Lines extend beyond the British consulate for a fifth straight day as residents pay their respects to the Queen.
Despite the unseasonable heat and humidity likely exacerbated by a typhoon in the seas off Japan, the queue of Hong Kongers paying their condolences to the queen on Friday stretched far beyond the consulate, passing a major mall and hotel complex to end at the bottom end of a nearby park.
It was the fifth straight day of queues that would keep residents waiting for several hours, something noted by numerous international media earlier in the week. Many, such as «BBC», «CNN» and others, attributed it as some kind of message or defiance towards Beijing due to its increased grip on the city after the 2019 pro-democratic protests. But the city's main English language daily newspaper, the «South China Morning Post», observed that a conservative member of the current government had also come to pay condolences.
Financial Center
As finews.asia reported Friday a week ago, the presence of the longest-serving monarch in British history is still clearly felt in many ways throughout the city. At the outset of her reign, Hong Kong was recovering from the Japanese occupation in World War II, and its importance as an international shipping port was on the wane.
It was only in subsequent decades, on the back of a booming manufacturing and construction sector, that it grew to become one of the world's pre-eminent financial centers, a role it still has by many accounts.
That may also be playing a part in the outpouring of sentiment. The current unease felt by many about a world fraught with geopolitical confrontation in places like Taiwan and the Ukraine War, and latent uncertainty about the city's future, is likely intensifying nostalgia about the past.
