The Hong Kong Diaries

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Christopher Francis Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes, KG , CH , PC ( Chinese: 彭定康; [2] born 12 May 1944) is a British politician who was the 28th and last Governor of Hong Kong from 1992 to 1997 and Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1992. For Chinese, verbal contracts are made on the basis of a shared understanding that “once I make a promise verbally, the deal is ‘legally binding as nine heavy pots’” (a Chinese way of saying).

He took steps to get in touch with the people of the colony, and was known for his penchant for taking public strolls around Hong Kong as well as in the media limelight. Lu planned to give Patten a gift (perhaps an agreement on the airport) but due to Patten’s tough attitude, Patten would not receive anything then. As Patten notes in The Diaries, in his negotiations he didn’t “have a secret agenda”; instead, he wants “to do the job efficiently and honorably” (p.One of them, a postgraduate medical student at Oxford, stopped him to explain that they had met at that meeting and Patten had been photographed with him carrying the yellow umbrella symbol of protest. After reading Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford and graduating in 1965, Patten joined the Conservative Party the following year.

This personal perspective is a great supplement to the official narratives one mig Indeed, one advantage of using verbal contracts in China is that, when compared to written contracts, there is plenty of room to revise deals since verbal agreements are not recorded in real time. For amateurs who are only interested to have an overview on colonial Hong Kong, they probably can refer to Jan Morris's book, which was highly recommended by Chris Patten in his diaries. Under a painted portrait of Patten and his wife of 51 years are photographs of their eight grandchildren. He asked Patten the question that all young people from Hong Kong he meets now ask him: “Do you think when we finish our degree we should go back to Hong Kong?However, some readers may find the book boring because they expect to gain some insights on political confrontations or exclusive stories regarding the negotiations between the United Kingdom and China on Hong Kong’s future. I also really liked the personal touch, especially finding out the on one of his birthdays in HK he went to Lamma Island and at at the pigeon restaurant, where my family and I often ate as well. On 29 September 2005, he published his memoirs, Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths About World Affairs. It came, however, immediately in the wake of widespread criticism of the BBC's live outside-broadcast coverage of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee River Pageant on 3 June 2012, which was castigated in the press and was the subject of 1,830 formal complaints by viewers.