-eyed girls in the doorways who look as though they should still be in high school. Some of them are.

Kowloon is a gaudy, captivating zoo, full of noise and life and reeking with a tide of smells: charred wood, incense, diesel fumes, flowers, spices and food. Lines of washing and flowering plants fill the balconies of tenements and modern apartment houses. Enormous neon signs are suspended across the street at second-floor level, packed so closely together you can't always read the wording or, sometimes, see the sun. Store windows are full of cameras, stereo equipment, watches, jewelry, jade, gold, ivory, antiques, suits, shoes, shirts, furniture. Every doorway along the narrow, crowded streets leads to one transaction or another: stores, theaters, discothèques, night clubs, restaurants, whorehouses, workshops, markets and the sort of guesthouses that keep Christmas decorations hanging all year round.

In some parts of the colony, congestion is so intense that people have to find space wherever they can, not always successfully. One family has built a house on the roof of the building where a Mr. Hoi Kee lives, on Yee Pun Road. "Cracks have appeared in our walls," Mr. Hoi writes, in a plaintive note to a local newspaper. "Water is even leaking through the ceiling. The whole building is out of balance. Help." Another Kowloon resident is driven to public complaint by "a terribly noisy hawker" who stands at the corner of Bowring and Parkes streets, keeping night-shift workers awake all day with his screaming. And a Mr. Koo demands to know when the authorities are going to do something about a gambling den that has opened over the bank next door, "causing a terrific noise for 24 hours a day."

Fortunately, there are many quiet and cool havens in Kowloon where the noise and the crush never intrude. One of them is Chinese Arts and Crafts Ltd., a Communist department store specializing in handicrafts from the mainland. Here the clerks wear blue-nylon jackets, usually with at least one Mao button pinned to the chest. They sit behind long glass display cases of silk brocades, ivory carvings, antiques, jewelry, porcelain and other merchandise; their manner is correct without being solicitous. There is no such thing as a pushy salesman on the premises, not even at the propaganda displays of posters and heroic carvings in ivory that depict crucial incidents in the Republic's young history. When I visited C. A. C., the second-floor gallery was filled with visitors, mostly children from local Chinese schools who had come to see an acupuncture exhibition. There are dozens of establishments in Hong Kong--newspapers, banks, theaters and stores--directly affiliated with the People's Republic. Tourists patronize them because all the items are marked--unlike most stores in Hong Kong, where buyer and seller negotiate the price--and prices are low even by the colony's standards.

A hundred yards or so from C. A. C., on the same street, the huge glass doors of the Peninsula Hotel reflect the fountain and a fleet of limousine parked in the front courtyard. The Peninsula--the Pen to staff and regular customers--is the most venerable hotel in the colony. During World War Two, it was the site on which the British surrendered the colony to the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941. Officers of the Imperial Army were billeted there until the war ended and the British took possession again.

The Pen's clientele are the sort of people who are accustomed to being met at airports by a chauffeur, so the management keeps eight dark-green Rolls-Royces for this purpose and cossets the guests in other small, elegant ways. Tea is served two minutes after new occupants check into their rooms, or it can be taken downstairs under the chandeliers in the lobby, a gilded ivory setting of such grandeur that the word lobby fails to do it justice. The Pen keeps records of the brand of soap preferred by VIPs, so when they return, the correct sort--out of about a dozen kept in stock--will be set out in the bathroom. And none of that supermarket soap; at the Peninsula, it's Eau Sauvage, Rochas, Jean Patou and other aristocrats in the nobility of suds. Any resemblance between the Pen and the rest of Kowloon is an unfortunate accident, as the position of the hotel itself, facing away from the mainland toward the island of Hong Kong, seems to suggest.

