| Charles Unedited: The Prince of Wales' Hong Kong Journal |
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| Written by Joanne Leyland | |
| Thursday, 23 February 2006 | |
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Page 3 of 4 The afternoon/early evening saw the start of the farewell ceremony in a stadium next to HMY. The Patten family had come on board at tea time looking incredibly sad and somewhat shattered, having said goodbye to Government House and all their staff. Chris Patten came on board cradling the Union Jack from Govt House which he had been given on departure...Having tried to soothe their nerves with a cup of tea, we all set off for the stadium where a kind of extravaganza had been arranged — as it turned out, in the rain. And the rain just came down in a light, steady trickle, thoroughly wetting everything and turning the red carpet on the platform where I was sitting into a soggy, squidgy mess. We sat through various acts and performances and listened to Chris Patten's rather moving speech — which he hadn't shown to the Chinese. I ended up with a lump in my throat and was then completely finished off by the playing of Elgar's Nimrod Variations immediately afterwards. During the course of all these proceedings I had a premonition that the heavens would open in a serious fashion just as I got up to speak — sure enough, just as I had thought and as if on cue, the rain came lashing down and I found myself standing at the lectern and trying to make sense of my speech which by now had become a soggy mess of paper pulp and each page stuck together. Never before had I been called upon to make a speech underwater. This was the first occasion. 
After all this emotion, and being thoroughly soaked to the skin, I rushed back to HMY for a bath before having to go on to the main Convention Centre for the banquet for 4,000 people. Inevitably, the fireworks display started precisely as I lowered myself into the bath and ended as I came down after changing. At the vast banquet I sat next to the Chinese Foreign Minister who must have had considerable difficulty knowing what to make of me. After a lot of toasting we left the dinner and just waited around until we could go through the ridiculous rigmarole of meeting the Chinese President Jiang Zemin, without loss of face on either side. The Chinese had been arguing the toss over every single detail of the arrangements of the handover and wanted to insist I came into a room to call on the Chinese President. This was adamantly resisted by all the British — so a compromise was found by which we both walked into the room from different ends and met in the middle. |
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