Some vignettes from my memories: It's a punishingly hot day in 1992, a few weeks after my arrival in Hong Kong. I'm visiting facilities for the disabled in Kowloon. Outside a sheltered workshop stands a group of parents with their handicapped children--wheelchairs, calipers, a few placards. They wait patiently through the sticky, oppressive afternoon to petition me courteously when I leave the workshop about the need for more assistance for families like them.

Hong Kong is an extraordinarily moderate place. Whether it's people lobbying--rightly in this case--for better welfare provision or for democracy and the defense of their civil liberties, they invariably behave with responsibility and restraint. Given the scale of the issues that Hong Kong has encountered in the countdown to July 1997, it is notable how little extremism there is here and how much level-headedness. This is a city that exercises its liberties prudently--provided, I suspect, that it's allowed to exercise them.

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