SOME 30 years ago the writer Richard Mason stepped off the Star Ferry at Wanchai looking for inspiration, and booked into the seedy waterfront Luk Kwok hotel. He found himself in the company of some golden hearted Chinese bar girls, one of whom he immortalised in his novel The World of Suzie Wong.
If Mason were to return to witness next year's historic transfer of Hong Kong to China, he would find the ferry still running and the Luk Kwok still in business, though it has been rebuilt as a top class family hotel, all marble and brass.
The tramcars which Suzie took still rumble through Central, and Jaffe Road is still a riot of crimson and gold restaurant facades and coloured neon lights, unmoving as required by law so as not to distract navigators in the air or at sea.
The island today, however, is a focus not of sailors and prostitutes but of bankers, insurance executives and financiers, who have erected soaring temples of concrete and smoked glass on the northern slopes, many of them glittering new hotels.
The 1950s author would also find that the bar girls have moved to Kowloon and that they now are mostly from Thailand or the Philippines. He would discover, moreover, that he could not get a room for love nor money.
The Luk Kwok has already been booked solid for June 30th, the date when Hong Kong reverts to China. "Bookings closed two months ago for the three days before and the three days after June 30th," said the receptionist.
Almost all the 34,305 bedrooms in Hong Kong's hotels and guest houses have been booked years ago by people coming for the end of Empire show next year. The city has always been a festive place and everyone, it seems, wants to enjoy the fun and fireworks or wallow in the nostalgia, while witnessing the unique phenomenon of the peaceful transfer from a capitalist to a communist power of perhaps the greatest free market city the world has ever known.
Way back in 1987, the Excelsior in Causeway Bay offered a special deal, the chance to book a room for the night of June 30th 1997, at a price equivalent to £166. Within weeks, all 100 rooms set aside for the deal had been snapped up. The hotel's 760 other rooms have since been offered, at a much higher price, for a minimum six night stay, and all were booked several years ago. There is presently a waiting list of 400 hoping to get rooms at the Excelsior for a world event which will be as big as the Olympics.
Undoubtedly, one of the best place to witness the goings on is the Mandarin Oriental, managed by Irishman Liam Lambert, and already a favourite of visiting Chinese officials - and of Margaret Thatcher, who is expected to come and stay briefly before departing into the darkness on the night of June 30th with the governor and the Prince of Wales. It is just a couple of blocks from the British military barracks, which the soldiers of the People's Liberation Army will liberate at the stroke of midnight.
The Mandarin was built in 1963 as a symbol of sophisticated Hong Kong - but with its front doors placed at an angle to satisfy Chinese concerns about discouraging evil spirits. Its style was described by Jan Morris in her Hong Kong, Epilogue to an Empire, as that "of the loftier British of the China coast, tempered by long years of comfort and assimilation in the east".
Comfort and assimilation comment a price. The Mandarin's six night package ranges from £2,400 to £3,300 depending on whether you get the standard city view or the deluxe harbour view, and up to £6,750 for a six night suite.
The dignified old Peninsula, which could be seen across the harbour from the balconies of the old Luk Kwok, and the Victoria, where the lift carpets are replaced every midnight with ones showing the new day's date woven into the fabric, have also been booked at similar prices.
It is the same story at the Hilton, where a plaque marks the bar table once frequented by Richard Hughes, the Australian journalist who became "Old Crow" in another famous book based in Hong Kong, John le Carre's The Honourable Schoolboy. "We held back and didn't take bookings for the handover until recently," said Mr Michael Makil of the Hilton yesterday. "Now we are not accepting any more bookings. Most hotels on the island are fully booked."
Not everyone wants to come, of course. A couple of years ago, when his book was reprinted here to take advantage of rising tourist interest in Hong Kong, Richard Mason said in Rome where he had gone to live: "Of course with 1997 approaching, we're all interested in what will happen over the next few years. But I'd like to remember it as it was back in the 1950s, in the days of The World of Suzie Wong.