Short answers, pulled from the story.
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China on China's southern coast, just south of Shenzhen. It consists of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories, and is home to 7.5 million residents in a 1114 square kilometre territory.
The Qing dynasty ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in 1841 to 1842 after losing the First Opium War. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860, and in 1898 the United Kingdom obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories.
Hong Kong was handed over to China at midnight on the 1st of July 1997, after 156 years of British rule. Under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, China agreed to guarantee Hong Kong's economic and political systems for 50 years after the handover.
One country, two systems is the principle under which Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from mainland China. The Basic Law of Hong Kong serves as the regional constitution, and the territory keeps its own common law judicial system, currency, and immigration controls.
The 2019 protests erupted over a proposed extradition amendment bill that would have permitted the extradition of fugitives to mainland China. Organisers claimed more than three million residents joined, making them the largest protests in Hong Kong's history.
Hong Kong has the world's largest number of skyscrapers, with 554 towers taller than 150 metres, because a shortage of buildable land forced dense, high-rise development. About 70 square kilometres of the city, roughly 6 percent of total land, has been reclaimed from the sea.
Hong Kong earned the nickname Hollywood of the East because its films grew popular in overseas markets after Bruce Lee's The Way of the Dragon in 1972 and Enter the Dragon in 1973. At its early 1990s peak, the city produced over 400 films each year.