Most visitors do their Kowloon shopping in the Tsimshatsui district and in the shopping arcades on the Hong Kong side. In some Kowloon stores, merchandise may be cheaper than across the harbor, but in the case of cameras and watches, there may be no manufacturer's guarantee. One of the traditional dodges among Hong Kong's less scrupulous entrepreneurs is the doctoring of Swiss watches, the original mechanisms of which are sometimes replaced with inferior parts. A few months ago, a representative of a well-known watchmaker flew in from Geneva to trace the source of imitations bearing his company's name. He was supplied with a large amount of cash and told to buy up the entire stock if it could be done. He made contact with a man who said it was possible, but the makers of the fake watches would want $40,000, to which the gentleman from Geneva agreed. He handed over the money and arranged a meeting with his contact, who promised to bring the watches. Neither these nor the $40,000--nor the go-between--has been seen again and those who know how things operate in the colony assume the unexpected bonus has been used to finance the purchase of yet another consignment of Swiss watches and locally made mechanisms.

Having gratified the acquisitive urge, you should waste little time in finding the best places to eat. In Hong Kong the choice is on the generous side: There are at least seven regional Chinese styles of cooking here, with Cantonese predominant. Others include Shanghai, Peking, Hakka, Swatow, Szechwan and Fukienese. Foreign cuisines represented include Portuguese, Swiss, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Indonesian, French, Hungarian, Indian, American and a polyglot (text continued overleaf) mixture known vaguely as international.

Virtually nothing that swims, crawls, hops, flies or burrows under damp rocks is wasted by Hong Kong's chefs. Their refusal to throw away any part of a creature that can be prepared and eaten possibly explains why one never sees any sea gulls in the harbor. You can find everything from crocodile steaks to snake's bile, cock's testes, fish lips, duck's brains and steamed pigeon hearts. In areas like Mongkok there is, in winter, a thriving underground trade in dogs. Black, preferably, and someone else's. The Chinese believe that for every pound of dog meat, the body acquires insulation against winter drafts; three pounds and you don't need to buy a topcoat. But if you eat dog in summer, they say, you bleed from the nose and ears. Elsewhere, chiefly around Kowloon, you may come across such oddities as storks and monkeys, both of which are believed to be rich in properties that ensure good health and long life, and which, with dogs, are prohibited foods in Hong Kong. Have no fear that one of these will be served on your plate cunningly disguised as meat loaf or Chinese beef and vegetables; they are all hard to come by--and expensive.

The only thing to know about Chinese food in Hong Kong is that it is the finest in the Orient, at least for the Cantonese, since most Hong Kong Chinese are Cantonese people. Northern Chinese dishes are better in Taiwan, but one would have to have been born in northern China to be able to tell the difference.

Anyone who can't find something to his taste among the possibilities available in Hong Kong's night life should feel his pulse to see if it's still going. The choice, apart from restaurants, includes discothèques, night clubs, cabarets, ballrooms, theaters and after-hours clubs. You can dine expensively aboard a floating restaurant or for a few pennies at a roadside stall.

If you're alone in the colony, you can remedy that by calling one of the escort services that employ Oriental and European young ladies. With the legitimate operations, such as Escort, Ltd., you pay for the services of an escort; elsewhere, you may get a little more. It depends on whether the girl herself is interested; although money can buy almost everything here, many a tourist has been surprised to find that a bulging wallet makes little difference if the young lady takes a dislike to its owner.

Prostitution has been a feature of life in China for at least 3000 years, though mainland authorities claim to have eliminated it along with venereal disease, which still exists in Hong Kong. In other Chinese communities, the business flourishes. In Taiwan, where it is a government-regulated business (government-owned might be more accurate), the whorehouses are huge, multistory hotels, most of them concentrated in Peitou, just outside the capital of Taipei. It's not like that in Hong Kong, where prostitution is technically illegal. But it's a thriving business, like everything else in town, and one that the government does little to suppress. The girls work out of bars, ballrooms, night clubs, brothels, on boats moored in Yaumati Typhoon Shelter, in Kowloon's Walled City, in the New Territories--virtually everywhere.

