A trip to glamorous Hong Kong was a distant dream for most Chinese mainlanders in the mid-1990s, but for schoolgirl Tracey Chen in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, it was just a lunchtime stroll.
As Hong Kong loses autonomy after 25 years of Chinese rule, Chen is among many of those in its Mandarin-speaking neighbor who yearn for the days when the former British colony's uniquely exuberant Cantonese culture permeated across the border.
Before Shenzhen began to be transformed in the 1980s, Hong Kong's freewheeling economy represented a consumer haven for many from the mainland.