Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day (Chinese: 香港特別行政區成立紀念日) is celebrated every 1 July, in Hong Kong since 1997. The holiday commemorates the transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China and the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The day is customarily marked by an officially organised extravagant fireworks display in the evening, and is also the platform for political rallies demanding universal suffrage. In 2007, to commemorate the 10th Anniversary celebration the Hong Kong Government published a song, "Just Because You Are Here" (Chinese: 始終有你). It was sung by many Hong Kong singers and composed by Peter Kam (金培達) with lyric by Keith Chan (陳少琪).
Famous quotes containing the words special, region and/or day:
“The universal social pressure upon women to be all alike, and do all the same things, and to be content with identical restrictions, has resulted not only in terrible suffering in the lives of exceptional women, but also in the loss of unmeasured feminine values in special gifts. The Drama of the Woman of Genius has too often been a tragedy of misshapen and perverted power.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath,
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)