Fired-Up China Celebrates End of Its ‘Disgrace’

BEIJING —  Awash in fireworks and fired-up patriotism, China today celebrated the end of 156 years of “national disgrace,” regaining a tiny patch of land ceded after a humiliating war and eyed enviously for a century as it blossomed into the prosperous British outpost of Hong Kong.

Jubilant throngs across the nation greeted the stroke of midnight, when the British crown colony suddenly became the Chinese crown jewel, adding billions of dollars, immeasurable prestige and 6.3 million more people to the world’s most populous country.

“The day that every Chinese has looked forward to is finally here,” declared 20-year-old student Ma Song, as bursts of color spangled the sky over Tiananmen Square in downtown Beijing.

About 100,000 people packed the square to mark Hong Kong’s historic reversion to Chinese sovereignty, shouting down the final seconds ticked off by a huge digital clock. Under clouds that had threatened rain during the day but kept their peace at night, the raucous but tightly monitored assembly was the largest in the plaza since the pro-democracy protests of 1989--demonstrations that ended in a bloody crackdown and struck fear in the hearts of many Hong Kong residents contemplating their own future under Chinese rule.

Then as now, the gathering brimmed with exuberant youths--but this time they were carefully selected by authorities so that they would come to praise the government, not bury it, with cheers and performances in the nation’s biggest celebration since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. Indeed, the hand-over of Hong Kong has excited a general patriotism across China that is often encouraged by political leaders but rarely reflected back by average citizens.

“A century’s sorrow has been removed. Our own territory has returned to us,” said Zhang Guoping, 40, a construction manager who attended the festivities in Tiananmen Square with members of his work group. “This proves the position of our country in the world.”

“China is a big dragon. The small dragon is coming home,” said Shanghai resident Yu Wenjing. “People are very excited . . . from the bottom of their hearts.”

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In muggy Shanghai, a vocal performance with 10,000 choristers--some of them singing from ships in the middle of the Huangpu River--extolled Hong Kong’s return to the motherland. Fireworks rained down on the cities of Tianjin and Guangzhou. Residents in one narrow Beijing lane crowded around a common TV set hauled outside so that neighbors could watch the hand-over proceedings.

Lion dances, acrobatics and pop songs lent a carnival-like air to the celebration in Tiananmen Square. At midnight, members of the crowd whistled and clapped as they watched the lowering of the Union Jack in Hong Kong and its replacement by the five-star Chinese flag--the righting, in China’s eyes, of a grievous wrong perpetrated more than 150 years ago.

That theme has reverberated across China, echoed by the innumerable banners garlanding every town and the wall-to-wall coverage in newspapers and on television. China, a nation with a long history and an equally long memory, has never forgiven Britain for forcing open its ports with drugs as currency, then seizing Hong Kong as booty after the first Opium War of the mid-19th century.

“For us, the Opium War is another patriotic lesson,” said Hu Shiyun, 65, a history professor in Shanghai. “We know that a weak country will be invaded. We must be strong.”

In welcoming Hong Kong back to the fold, the world’s last great Communist power is embracing a stable, free-spirited, market-driven territory that for decades stood as the antithesis to the upheaval and choking constraints of the mainland. Ironically, the revelry in Tiananmen Square played out under the painted gaze of Mao Tse-tung, China’s “Great Helmsman,” whose radical policies over a 30-year period did more than anything else to keep the country hobbled far behind Hong Kong.

Yet the spirit hovering over the hand-over was not of Mao but of his successor, Deng Xiaoping, who died in February, four months before his final wish--to see the repatriation of Hong Kong--could come true. Deng’s name and image have been invoked constantly in recent days, as he is lauded as the architect of the agreement that returned Hong Kong to China and of the reforms that now allow China to try to catch up socially and economically.

“Comrade Deng Xiaoping put forward the great concept of ‘one country, two systems’ with wisdom and strategic courage,” said an editorial in Monday’s People’s Daily newspaper, the Communist Party mouthpiece. The formula, designed to safeguard Hong Kong’s current way of life for the next 50 years, represents “the best way to promote the motherland’s peace and reunification,” the paper said.

