Colony newspapers have printed long excerpts from all the reports, and the _China Mail_ declared that they simply said what the newspaper had been publishing for two years. What Chief Justice Hogan and the Committee have jointly accomplished is to raise an issue of critical importance in the survival of the colony government. Whether it will be resolved as decisively as it has been faced may require months and years to answer. CHAPTER EIGHT Two Worlds in One House “Care must be taken not to confound the habits and institutions of the Chinese with what prevails in other parts of the world.”—BRITISH HOUSE OF LORDS (circa 1880) Hong Kong has furnished the Sino-British answer to a universal question: What’s in it for me? Its progress from the earliest days has been more powerfully influenced by the lure of gold than by the Golden Rule, with its British and Chinese residents having little in common except their human nature and an equal dedication to the maximum profit in the minimum time. “They don’t even speak the same language!” is a convenient expression of the ultimate separation between peoples, but while it is true that nine-tenths of Hong Kong’s Chinese do not speak English, the linguistic gap is only one of the many chasms that stand between them and their British rulers. The British traders and fighting men who muscled their way into possession of Hong Kong Island in 1841 were looked upon with fear and loathing by the Chinese governing class, who considered them gun-toting barbarian brawlers. To the English, the Chinese seemed a docile subspecies of humanity. It has taken most of the intervening 121 years to convince a majority of both sides that the initial judgments may have been wrong. The differences between nineteenth century Chinese and European civilizations were wide. Europeans, when they thought about religion at all, worshipped one God in a variety of antagonistic churches; the Chinese worshipped hundreds of gods, sometimes subscribing to several contradictory creeds simultaneously, without apparent conflict. Europeans were monogamous by law and custom; the Chinese, without odium, could be as polygamous as their means would allow. None of these theological or moral disparities weighed heavily on the English while they were securing a foothold in China and building the opium trade. On the contrary, when they noted the willingness with which Chinese customs officials accepted their bribes, they felt they had established a kind of moral bond with the East. These people, whatever their eccentricities, were ready to do business in the accepted Western way.