I always wondered what happened to them. Even those born in Hong Kong were not entitled to Chinese citizenship unless they were of Chinese descent. I wonder if these British permanent residents in Hong Kong learnt to speak Cantonese.What's the first word that comes to mind when you hear the term "Hong Kong expatriate?"
Thought so. Everyone says banker.
Twelve years ago this week, Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony. Just after midnight on July 1st 1997 Chris Patten boarded the Royal Yacht Britannia and sailed away to the strains of Land of Hope and Glory.
His departure coincided with rumours of an accompanying exodus of British expatriates. Traditional red post boxes had been painted green and purple and bank notes no longer carried a picture of the Queen – for some, there seemed little point in staying.
As it turned out, not everyone left when the last governor did. The British Consulate in Hong Kong estimates that there are currently between 25,000 and 30,000 UK expats based in the city. And contrary to popular belief, we're from a diverse range of professions and backgrounds – from former civil servants to clergymen; wheeler-dealers to washed-up backpackers.
Car mechanic Derek Brooks followed his girlfriend out to Hong Kong in 1994, found work maintaining a fleet of buses and decided not to return to Britain. When contracts started going to Chinese firms after 1997, the native of Harrow, Middlesex, took a job installing state of the art desks on the dealing floors of international banks.
In a form of economic irony, the recent wave of layoffs in the finance industry mean Brooks has never been busier. "I'm taking back out all the desks I put in," he jokes.
Mark Knight joined the Hong Kong Civil Service in the late Eighties and was impressed with the perks. "We had a huge apartment, a maid, gratuities and generous travel allowances," he says.
When the privileges ended in 1997, Knight qualified as an English language examiner and now specialises in corporate benchmarking across Asia.
"The opportunity to reinvent yourself is far greater here than back home. Switching careers in the UK would be much more difficult," he says.
David Tait would agree. Colonial Hong Kong was a sought-after posting for British military personnel and the Scottish Royal Navy officer liked what he saw during two tours of duty in the Eighties. He quit the Submarine Service and settled here permanently in 1993.
"I had no fixed career plans when I returned but the place was awash with money," the former lieutenant remembers. After a stint selling advertising space, Tait set up his own publishing company which has been in business for a decade this year.
At a time when the transfer of sovereignty was causing anxiety for some long-term expats, others saw the chance of a lifetime. Large numbers of young Britons poured into the colony for a last hurrah, attracted by preferential immigration and employment status and the chance to witness history being made.
Clutching CVs of varying pedigree, they slept on friends' sofas and hustled for job openings. These eleventh-hour arrivals became known as FILTH (Failed In London, Try Hong Kong). Many are still here.
British backpackers also arrived in droves. In need of a cash injection after extended jaunts around south-east Asia, they could turn up in Hong Kong in the afternoon and be serving drinks in a bar by evening.
Paul Docherty landed a job at Joe Bananas, a popular city nightspot. Realising he was never going to get rich pulling pints for homesick tourists, he decided to set up his own pub on rural Lantau Island.
The timing and location were perfect – construction of the new Hong Kong International Airport had started nearby and thirsty workers crowded into Papa Doc's from the day it opened. "The airport project definitely affected my decision to look for a place on Lantau," Docherty admits.
For another group of transplanted Brits, the Chinese passion for education is a blessing. No one has ever counted but there are probably more UK born teachers than bankers in Hong Kong.
From tutoring in language clubs to lecturing at universities, anyone with (and sometimes without) a qualification can usually find a teaching position.
Dominic Abbott arrived in 1993 and in another "it could only happen in Hong Kong" tale; he combined teaching English with work as a bouncer at a bar in Kowloon. The primary school teacher from Bradford says his nocturnal employment was infinitely more interesting than his day job.
"Triads would come in and offer money to spend the night with the barmaids. I had to tactfully explain that it wasn't that kind of place without upsetting the gang members. Then after a couple of hours' sleep I had to go and teach grammar to a class of Chinese housewives."
A different kind of violence was about to erupt as one visitor was deciding whether to put down roots in the city. Reverend John Chynchen first ventured to the Far East in the Sixties, arriving in Hong Kong for the first time in 1966.
The Communist-inspired riots a year later didn't dampen the former marine surveyor's enthusiasm however and he moved to the colony permanently not long after. Ordained as a deacon in 1989, he has no plans to abandon his flock.
"I was all set to leave in 1997," he recalls "but I realised that I wasn't ready to retire." Like most "old China hands" Chynchen, originally from Enfield, deals with bouts of homesickness by returning to the UK at regular intervals.
"I would definitely describe myself as an expatriate," he says "but I still retain membership of my London club."
Under the "one country, two systems" policy, Hong Kong is rapidly integrating with mainland China. Colonial privilege and residual goodwill are waning and resourceful British expats are discovering that adaptability and cultural awareness are more useful than membership of the cricket club.
This morning I asked my four-year-old son to sing me a song he'd learned at kindergarten. I recognised the tune immediately but not the words. He was singing in Mandarin.
But instead it has left the normally bubbly 17-year-old smouldering with anger. For, following a local tradition that seems extraordinary in a country which has elected its first black president, there was not just one formal dance for the 54 classmates who graduated from Montgomery County High, but two.
