Hong Kong's night streets, wrote novelist Ian Fleming in 1964, "are the most enchanting I have ever trod." By day the city's thoroughfares are dominated by the gray around them. But twilight brushes the territory with garish hues--the sodium-yellow of spotlit skyscrapers, the pink and pastel blue of neon signs, the crimson of paper lanterns. The rich palette cheers on a street life that is just as comfortable outside the city's fleshpots as along its side-alleys lined with food stalls. In this unreal glow, Hong Kong's features reveal themselves most clearly, as oddities that will be washed out in the thin light of day. --Nisid Hajari

6:55 PM CONVENTION CENTER
The newest addition to Hong Kong's skyline --a vast extension to its exhibition facility--will host the official handover ceremony

8:50 PM HAPPY VALLEY RACETRACK
On Wednesday nights, the city's attention--as well as some $100 million in bets--is drawn to the action at the 113-year-old course

9:30 PM KAI TAK AIRPORT
Air-traffic controllers quietly concentrate on one of the trickiest approaches in the world

10:15 PM TSIMSHATSUI WATERFRONT
Hong Kong's romance extends over to Kowloon, a perfect vantage onto the iridescent skyline

11:10 PM CENTRAL
Currency traders at Bank of America follow the grueling sche- dule set by international capital

A sidewalk chef fires up his wok for the evening A fortune-teller mesmerizes tourists with his palmistry Style-conscious teen hipsters look to remake themselves with colored wigs

8:00 PM --12:00AM TEMPLE STREET MARKET
No god ranks higher in Hong Kong than Mammon, and from 8 p.m. to midnight Kowloon's Temple Street becomes the city's truest altar to consumerism. From the mundane--electric plugs, dumplings, T-shirts--is wrought a festival, a lantern-lit celebration not of the divine but of the soul of a city.

Crates of cheap CDs attract bargain-hunters

Tourists study a jewelry engraver hard at work The homegrown tones of amateur Chinese opera fill the air

A child dutifully finishes his homework behind his parents' stall Hungry shoppers line up for a last bite before going home

12:05 AM WANCHAI
Fortune brings campy heartthrobs Melvis and Boyzone together for an improvised duet

12:15 AM NEAR HARBOR TUNNEL
"Formula C" racers pit their souped-up radio cars against one another under a flyover

1:20 AM LOCKHART ROAD
Ricky's, a Wanchai landmark, accepts another late-night customer, in for his second tattoo

12:55 AM WANCHAI MTR STATION
Underground, an office worker waiting for the last train paces alone, oblivious to the revelers thronging the girlie bars at street level

3:40 AM YAUMATEI FRUIT MARKET
Containers are unloaded from midnight to 4 a.m., when the city's traders start to arrive

5:35 AM ABERDEEN HARBOR
Fleets of fishing boats bring in their catches destined for Hong Kong's many restaurants

6:20 AM FLEMING ROAD
Just before dawn, a solitary vendor puts copies of the morning newspapers in order