imperialism my 100 year old guy book  will leave me on a railway adventure  

through archipelagos and peninsulas dotted  with hills forests and paddy fields i'll tour  

towering mega cities and magnificent mosques i'll  encounter golden buddhas and jewelled temples  

and experience some of the world's most  spectacular and notorious railways as i travel  

through the diverse nations of this vast region  i'll learn how they asserted their independence  

against the british french and dutch empires to  become the economic tigers and dragons of today

i'm in hong kong continuing to explore this  mega metropolis i visited the kowloon peninsula  

and crossed victoria harbour to hong kong  island from here i'll head north to visit  

the ward villages of the new territories and  west to the remote and tranquil lantau island  

i'll meet a descendant of one of the  region's oldest dynasties your family  

has been here how long over a thousand years  it makes the british occupation seem like just  

learn about the father of modern china  sanyasin is the person who came and made  

change in a huge way and discover why hong  kongers are protesting 20 years after the handover  

were not being given what was promised the anger  and the frustration is there and it's escalating

i'm exploring hong kong island on a metro system  that handles around six billion trips a day  

the success of hong kong's mass transit  railway is very hard to believe it's  

only existed in its modern form since 1979  and yet it has now 91 heavy rail stations  

including some which are indescribably huge  most unusually amongst metros in this world  

it is highly profitable and its punctuality  record is just shy of 100 percent  

so

i'm traveling to hong kong university to  learn about one of its most renowned alumni

bradshaws tells me that the foundation stone  was laid in 1910 before that it was the hong  

kong college of medicine for chinese and the  physician dr sun yat sen graduated in 1892  

since he went on to become a revolutionary  to overthrow the chinese imperial dynasty  

and become known as the father of modern china  it makes you wonder what was on the curriculum

my

in 1911 sunyat sen and a group of revolutionaries  led a successful uprising against the qing dynasty  

and founded a republic in china but he  spent his formative years in hong kong  

dr ho yin li is an associate professor  

in architectural conservation his  grandfather was sunya sen's secretary  

i understand that sun yatsen graduated from the  medical school here was his background before  

that in hong kong um before he came to hong kong  he was in china as a young person and went to  

school as most people who came from a family of  reasonable wealth and he wasn't happy obviously  

with the educational system and all kinds of  systems in china then and so in fact he went to  

america to hawaii where his brother lived and he  did study for a short while you know in hawaii and  

before he came to hong kong while he was studying  to be a physician do you think he was already  

having political ideas yes very much by the time  he went to medical school and he was beginning to

get into contact with like-minded people to  form a revolutionary idea to overthrow the qing  

government and to establish a modern china why  would he have revolutionary ideas what was wrong  

with china in those days china i can't even begin  to count you know what's wrong with china then  

and so if you look at education and china was  still stuck in a educational system that is to  

say the least you know is not about academic  freedom and if you look at the governance  

and so it is a huge nation rule by a small  family so it's a royal family but you know  

essentially it was a dictatorship and  the worst part is that there is no

concern by the government to the demand of the  people eventually to put it uh simply is that  

the people of fedor is looking forward to change  you know and so sanya singh is the person who came  

and made change in a huge way sunyat sen was  a graduate of an open and modern western style  

education in 1923 he returned to the university  to deliver a speech that's remembered to this day

oh what an impressive room it is this is  the place where one summer day in 1923  

dr sanya singh the founding father of modern  china came to give a rousing speech to the  

community of the university of hong kong well  if you come on stage i'll tell you what's insane

so in 1923 on that day imagine these rooms  completely filled with people professors  

students you know they're all anticipating  what's understanding going to say and he  

said that i feel as though i've come home and  hong kong and this university of hong kong  

are my intellectual workplace and you can  just imagine the crowd must have been cheering  

and he continued to say that and where did i get  my revolutionary and modern idea and he said that  

this idea came from the colony of hong kong here  you are a resident in hong kong teaching hong kong  

what do you think of sun yat-sen today if you go  back to his the three principles of the people  

and in which he advocate for a strong chinese  nation so that means having pride in the chinese  

identity and the second thing is that it's about  developing a liberal society with freedom of all  

sorts but that's important to this university  intellectual freedom and the third thing is  

about the livelihood of people so that means  having a responsible government that addresses  

and respond to people's needs in a timely manner  so all of this is exactly what the young people  

the protesters are asking for so in fact it's  totally relevant and that there's no contradiction  

at all so i wish more people would look into  sanjay's political thoughts you know and think  

more about it i think that way hong kong will be  will get out of the trouble that we are having now

i'm heading towards hong kong's northern border

as i travel away from central districts  the contrast is remarkable skyscrapers are  

replaced by mountains concrete by trees and  urban density by thinly populated villages  

my preconceptions of hong  kong are being challenged

i'm heading towards hong kong's northern border

25 minutes later i'm in kamtin a  district in the new territories

this is the walled village of kat hing wai first  settled by the tang clan over 500 years ago  

it was built to protect the residents  from rival clans and bandits  

at the time of my guidebook the villager's  distinctive brick walls will be tested once more  

in 1898 the british wanted to establish a  defensive barrier for hong kong and so they  

acquired on a 99-year lease the so-called new  territories which consisted of more than 600  

villages not all the inhabitants were at all  happy with british rule and there followed a  

very bitter six day war with very high chinese  casualties here at the village of cat king y  

they closed the gates against the british  nonetheless they were overrun the gates were  

stolen and sent to britain and restored to the  village only in 1925 as a gesture of goodwill

also in camtain another beautifully  preserved historic village  

shui tauswan inhabited by  descendants of the tang clan  

featuring traditional cantonese architecture  parts of the village date to the 17th century

