In its last days under British rule, the Crown Colony of Hong Kong is the world’s most exciting city, at once fascinating and exasperating, a tangle of contradictions. It is a dazzling amalgam of conspicuous consumption and primitive poverty, the most architecturally incongruous yet undeniably beautiful urban panorama of all. World renowned travel writer Jan Morris offers the most insightful and comprehensive study of the enigma of Hong Kong thus far. Combining firsthand reportage with exemplary research, Morris takes readers from Hong Kong's clamorous back alleys to the luxurious Happy Valley racecourse, where taipans place their bets between sips of champagne and bird's nest soup. Morris chronicles the exploits of traders, pirates, colonists, financiers, and shows how their descendants view the prospect of reunification with the Chinese mainland. What emerges is an epic tableau, vastly informed and pungently evocative. Jan Morris was born in 1926 to a Welsh father and an English mother, and when she is not travelling she lives with her partner in Wales, between the mountains and the sea. Her books include  Coronation Everest ,  Venice , The Pax Britannica Trilogy ( Heaven's Command ,  Pax Britannica , and  Farewell the Trumpets ),  Conundrum,  and   Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere . She is also the author of six books about cities and countries, two autobiographical books, and several volumes of collected travel essays.  A Writer's World , a collection of her travel writing and reportage from over five decades, was published in 2003.  Hav , her novel, was published in a new and expanded form in 2006.