Hong Kong, China

HONG KONG | "香港 — Fragrant Harbour"

Hong Kong is the most dramatic urban landscape in the world — a Special Administrative Region of 7.5 million people compressed onto 1,106 square kilometers of rock, hill, and reclaimed land at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta, where the density of the city, the steepness of the terrain, and the extraordinary juxtaposition of colonial architecture, Chinese merchant culture, and global financial infrastructure create an environment of such visual and social intensity that arriving in Hong Kong for the first time remains one of the most disorienting and thrilling experiences in travel. The city was a British Crown Colony from 1842 to 1997 and the layering of British colonial institutions, Cantonese cultural vitality, and the ambitions of the post-1997 transition have produced a civilization of unique complexity — a place that is simultaneously Chinese and cosmopolitan, ancient and hyper-modern, local and global in ways that no other city manages.

The colors are the specific Hong Kong palette of vertical stone and harbour light: the deep grey of the Victoria Peak granite above the city, the gold and white of the Kowloon skyline reflected in the harbour at the Symphony of Lights show, the brilliant red of the traditional junks against the modern ferry terminals at the Star Ferry pier, and the extraordinary nocturnal color palette of the city seen from the Peak at night when 7.5 million people's lights compress into a single continuous illumination that stretches from Aberdeen to Sha Tin.