Hong Kong people, for all sorts of reasons, had hardly given the mainland a proper look in the 1980s.
It wasn’t until the 1990s that exchanges really began.
The delegation left Beijing and went straight to Guangzhou, and what they saw there left them stunned.
Guangzhou in the 1980s was unique in the whole country.
It held the first domestic beauty contest, built the first large-scale amusement park — and on opening day it welcomed 100,000 visitors.
It had already become the nation’s clothing distribution center: there was a whole garment street, a lit-up night market, food stalls everywhere.
The city had more than seventy music teahouses where Hong Kong, Taiwan and foreign music played freely.
Annual revenue topped over twenty million yuan, an average of about three hundred thousand per venue...
The film industry was booming like never before.
One downtown street alone had eight movie theaters — they boasted “eight theaters surrounding the city!”
The Hong Kong delegation arrived full of complaints, but once they started inspecting things they got excited.