If that sort of companionship doesn't appeal but you'd still like company, go to the Polaris on top of Kowloon's Hyatt Hotel, around six, or to the Go-down in the basement of Sutherland House, on the Hong Kong side, about 5:30. You'll find an assortment of youngish people who belong to the Up Club, a highly successful and very informal organization founded last year by Jon Benn, an American resident. The club espouses no specific cause. Benn, who says he started it as an attempt to break down the colony's professional and nationality cliques, claims a membership of around 1000, about 15 percent of which are Chinese. Twenty other nationalities are represented and about 35 percent are married. Anyone can join. Weekend parties are held every now and then, sometimes aboard a three-masted schooner that sails around to Big Wave Bay for a feast on the beach. Some of the more cynical nonjoiners in Hong Kong say the purpose of the Up Club is to help people find a place to get it up; if so (and why not?), the Godown or the Polaris at cocktail hour are worth an exploratory visit. Drinks are half price for everyone. Call Jon Benn at H-724398 if you want to find out more.

Some of the best and least expensive things you can do in Hong Kong at night are in the open air. Among these is the Poor Man's Night Club at the Macao Ferry car park on the island. You should arrive about ten p.m., when the food vendors have set up their caldrons, grills and open fires and the night air is rich with the spicy smell of odd and appetizing foods. For a dime you can feast on a stew of noodles, pork and vegetables. Spend another 40 cents for a serving of steamed fresh shrimps, a bowl of rice and a quart of beer, which you can eat sitting at a long trestle table lit by the hissing glare of a Coleman lamp.

Once, at least, you should cross the harbor at night on a walla-walla. These small sampans (named for the watery chug of their engines) go into operation when the Star Ferry service stops at two a.m. Less than 20 cents buys one of the most memorable experiences Hong Kong can offer. You descend a steep flight of steps built into the side of the wharf, lit by the pale-yellow glow of a single bulb in the roof of a shed, with the water of the harbor lapping at the pilings and splashing across the lower steps where the walla-wallas are moored alongside one another. The surface is a mass of shimmering colors, the lights reflected from shipping and the electric façade on the other side of the harbor. Eerie signals from passing vessels echo across the water, the only sounds heard over the comforting beat of the sampan's engine. Crossing the harbor, you see warships dressed from bow to stern with strings of lights, or a cruise liner glowing like a gold ingot that's spotlighted in a dark room.

The Star Ferry, however, is probably the best bargain in the colony. The fare is a nickel or a couple of cents, depending on the class traveled; both upper and lower decks afford the same view, which changes constantly with the movement of shipping. Aboard the ferry, a blind woman with two heavy baskets of vegetables at her feet calls her three young children, who have been playing hide-and-seek around the funnel housing that pierces the upper deck. From the ferry's engine room comes the clang of bells and the thump of engines as the skipper signals for reverse and the propellers churn the water into a foam in preparation for docking at the Hong Kong-side terminal. The passenger ramps are lowered and everyone streams ashore in a jostling din, some running to be first in the line for taxis, the rest dispersing into the modern office buildings of the colony's capital, Victoria.

Most people refer to the area as Central. It's the administrative capital as well as the main business district of Hong Kong. There is a sense of spaciousness and colonial grandeur here that's not very evident in Kowloon. The buildings are bigger and cleaner, the streets wider, and gardens and fountains just outside the ferry terminal lend a touch of serenity. But immediately beyond this cloister lies more of urban Hong Kong's typical chaos: narrow streets filled with market stalls, rickshas, traffic and people--thousands upon thousands of shouting, gesturing, spitting people. Alleys lead uphill in flights of concrete steps, lined on both sides with booths selling haberdashery, cheap clothing, bolts of cloth, souvenirs and all manner of hot foods.

The dominant feature of the island is the Peak, which rises 1809 feet from sea level and was once the prestige address of anyone who aspired to be anyone in the governor's social circle. It is still one of the most pleasant places to live in the colony, being cooler by several degrees than the lower levels of the island, but the advent of air conditioning has taken some of the status away. Tourists travel to the end of the line on the Peak Tram to enjoy the colony's most impressive view of the harbor or to take a breather in the café near the top. From the lookout point, Hong Kong sprawls across the steep, wooded hills down to the foreshore and the harbor. To the right are Causeway Bay and Wanchai--girlie-bar land, a hazy cityscape during the day that is transformed into a twinkling sea of neon at night.