Some of those celebrating Hong Kong’s return already had an eye to a glorious reunion with Taiwan, now ruled by the Nationalists who were kicked out of China after the country’s civil war, which brought the Communists to power.

“Taiwan’s reunification is a question of time,” said Ma, the 20-year-old Beijing student, who hopes to become a police officer. “It will come to the motherland sooner or later, because it is a part of the mainland’s territory.”

But others were caught up only in the moment. As he finished pulling on a pair of red silk pants in preparation for a performance in Tiananmen Square, Li Qing described the bond between China and Hong Kong with the brand of nationalistic ardor the central government heartily endorses.

“We have the same ancestors. We’re of the same flesh and blood,” said Li, 22, a mechanical engineering student at the Beijing Institute of Technology. “We love every inch of the motherland’s territory.

“If anyone dares invade our country, we won’t be polite,” he asserted, recalling China’s humiliation at British hands a century ago. “If necessary, young people will take up arms to defend our country.”

Such fervor sounded a striking note of contrast with the last mass gathering of students in the square, arguing for democracy to be brought to China. Officials took no chances with Monday night’s assembly, handpicking attendees through their workplaces, assigning them specific locations and deploying hundreds of police.

A more spontaneous outpouring of both patriotism and curiosity occurred Sunday night as thousands of ordinary Beijingers filled Tiananmen, waving flags, flying kites and snapping photos of themselves in front of the countdown clock on the east side of the square. They streamed in from Changan Avenue, where tread marks from the tanks that rolled in to crush demonstrators eight years ago were completely paved over only in the past several months.

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Memories of the June 4, 1989, massacre seemed distant, if present at all, in the minds of the party-goers in the square for the hand-over. But for every person who received the invitation--or the command--to attend the festivities, scores of Beijingers stayed at home, quietly watching the performances on TV--or, in some cases, ignoring the event altogether.

“What’s there to celebrate?” asked artist Lao Fang, 42. “It’s got nothing to do with me.”

His reaction belied the Chinese government’s insistence that the repossession of Hong Kong “demonstrates the close unity of all ethnic groups and patriots in China,” as the state-run China Daily said Monday. Officials have promoted the hand-over as a glue to bind together the general populace.

Many citizens go further, portraying Hong Kong’s return to China as an event sure to swell the pride and solidarity of ethnic Chinese around the world, whether in Asia or the West. As the chorus in Shanghai crooned Monday night in a pop ballad called “My Chinese Heart,” which was first popularized by a Hong Kong singer:

Although I wear a Western suit,

Nothing can change my Chinese heart.

Yangtze River, the Great Wall, the Yellow Mountain,

And the Yellow River weigh heavy in my heart.

Today, Hong Kong can be added to that list.

Chu reported from Beijing, Holley from Shanghai. Anthony Kuhn and Wang Jilu of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.

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Voices

“I’m happy we are no longer a colony of Britain. But we want the Hong Kong government to respect people’s rights, respect people’s views and to allow elections to build a legislative council again.”

--Tony Chen, 20, biology student at Chinese University of Hong Kong, participating in democracy protests

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“People, especially the Americans, need to give China more of a chance on Hong Kong.”

--Song Weinning, 34, professional engineer from Toronto, Can. who was guest of Chinese government at handover ceremony in Hong Kong Convention Center

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“When I saw the Chinese flag go up I felt so happy. I’m an American citizen now, but I was born in Chongqing (China) and China is still my motherland.”

--Raymond Zhong, 38, engineer from Monterrey Park, Ca., also invited as guest to attend handover ceremony in Hong Kong Convention Center.

“The flag is black because it represents sadness, freedom going down slowly.”

--Simon Wong, 38, truck driver, holding a black flag outside the Hong Kong Legco building where democratically elected legislature was disbanded on the eve of Chinese rule