On the first night, a prom was held for the school's white students; the following night came the celebration for Miss Nobles and the school's other blacks.
In early summer when Georgia peaches are at their sweetest and high school seniors can't wait to be loosed on the world, separate proms are part of the bitter aftertaste of segregation that persists in parts of America's Deep South.
For nearly 40 years state school pupils have been educated together. They have played sports together and developed close bonds of friendship, before finding themselves face to face with a cruel ghost from America's past.
"It was heartbreaking," said Miss Nobles, who will be leaving home to go to university this autumn. "It was the one night to see all your friends dressed up and I'm told, I have to wait until the next night because of the colour of my skin."
The annual prom held by high schools across America near the end of the academic year is big event, for which students and parents spend months preparing. But in a handful of Southern towns, parents still insist on whites-only proms which blacks are not allowed to attend.
The election of Barack Obama did nothing to change attitudes that go back generations in the small rural towns of Montgomery county, Georgia; the surge of pride black people felt in the election of the first black President was met by frosty silence by whites. The county, which is two thirds white, voted overwhelmingly Republican last November and attitudes have hardened as the months have passed.
Barred from attending the white prom, Kera still stood outside to show moral support for her closest friends, cheering and taking photographs as they arrived and did the "senior walk" into the community hall with their boyfriends or their fathers. Then she left, with her black friends.
Next evening her own white friends encouraged her and took their own pictures as she and her friends dressed in lavishly coloured dresses and rented dress suits for their own event at the same venue.
She was close to tears. "Every (school) class we sat beside each other," she said, ticking off the names of her best white girlfirends, Harley Boone and Cierra Sharpe.
"We love each other. But there's a lot of hidden history here, and while everybody gets along there's always something... If your parents are a certain way nine times out of 10 you're going to think the same way."
Blake Conner, 17, who is white, did not want to go to the prom at all, but was persuaded to attend by friends. "There's a lot of people I went to school with, who are my friends that I wish could have been there," he said, lifting sacks of sweet corn from an elderly farmer's pickup truck into farm shop where he has a summer job.
He believes it would be hard to have a successful integrated prom for what he calls "cultural reasons."
"My friends tried to organise a joint prom but they just couldn't agree on the music or even a theme," he said.
For two white sisters, Terra and Tamara Fountain, both of whom have black boyfriends, prom night was especially trying. "I wanted to go to the black prom," said Terra, 18, "but my mom wouldn't pay. She doesn't like me talking to black people anyway." She now lives with her black boyfriend, Gary Carswell, but neither feels comfortable living under scrutiny in a small town.
Her sister Tamara, 16, added that she cannot be seen on the street with her boyfriend Ken Troupe. "Its terrible, everybody's so racist round here," she said. "If they see you in public with a black guy they just stare at you with hate in their eyes."
Montgomery county's time warp seems to be rooted in institutionalised racism. Until relatively recently the black community of this town lived in terror of the lynch mob.
In one infamous killing in early August 1930, a prominent 70-year old black politician was taken from his house by a mob and tortured to death. In 1944, after a one-day trial by an all white jury, a maid was convicted and later executed for shooting dead a man who was sexually assaulting her.
Racially motivated killings continued through the 1950s, and in the late 1970s a white man was shot dead for having an affair with a black woman. No one was prosecuted.
Officials insist that the once powerful Ku Klux Klan is no longer active. "The Klan is now history and thank the Lord for that," said one. "They are gone now, we are just dealing with some old attitudes."
It's those attitudes that kept last month's proms segregated, since the parents of white pupils refuse to support it another way. This year's "white folks' prom", as it is known, was a lavish affair for which tickets cost over $200 a head - out of the reach of most black pupils, who are from some of the poorest families in the country.
The sadness of the black pupils was captured by Gillian Laub, a freelance photographer who reported on the town's segregated events for the New York Times Magazine.
Harley Boone, a graduating white student who posed by her parents' outdoor swimming pool, told her: "There's always been two separate proms. It don't seem like a big deal around here, it's just what we know and what our parents have done for so many years.
"In our school system it's not really about being racist or having all white friends or all black friends. We all hang out together, we're all in the same classes, and we all eat lunch together at the same table. It's not about what colour you are."
Miss Boone's comments outraged many and she found herself cruelly caricatured as a racist on a YouTube video that has been widely viewed.
Betty McCoy, the editor of the local newspaper, the Montgomery Monitor, has watched with dismay as segregated proms continue year after year. "It's really the fault of a few families," she said. "This is really a friendly and well integrated community."
Pastor F Lee Carter of the African Baptist Church - who once marched for civil rights in Selma, Alabama with Rev Martin Luther King, has little patience with those who demand separate proms.
"Political life is intertwined; educational life is too," he said. "So why shouldn't our social life be intertwined as well?"
But the school superintendent, Leon Batten, pointed out: "The most segregated hour of the week is 11 am on a Sunday morning when white and black attend separate churches."
Even so, Mr Batten has decided it is time to end the segregation - and next year there will be an integrated prom, arranged by the school instead of the parents, he told The Sunday Telegraph. "It may not be a great success at first, but we will persist and over time the segregation will be history."
