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1983 Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong%2C_Hong_Kong Hong Kong is situated on the eastern banks of the Pearl River Delta on the southeastern coast of the People's Republic of China, facing the South China Sea in the south and bordering Guangdong Province in the north. Hong Kong was a British colony from 1842 until the People's Republic of China resumed the exercise of sovereignty in 1997. It is governed as a special administrative region under the Basic Law of Hong Kong, the territory's constitution. The area now known as Hong Kong became an important trading region and a significant strategic location for the Chinese mainland during the Tang and Song dynasties. These populated townships or villages had never been collectively known as Hong Kong before the British administration. The area began to attract the attention of China and the rest of the world again in the 19th century, when it was ceded to Britain after the Opium Wars. Hong Kong's earliest recorded non-Asian visitor was the Portuguese mariner Jorge Álvares who arrived in 1513. Álvares began trading with the Chinese, and the Portuguese continued to make periodic trade stops at various locations along the coast. Tea, silk, and other Asian luxury goods were introduced in Europe by the Portuguese, and by the mid-18th century these items were in high demand, particularly tea. The British, to redress their net outflow of payments to China for tea and to force China to conduct relations like other states, invaded China, winning the First Opium War in 1841. During the war, Hong Kong Island was first occupied by the British, and then formally ceded by the Qing Dynasty of China in 1842 under the Treaty of Nanking. Hong Kong became a crown colony in 1843 with the first urban settlement named Victoria City. The Kowloon Peninsula south of Boundary Street and Stonecutter's Island was ceded to the British in perpetuity in 1860 under the Convention of Peking after China's defeat in the Second Opium War. Expansive adjacent lands to the north, known as the New Territories (including New Kowloon and Lantau Island), were then leased by Britain from China for 99 years, from 1 July 1898 to 30 June 1997.