The Hong Kong side, the island, is the preferred address of the colony's foreigners, whether British, Australian, German, American, Swiss or Swedish. On the upper slopes of the Peak, senior executives live in colonial villas with neat gardens and cool, tiled patios, or in one of the modern apartment houses that sprout from the hillside--anywhere on the island where the hills and sea afford an occasional breeze and the sunset is not obscured by another building. The best districts resemble the upper reaches of the more exclusive canyons in Los Angeles--winding roads between banks of trees, with long driveways leading to gracious, expensive houses that stand on the rims of precipitous slopes.

The white man who used to come to the Orient and promptly sink into decay seems to have vanished from the colonial stage in Hong Kong. He looks well fed and prosperous. Most of the Caucasians you see on the streets seem to be dressed for either a board meeting or a barbecue at a country club. New cars are everywhere--Jags and Mercedes, many of them--and the family that can't afford a servant or two, or at the very least a part-time maid, is a rarity.

It is by no means a strenuous life and the rewards are generous. Income tax is only 15 percent, with a personal exemption of more than $1000, and management types get paid leave every year. The Hong Kong whites enjoy a social position similar to that of another racial minority, the South African whites, except that in Hong Kong there is no visible sign of racism apart from the traditional belief of all Chinese that all non-Chinese, and white men in particular, are dangerous idiots.

Prosperity and upward mobility are not confined to the European population, however; many a Hong Kong Chinese has dragged himself out of the back streets into the rarefied air of the green Peak, where he can, if he wishes, consider himself the equal of any round-eye and probably more equal. For the majority of his fellow Chinese, it's another story.

Most of them live in the reeking tumult along the northern shore of the island or in the filth and noise of the slums north of Kowloon's Golden Mile. Hundreds of thousands live in the government's huge housing projects, where they pay next to nothing for rent but are obliged to live in overcrowded conditions that would cause most people to take to the streets in protest. Thousands more--"the boat people"--live in shanty settlements or aboard junks or sampans moored in floating cities such as Aberdeen, on the island's south coast, and in other anchorages all around the colony's coast line.

Many families with five or more members live on sampans measuring little more than 16 feet long and six feet wide. During the day, while the children are at school and husbands at work, wives ferry tourists to the floating restaurants in Aberdeen. Between fares, they might string artificial pearls for a local costume jeweler, prepare wine from the roots of plants or paint souvenir objects that they hang up to dry under the sampan awning.

The highway that encircles most of the island has always been busy on weekends and with the opening of the new tunnel, will no doubt be even more jammed. Visitors hoping for a quiet place on the beach will be out of luck unless they charter a boat or a helicopter to take them to a lonely coast line on one of the islands, where the only sign of life might be a fishing boat drifting across the sea.

Or they might drive up through the rural landscape of the New Territories, among narrow plains edged with mountains and dotted with red-roofed villages. A girl, up to her knees in a muddy field of rice, steers a plow pulled by a water buffalo. Thousands of ducks fatten in breeding ponds and bandy-legged old men, wearing the conical straw hats seen in Chinese prints, stoop in the hot sun to divert a trickle of water from an irrigation ditch. Farther north, at the nearest point to which visitors may approach the border, is the observation post of Lok Ma Chau, a steep hill overlooking the Shum Chun River and the collective farms of Kwangtung province. At the top of the hill, an old Chinese who makes his living by looking wizened and inscrutable poses for photographs.

For the purest solitude, you can catch the ferry from the Hong Kong side to the outlying island of Lantao, where, for about ten dollars, a couple can spend a night in a Buddhist monastery, room, meals and fares included. The ferry ride takes 45 minutes to Lantao's Silver Mine Bay Terminal. From there you take a bus that follows a single-track road, winding up into the mist in the hills, then making a terrifying U-turn on the edge of a cliff that looks as though it plunges straight into hell. From here the road is two parallel concrete strips on an embankment jutting out from the mountainside. Below, at a spine-chilling depth, lies the valley floor and, beyond that, the sea dotted with the humps of islands. At the top of the mountain, usually to the accompaniment of an ominously overheated radiator, the bus passes an ornate arch guarded by stone beasts. Through the iron gates, set against a steep declivity, lies the temple of Po Lin Tse, a yellow-roofed Oriental fantasy that stands in a broad, paved courtyard.

