Hong Kong Quotes: Capturing the Essence of the City

"The problem with a lot of Chinese is that they put up divisions between Taiwanese, Hong Kong natives, mainlanders. We are never united. I really hope that the Chinese can be more united"

Martin Yan, Celebrity

"American stuntmen are smart - they think about safety. When they do a jump in a car, they calculate everything: the speed, the distance... But in Hong Kong, we don't know how to count. Everything we do is a guess. If you've got the guts, you do it. All of my stuntmen have gotten hurt"

Jackie Chan, Actor

"And I managed to arrange to get some research support and to stay in Hong Kong for another year and a half, interviewing people coming out of China, both Westerners and Chinese. And that was my first real research study on thought reform or so-called brainwashing"

Robert Jay Lifton, Psychologist

"In the West audiences think I am a stereotyped action star, or that I always play hitmen or killers. But in Hong Kong, I did a lot of comedy, many dramatic films, and most of all, romantic roles, lots of love stories. I was like a romance novel hero"

Chow Yun-Fat, Actor

"Hong Kong has created one of the most successful societies on Earth"

Prince Charles, Royalty

"At thirteen, when I arrived in Hong Kong after leaving China, I made a living by working in a restaurant"

Martin Yan, Celebrity

"It's a remake of a film called Inferno Affairs. It's a Hong Kong film, and if we come anywhere close to what they did in the original, we're going to have a hot property on our hands, because Inferno Affairs is a great piece"

Anthony Anderson, Actor

"That's so different in Hong Kong when I'm using my own mother language, I can treat the line in one thousand different ways, with many different reactions"

Chow Yun-Fat, Actor

"I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned"

Jung Chang, Writer

"Be realistic and truthful - and tell Hong Kong businessmen honestly that they should go for long-term investments since it is unlikely money can be made in the short haul"

Zhu Rongji, Statesman

"We got to jump on, like, trampolines, learn flips, learn karate, kung fu, Hong Kong street fighting"

Jaime King, Actress

"English is my second language, but in Hong Kong, they don't know that I'm from China. They think I'm from Hollywood because all the films they see are from here. China and Hong Kong are very different places, but they're starting to merge. Still the culture is very different"

Bai Ling, Actress

"I became producer so that I could work with persons like him and to rock the world of Hong Kong Cinema a bit"

Andy Lau, Actor

"I am classified as an idol in Hong Kong and in Asia"

Andy Lau, Actor

"I'm Anna May Wong. I come from old Hong Kong. But now I'm a Hollywood star"

Anna May Wong, Actress

"There are many kinds of movies in Hong Kong. Some are commercial and others are more artistic"

Andy Lau, Actor

"When I lived in Hong Kong, I felt that Hong Kong is my family"

Jet Li, Actor

"Six months after that, I left Taiwan, first for Hong Kong and then for mainland China, where I spent another three months studying still more Chinese and generally kicking around the country"

Eric Allin Cornell, Physicist

"Among other things they picked out a detail that Charles had been offered the Governorship of Hong Kong in its dying days by Thatcher in return for shutting up about the inner cities. He quite rightly in my view led the paper on this story"

Anthony Holden, Journalist