Customer Reviews

National Geographic's Hong Kong: A Family Portrait [VHS]

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This very fine documentary takes a look at the tremendous pressure the British Colony (British at the time of shooting) of Hong Kong was, and is, put under by the influx of millions of refugees fleeing China in the last several decades (1950s to 1970s, and beyond). By concentrating on two families - one living in the Yaumautai Typhoon Shelter in a "junk city" - a semi-slum community of thousands annd thousands strong who live on Chinese junks all moored together; and another family living in a one-room apartment in one of the of the many thousands of forty-storey concrete tower blocks/tenement blocks that had to be hastily erected to house the refugees (who initially lived on hillsides in tin-and-garbage-made shacks - when I lived in Hong Kong in the nineties a few still did), the viewer gets a moving portrait of the pain and suffering and effort that goes in to producing Hong Kong's famous "effervesence." Exhilerating (or overwhelming) for tourists, this "hustle and bustle" is made up of millions of ex-refugees and their children trying to survive. I think this documentary is a fine corrective to the tourist bureau image of the place as an "international city" (almost everybody is Chinese) or a kind of "Paris of the East" (you hear that phrase among insecure residents, but the city's wall to wall concrete tower blocks aren't much to look at up close, and the cultural amenities are mediocre), especially because the human story of Hong Kong deserves a more understanding and informed approach - as this National Geographic video will help the viewer to attain. Made in the 80s, Hong Kong has changed little in essentials since this video was made - the boat people have been moved into tenements for the most part, but the shabbiness and sheer oppressive weight of numbers is still a big problem, making life just as difficult. The video does not go into the high rate of emigration from Hong Kong, of refugees who have marketable skills, to the First World, which would have underlined the situation a little better, I think, for those millions left behind. The one thing that has changed of course is the British Government has left. Since the Brits were famed for leaving people alone in a region infamous for excessive government intereference, we shall have to see what happens.