A pack of wild dogs roams the area, invading the kitchen for leftovers and snarling at strangers. A couple of these stunted mongrels sit at the steps to the temple, while monks shuffle in and out in their black or saffron robes. Incense burns in a stone basin, the wind whipping shreds of smoke from the glowing ash, and the bronze crash of gongs mingles with the howling of an unearthly chant.

At night there is nothing to do at Po Lin Tse except walk farther up the slope, past the temple and beyond the isolated tombs on the bare hillside. Here, sheltered from the groaning wind by thick and lengthy stems of grass, with the lights of the temple settlement flickering in the dusk below, you see an ordinary sunset transformed into a thing of somber dread that fills the sky with blood and darkness. Returning to the temple dormitory, the shaved head of a monk is seen through an undraped window. He sits in a room lit by a familiar cold-blue glow, watching a quiz show on television.

There is another journey to make from Hong Kong, and this one requires a passport and a visa, for it takes you out of British waters on a 40-mile excursion across the wide mouth of the Pearl River, west of Hong Kong, to the Portuguese colony of Macao, the oldest European settlement in the Orient, having been established as an outpost of Lisbon some 300 years before the British arrived.

Some people think Macao is the best thing about Hong Kong, with which it has practically nothing in common. No booming industries, no modern highway systems, not even an international airport. It's small; with the two adjacent islands of Colôane and Taipa, Macao covers about six square miles. The town itself is an Iberian-Oriental blend of Catholic churches, Buddhist temples and crumbling old Mediterranean villas that meander in soft pastel colors across a narrow, hilly peninsula of the mainland.

There is something wistful about the place, a reminder of splendid destinies gone astray. You sense it in the valiant grandeur of Government House, with its lone Portuguese soldier on guard outside, and in the flaking walls of once-elegant houses, their dark courtyards heavy with the perfume of flowering vines. "Surely nowhere in the world," as a visitor wrote of Macao some years ago, "do the buglers linger so long over reveille and retreat."

If you'd like to stay somewhere that's typical of the old Macao, check in at the Bela Vista, a venerable house situated in a garden at the top of a steep flight of steps. You'll take breakfast on the veranda of an old villa, with the ceiling fans stirring a breeze through the French windows, the fragrance of bougainvillaea in the air and the twitter of swallows whirling around the roof. Ask for a room at the front, so that you can look down at the junks scudding under full sail across the bay.

Macao was at one time the sin center of the Orient, or so the legend goes. It's hard to imagine that in these few square miles there was enough room for any large-scale debauchery, but the reputation persists that here was a place where vices of every sort reached unparalleled depths of depraved ingenuity. Along the Street of Eternal Happiness, opium divans lined the lower floors, with brothels one flight up. The street is still here, but not the rest. You can find taxi drivers who might steer you to a stag movie in some smelly loft, and people in Hong Kong claim to have witnessed a grandmotherly couple perform with a double-ended dildo, but Macao is not the stronghold of sin of former days.

Neither is it the feeble, declined European colony it appears to be. Macao is the caretaker of enormous wealth in gold, which earns more for Portugal (and for Peking) than tourism or local exports of firecrackers and textiles. Portugal never signed the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, in which the importation of gold for private use was prohibited. Consequently, Macao and Portugal import all the gold they can get, the bulk of which comes through Hong Kong in transit from countries around the world. Shipments arrive in special hydrofoil deliveries.

The Macao gold syndicate, which holds the official franchise for handling the gold, issues statistics for imports (around $32,000,000 in 1970) but not exports, so nobody knows where the metal goes after it gets to Macao. In all probability, it is melted down from the conventional bars into lighter and more conveniently shaped strips, which can be hidden and then smuggled through Hong Kong to illegal buyers in Southeast Asia, Latin America and India--to all those places in the world where piracy and intrigue, crooked dealings and clandestine meetings, narcotics traffic and easy wealth exist either not at all or as the unapproved exception.

