There is a Hong Kong, the neon-lit metropolis of the postcards, that bristles with office towers of glass and steel, with shopping malls housed in windowless concrete cubes and apartment blocks so densely packed on the slope above the city centre that the inhabitants commute to work by escalator.

That is the Hong Kong of luxury-brand stores and teeming streets, of shipping and finance, of Mongkok and Mid-Levels, of architects Norman Foster and I.M.Pei. It is efficient, intermittently post-modern and sometimes beautiful. It is rarely loveable.