British Hong Kong British Hong Kong British Hong Kong denotes the period during which Hong Kong was governed as a colony and British Dependent Territory of the United Kingdom. Excluding the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, Hong Kong was under British rule from 1841 to 1997. The colonial period began with the occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841 during the First Opium War. The island was ceded by Qing China in the aftermath of the war in 1842 and established as a Crown colony in 1843. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War
Culture of Hong Kong surveys. The traditional Cantonese religiosity, including Mahayana Buddhism, was generally discouraged during the British rule over Hong Kong, which favored Christianity. With the end of British rule and the handover of the sovereignty of the city-state to China, there has been a renewal of Buddhist and folk religions. The art of "asking the dead" (Jyutping: Man mai; Traditional Chinese: 問米) has long been a tradition in Hong Kong. It is often common for living people to want to ask dead people about their lives in the underworld. In these rituals, people bring paper-made garments, paper-made money, and paper-made food to