It's tempting to regard Macao and Hong Kong as vestigial anachronisms, the last remnants of empires that no longer exist. But neither the Portuguese nor the British have disappeared from the colonial scene. With Macao, Lisbon still rules seven overseas territories as Portuguese provinces, from the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa to Timor Island in the Malay Archipelago. And London is still the seat of government for about 15 colonies and is directly concerned in the administration of a dozen protectorates, dependencies and associated states located around the globe from the West Indies to the Pacific Ocean. The new China--transformed from a 19th Century weakling into a 20th Century colossus capable of crushing both Portugal and Britain--could long ago have acted upon its frequently stated hostility to European colonialism by retaking these two most vulnerably situated colonies of all. It has not. Indeed, when Portuguese government officials in Macao were reported to have expressed their government's intention to abandon the colony during the Communist-instigated riots there in 1966--1967, Peking moved very swiftly to cool them off.

So Macao and Hong Kong endure--uncertain, as always, about their destinies. Hong Kong in particular has astonished everyone since the very beginning, having outgrown its apparent potential a thousand times over. It isn't always remembered, but when British government leaders first heard about Queen Victoria's new acquisition in China in 1841, they were distressed by its smallness; they had wanted something bigger from which to expand their trading strength in the Orient. "A barren island with hardly a house upon it" was the contemptuous appraisal of Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary. He dismissed the official responsible for the choice of this lowly tract and had him exiled to the independent republic of Texas as chargé d'affaires. "It seems obvious," Palmerston wrote in a letter of crushing rebuke to this unlucky man, "that Hong Kong will not be a mart of trade."

Capsule guide to hong kong

Hotels

In most cities, the choice of hotel is governed by its location as much as by its cost and service, but not in Hong Kong, where the urban districts on both sides of the harbor are very compact and all essential tourist facilities are within a few minutes' walk. There are four luxury-class hotels on the island--the Mandarin, Hilton, Lee Gardens and Repulse Bay. Impeccable as the others are, the Mandarin has a definite edge in style, food and service, but the Hilton has a pool, one of the most sociable bars--the Dragon Boat--a terrific buffet lunch and a 24-hour coffee shop that rarely has an empty seat. The Lee Gardens, which opened this year, pioneered new ground for a major tourist hotel by situating itself in the Causeway Bay area, amid the color and noise of the Chinese community, instead of in Central, the main business district on the island. The Repulse Bay is on the other side of the island, away from the city, overlooking a beautiful beach. Both hotel and beach are crowded on weekends, but between Monday and Friday residents have them pretty much to themselves. It's difficult to imagine, seeing the Repulse Bay today, with its potted palms flanking the central porch steps and young English army officers taking tea with their wives, that the corridor in the west wing was the site of a battle between Japanese and British troops, in which the latter silenced a Japanese machine gunner by rolling hand grenades along the carpeted floor.

The best hotels in Kowloon, after the Peninsula, are the Hong Kong, Hyatt and Miramar. The Hyatt accommodates TWA and Pan Am crews, and its 24-hour coffee shop is heavily patronized by local girls when the bars and clubs in the area close for the night.

There are many hotels below the luxury range (average cost of a single room: between $12 and $17) that cost less and aren't appreciably less comfortable, but the rooms are smaller. At North Point, on the island, you can stay in the Show Boat, a bizarre place full of mirrors and other inducements of one sort or another, where a single starts at about eight dollars. The Singapore in Wanchai charges about the same. The Imperial, on Nathan Road in Kowloon, is slightly higher, but it's convenient to shopping and night life. Another in the same category is the Grand, on Carnarvon Road, which serves excellent Scandinavian food and has refrigerators in the rooms. There are also dozens of guesthouses on both sides of the harbor, some less sleazy than others, but mostly dank, sweaty buildings off Nathan Road that may be sandwiched between a brothel and a Turkish bath.

SHOPPING

With the exception of five groups of commodities--liquor, tobacco, hydrocarbon oils, table waters and methyl alcohol--everything sold in Hong Kong is free of duty and taxes, and bears only the markup claimed by the importer, wholesaler and retailer, who are, in many cases, the same individual or company. For the buyer, it means that everything--English woolens and leathers, Indian silks, Swiss and Japanese watches, German and Japanese cameras, stereo equipment and other imported portable luxuries--is often cheaper in the colony than in the country of origin. Bargaining for a lower price is standard practice, even in some of the more elegant jewelry stores, where the management won't argue the point if a serious buyer cuts the asking price by 20 percent.

