Hong Kong, China.

When i started Streets I thought the definition of a country was clear. I'd choosen the countries that have a seat in the U.N. as my guiding principle for this project. Along the way I found that things aren't that easy. There are "countries" that other countries don't agree with, Taiwan for instance. There are also countries that have a shared U.N. seat or none at all. The peoples of these countries feel and say that their place is definitely a country. And then there are places that surely are not countries, but something strange is going on with them. Things that make them interesting to include them afterall in the Streets of the World project. Hong Kong is one of these places.

Up untill 1997 Hong Kong was part of Great Britain. A deal was signed in 1898 that included handing Hong Kong over to China 99 years later. And so it was done. But Hong Kong did not become "Chinese" in that sense at all. It kept it's own economic system, administration and laws. This will continue to be so for at least the next 40 years. in Hong Kong you don't have the feeling you're in China. You don't need a Chinese visa to go there, they have their own Hong Kong dollar and if you want to move from Shanghai and bring your dog to Hong Kong it has to be quarantened for three months!

So how do we look upon Hong Kong? The Chinese call it; One country, two systems.