Distance alone was a formidable obstacle; by today’s shortest air route, Hong Kong is 10,611 miles from New York and 7,286 miles from London. It was much farther by ship, and it took weeks to get there. Imperial Airways opened the first regular airline service from Europe in 1936, and Pan American World Airways started weekly transpacific flights in 1937. Early flights from New York or London still required a week, more or less, and although faster piston-engined planes gradually pared down the time, it took the introduction of jet airliners in 1958 to cut the longest flights to approximately 24 hours. The new Kai Tak Airport, whose 8,350-foot runway juts into Kowloon Bay on a strip of reclaimed land, opened on September 12, 1958, six weeks earlier than the first oceanic jet passenger service. Scheduled ocean liners and cruise ships continue to call at Hong Kong, but four-fifths of all tourists arrive by air at Kai Tak. More than 210,000 of them came in 1961, with Americans and residents of the British Commonwealth comprising the two largest groups. Not included in this total are the 132,000 members of the American armed forces who had shore leave in the colony during 1961. For many years they have been the largest group of colony visitors; liberal spenders and generally law-abiding. After ignoring Hong Kong effortlessly for decades, Americans had their attention drawn to it by a variety of stimulants. Hollywood motion pictures such as _Soldier of Fortune_, _Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing_, _The World of Suzie Wong_, and _Ferry to Hong Kong_ were of varying artistic merit, but they all helped the tourist business. Television, radio and film personalities—Arthur Godfrey, William Holden, Jack Paar, Ed Sullivan, and David Brinkley—presented documentary reports on the colony. There was even a television adventure serial about Hong Kong, but with the exception of a few on-the-spot film clips spliced in for authenticity, it dealt with people, places and customs unknown to any colony resident. Tourism stands next to the textile industry as a source of foreign exchange and it has created thousands of jobs for hotel and restaurant workers, entertainers, guides and shop clerks. Recognizing its economic value, the colony government set up the Hong Kong Tourist Association a few years ago. The association beams its Lorelei serenade to tourists overseas, but in its own yard, it functions as a watchdog. Its warning yip is brief: Don’t flim-flam the tourists, or you’ll kill a $120 million-a-year industry. Transportation facilities in and out of the colony are equipped to handle any foreseeable increase in freight or passenger traffic during the next few years. Seventy-six shipping lines sail to 234 ports around the world. Nineteen airlines operate out of Kai Tak, with the four busiest—Cathay Pacific (chiefly regional), British Overseas Airways, Pan American and Japan Air Lines—averaging two or more arrivals and departures every day.