Prices also are affected by fluctuations in the exchange rate and by supplies of popular brands. And stores that offer big discounts may have inflated the original price, so, when buying anything that's moderately expensive, compare prices thoroughly on both sides of the harbor.

Few men agree about the criteria of good tailoring in Hong Kong, but among the most reputable are George Chen, A-Man Hing Cheong, Ricky Bo, MacBeth II, Princeton, Kawa and Lai Chow. The material governs the cost, naturally, but it should be around half the price of an equivalent suit in the U.S. Don't try to get anything made in 24 hours. You'll need at least two fittings for a good fit and a minimum of three days for a perfect finish. MacBeth II also makes shirts to measure. If you want shoes, try Kow Hoo, in the Hilton; they'll be made to fit you, and you can reorder from anywhere in the world by quoting the size. For ready-made clothing, shop in one of the department stores, such as Lane Crawford, where the best bargains are Hong Kong manufactured.

If you want an ocean-going yacht or a fully rigged Chinese junk, the two best shipyards are Cheoy Lee and Wang Fat. Authorized dealers or sole agents for the better-known brands of Swiss watches are: Artland Watch Co., for Girard-Perregaux; Omtis, for Omega and Tissot; Sennet Freres, for Patek Philippe; Shui Hwa Watch Co., for Piaget. Photographic goods from Kinefoto, on the Hong Kong side; Cinex, at Ocean Terminal and Central; A. Sek, in the Hilton; or from any leading hotel arcade. Shotguns from Hong Kong Sporting Arms, opposite Kinefoto. Stereo equipment from Pacific Radio, Cosdel, Tom Lee Piano and Moutrie & Co. Try the Communist department stores to get an idea of prices for antiques. Most stores offer free packing but charge for shipping.

DINING

Typical Cantonese dishes consist of barbecued pork, steamed fish and other seafoods, roast goose, delicious soups and dim sum, which are small dumplings of meat and fish served on saucers that are counted afterward by the waiter when he adds up the check. The best Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong is Luk Yu Tea House, an unpretentious establishment in Central that seats regular customers ahead of strangers. If you're patient, you can feast on dim sum during the day and, at night, on shark's-fin soup, followed by Chinese ham soaked in honey and deep-fried.

At Yung Kee, also in Central, Cantonese specialties are roast goose, braised pigeon, soyed chicken, fried stuffed crabs' claws and fried frogs' legs. For Shanghai dishes, go to the Great Shanghai in Kowloon, where you can sample chicken in wine, the famous "drunken chicken," or fried noodles served with pork, shrimps, kidneys, chicken or eels. A few minutes away, at the Spring Deer on Mody Road, you can order Peking duck coated with honey and hung for nearly an hour over charcoal. If you've still got room afterward, the rest can be made into a soup. If you like heavily spiced foods, try the Sun Sun in Causeway Bay, where you'll find cher padi, a pork-stuffed bun; oiled pancakes coated with green onions; hot chili beef, Szechwan style; fried shrimps; braised eggplant; and hot-and-sour soup.

In the best Hong Kong restaurants, you'll have trouble communicating if you don't speak the language; but don't be put off. If you want something that can be drawn, draw it, or point to someone else's plate. Go to the back, where they keep the tanks of fish and other sea creatures, and indicate the one you want. Don't think you're making a fool of yourself; the serious eater never lets his ignorance get in the way of his appetite.

Alternatives to Chinese meals, should the need arise, are Jimmy's Kitchen for chicken Kiev; the Copper Chimney for Swiss fondue; La Taverna for pizza, cannellone and Florentine steak; the Marseille for bouillabaisse and coq au vin; the Dateline for Macao sole and enchiladas; the Parisian Grill for Kobe beef and a globe-trotting menu; and Saito for tempura, sushi and other Japanese dishes. For European food and a lot of flames at tableside, head for Gaddi's in the Peninsula.

Finally, you might try to wangle an invitation to a man han feast. The meal consists of 69 courses and has to be ordered five months in advance. It includes braised venison, bear's paw and something called silver fungus soup. Cots are provided for bloated diners who want to sleep between courses.