The Royal Yacht Britannia flies its colors as it enters Victoria Harbour when Hong Kong was still under British control. "Albert is much amused," wrote Queen Victoria in 1841, "at my having got this island of Hong Kong." Today the sun may have set on the British Empire, but it still rises over Hong Kong, reunited with China since 1997.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Hong Kong: Countdown to 1997," February 1991, National Geographic magazine)