IN THE Soldiers' Mess Bar in a crowded Hong King sidestreet there was mixed reaction last week to the entry of a 40 strong advance contingent of the People's Liberation Army from mainland China.
The bar is the hangout of ethnic Chinese soldiers who served in the British army's locally recruited Dragon Company. Their military task was to keep the Chinese communists out, said the pub's founder proprietor, Mr Henry Keith Ip, a former corporal with spiky black hair and steelrimmed spectacles.
Now they are here and Mr Ip (35) has been discharged, no longer needed by Her Majesty's forces.
As we sipped a Chinese beer at the tiny counter, he said: "I feel a little bit unhappy about what is happening." Not so much because the Red Army is in town, he hastened to add, but about the fact that he is out of a job and very much misses the camaraderie of military life.
Mr Ip opened the Soldiers' Mess in the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon three months ago to keep in touch with his service friends after the end of British colonial rule. He has made the little pub, called Bar of the Dragon in Chinese, a museum to the proud memories of Chinese participation in the British army.
At the door stands a tailor's dummy dressed in his old British army uniform, its face smeared with camouflage paint and holding an imitation machine gun. Inside, the Union Jack hangs over one corner, and the Army Maritime Corps flag, with British ensign and crossed swords, in another, under a bar mirror inscribed Guinness, 1979, Brewed in Dublin".
On the walls Mr Ip has displayed rows of framed pictures of regimental occasions, including the disbanding on March 31st of the Dragon Company. He pointed out his place in the second row of the 130 men. Over the bar are metal badges of regiments like the Royal Military Police and the Special Air Services.
At night the noise in the pub is overwhelming as former Chinese servicemen, and an occasional member of the Black Watch regiment, which will lower the flag on June 30th, meet to drink and swap stories until 4 a.m.
But the atmosphere was subdued on Monday evening after Maj Gen Zhou Borong led the advance PLA party across the border at Lok Ma Chau, the first military mission to enter Hong Kong intent on occupation since the Japanese invaded on December 8th, 1941.
The only impediment facing the 40 soldiers in green uniform with red star shoulder flashes on this historic occasion was the usual heavy traffic in the cross harbour tunnel to Central, which they negotiated with the help of Black Watch soldiers who boarded their minivans.
They were admitted through the gates of the Prince of Wales barracks and met by Maj Gen Bryan Dutton and 227 members of the media, and since then have kept a low profile, waiting for July 1st, when China assumes sovereignty of the territory for the first time since the Opium Wars.
Some of the PLA soldiers have been glimpsed looking out at the soaring glass skyscrapers behind them and the luxury hotels where their monthly pay would hardly buy a meal for two. Mr Ip said he hoped they would come to his bar for a drink after July 1st. He has sent flyers to the advance contingent inviting, them to drop by.
Opening a bar dedicated to service in the British army might seem a provocative, politically incorrect thing to do on the eve of the British departure, but the former corporal remarked: "I don't worry about this. They said for 50 years there will be no change in Hong Kong."
He was confident that nothing would happen to Chinese soldiers who served the British once the territory changed hands. "It was just a job for me when I joined up in 1985," he said. "I was only earning HK$1,240 (£100) as a clerk and the army paid me HKS2,500. Also the Military Service Corps wanted me to strengthen their volleyball team as I played for Hong Kong."
Even if Mr Ip wanted to leave the territory before the formal handover it would be difficult, as he is three years short of the 15 years' service necessary to qualify for a British passport. All the rank and file are staying on. Some have got jobs in security firms or the Hong Kong, police.
But most ethnic Chinese officers who served the British decided to leave Hong Kong for good rather than take their chances under the red flag.
Out of 10 officers, six or seven had gone to London and two more would follow in June, Mr Ip said. Last year on a visit to London he accidentally came across one of his former commanders, Capt Leung, hauling goods in Soho for Chinese restaurants. "I was very upset. This was a dignified person whom I once saluted," he said. "I spoke to him but he put his head down and went on."
Didi he trust the Chinese government? "I must trust the Chinese, because I'm staying on," he replied with a smile. And business is so good he hopes to expand. But he is not insensitive to reality. At midnight on June 30th, he said, he would be replacing the big Union Jack in the corner with the reg flag and five stars of communist China.