village leader ying hua tang  is showing me the family temple  

this is very very beautiful  how old would this be oh

200 years yeah 200 years haha tell  me about this nidhi haidi sanjibhai  

name my daddy my grandfather and all all  the generations oh wonderful may i see okay

my father and my grandfather very beautiful and  very moving your family has been here how long  

over a thousand years a thousand years yeah or  mr ten one family one thousand years yeah it  

makes the british occupation  seem like just a moment  

tucked away in the quiet village the yitai's study  hall built during the latter years of the qing  

dynasty in the mid 19th century was converted into  a primary school around the time of my guidebook

at little desks like this  countless generations of villagers  

will have done their confucian  studies and will have learned too  

to revere their ancestors it strikes me that in  a place where a family has lasted for a thousand  

years you probably view history differently  it's not so much about the isms imperialism  

communism capitalism the empires don't matter  so much the qings and the mings and even  

for the one-day visitor to the village it  makes you perceive the past quite differently

i'm leaving the new territories and taking  the mtr back to the heaving metropolis  

where i'm navigating a vast open-air  market in wanchai on hong kong island

wang chai is an old residential district of faded  apartment blocks and on them they have grown air  

conditioning units like barnacles on the hull of  an old ship but down here by contrast the produce  

is incredibly beautiful and fresh well  fresh it should be half it is still alive

hello guys hi excuse me are you enjoying hong  kong yeah we are wherever you come from well we  

both live here yeah you do yeah so this is our  local our local market oh how amazing how long  

have you lived in hong kong uh i've been  here nine months i've lived here for like  

a month and a half wow how you enjoy it yeah i  love it what do you enjoy about the life here  

uh i mean for me we came here because of the  the food and the the travel opportunities  

um you can really travel anywhere in in south  asia very easily from here and it's an exciting  

place and there's a lot going on it's never boring  there have been protests recently has that been  

has that been disruptive that has that had you on  edge a bit uh no it's actually been very exciting  

i think for me uh i mean it's not very often  you see democracy like happen in front of your  

eyes that dramatically thank you so much so  nice to talk to you yeah your meal tonight

this silent and very dignified demonstration  is part of a series of protests that have been  

held in hong kong over the proposal for a law  by which hong kong people could be extradited  

to the people's republic of china for trial on  charges presumably including political charges now  

the british did not really bequeath to hong kong  democracy but they did leave a legacy of laws that  

were pretty much fair and non-political and so  hong kong people now fear that they're losing some  

of those important rights they're losing their  special standing and they're losing their autonomy

it's my last day exploring hong kong and  i'm heading to one of its outlying islands

my next stop will be lantau which the chinese call  big island mountain certainly it's a great deal  

larger than hong kong island and although it's  vastly populated it is strategically important  

it hosts the international  airport that opened in 1998.  

i'd like to see how important it was to  the british as they monitored shipping  

headed towards the pearl river delta  and the great ports of china beyond

be a safe escalator user holds the handrail and  don't keep your eyes only on your mobile phone  

lantau island was added to the colony in  1898 as part of the new territory's lease  

today it's connected to the mainland by a large  double deck suspension bridge with road above  

and rail underneath the largely mountainous island  is often referred to as the lungs of hong kong  

a destination for pilgrims the remote poland  monastery with its colorful buddhist imagery  

sits alongside the big buddha a 34  metre bronze statue built in 1993  

i've arrived in tai o a traditional fishing  village on the west coast of the island

what a sight the village of tayo on the same  island as the intercontinental airport but here  

houses on stilts long before  people lived in apartment blocks  

i suppose this is how they dwelt and  long before they made their living  

out of financial services and shipping  it was with a boat and a fishing net

no need to ask here whether the fish is fresh

hello

let's go for a lovely cruise please thank you

hmm there's a cool breeze upon the water  and the modern world seems very far away  

the fishing village of tayo offers a glimpse  of what life was like in pre-colonial hong kong

and just outside the village with a  commanding view over the pearl river delta  

is a striking example of colonial architecture

it's now a boutique hotel  and carl law is the manager

carl from the veranda we have a terrific  view lots of islands and actually quite  

a lot of shipping as well yes and if i look out  what what can i see if you look all the way far  

you can see the macau and jihad so this is quite  a strategic point yes he is this building what was  

what was this this building it was a marine  police station and it was a built in 1902  

and during that time there's a lot of pirates  around this area so this is why this police  

station was built to look after this cold side  also look after this fishing village what were  

the tasks of the marine police at the night time  the police officer will use the searchlight to  

scan around the area to look after if any illegal  immigrant although also this macro around this  

area during that time when did it cease to  be a police station uh this police station  

was seen close at the 2002 and the reason it  was closed is because of this village become  

safer and safer they only recorded only five  crimes during the period so that's why the  

police station was closed and then the police  was moved out a happy reason for a closure

i'm nearing the end of my exploration of hong  kong and returning to the central district  

i came in for a simple cup of char  this is wholly unfamiliar to me  

red brown liquid boiling hot it's a whole new  strain of chai and not necessarily my cup of tea

this i'm told is hong kong style milk tea

thank you very much thank you

the whole place smells strongly of tea

yeah it's very very strong tea with condensed milk  

and the tea has been repeatedly  strained to make it smooth it is smooth

it's a kind of very strange fusion  between british and chinese ways  

which actually reminds me that i came to hong  kong in the very last days of british rule i  

was defense secretary i came to visit the  troops it was received by the last governor  

a government house and we did feel very sad  about giving up hong kong but i think that was