Beijing closes gap with HK

While growing up in her snowbound village outside of Harbin in the extreme weather of northeast China, Yang Wan often dreamed of visiting Hong Kong.

Then later as a five-year resident of the increasingly cosmopolitan Beijing, she continued to view the glittering island city as a window on global fashion, a place that gave rise to famed Chinese movie stars and a consumer wonderland.

And last week, she finally got a chance to go. I only had one question to ask her: was it really all that different from Beijing? "Not really, just a lot warmer and with the ocean," she said. "The famous (international) shops were the same as Beijing."