A decade after Hong Kong's return to China, 30 young Hong Kong artists exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai. They're more inward-looking, taking a more micro approach, says Douglas Williams.On December 19, 1984, the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in Beijing's Great Hall of the People. This resulted in the historic return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China on July 1, 1997, 10 years ago this month.In celebration of that momentous occasion, the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai is hosting an exhibition titled "Reversing Horizons - Artists Reflections on the Hong Kong Handover's 10th Anniversary."Chairman, director and founder of the museum, Samuel Kung, was born in Shanghai but raised in Hong Kong, and he now divides his time between these two metropolises.Remembering back to the run-up to the handover, Kung says: "Hong Kong people have always been more concerned with business than politics, I wasn't worried."Kung quotes late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping as saying, "Hong Kong would remain unchanged for 50 years." Kung also scoffs at the "doom-mongering" Fortune magazine and its "The Death of Hong Kong" predictions 12 years ago."The magazine couldn't have been more wrong," the jade designer and dealer laughs. "In a way I was happy because after the handover I was definitely Chinese. Before I held a British National Overseas passport, which was a kind of confused identity. Things were less ambiguous after 1997."For the exhibition, more than 30 young contemporary Hong Kong artists have been asked to think about the time in the lead-up to the handover and the period since."The art scene on the Chinese mainland has exploded over the last 10 years," says Kung. "There has been a lot of international focus on art on the Chinese mainland but in terms of Hong Kong there hasn't been anything like the interest."This will be one of the largest exhibitions of contemporary Hong Kong art ever held on the Chinese mainland.The exhibition will open August 8, 9am-5pm at Gate 7, People's Park, 231 Nanjing Rd W."I wanted to give young Hong Kong artists a good stage where they can be seen by the big Chinese and international collectors," says Kung. He is confident the phenomenal rise of modern Chinese art will continue for another 10 years. "Over the last 10 years most of the collectors have been from overseas but this next 10 years we will see more and more Chinese buying art."Joint curator Gao Shiming from Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, is clear on what he sees as the main differences between mainland and Hong Kong artists. "Where much of the mainland art is based on the big ideologies in life, much of Hong Kong art comes from a more micro approach - the politics of everyday life."In some respects, posits Gao, this more subtle focus is much deeper. "The work you can see at this exhibition focuses on the minutiae where many mainland artists employ obvious imagery and symbolism in their work."In contrast to a growing number of mainland artists who are fully professional, according to Gao, most Hong Kong artists must hold down another job to survive."It's ironic that although some of the biggest art collectors in the world are from Hong Kong and they are snapping up much of the mainland artists' work, they rarely buy Hong Kong work," he says.One of the exhibiting artists is Amy Cheung, a graduate of London's Goldmith's College, who is also showing work at the Venice Biennale. "I think we have a different sensibility from our mainland cousins, we're less political," says Cheung. "I think mainland artists have more of an outward look but we Hong Kongers are more inward looking."This exhibition marks Cheung's own 10th anniversary as an artist, her first exhibition was held in 1997 with the same topic - the handover. "At that time I was just so sick and tired of everyone asking me about it. I blindfolded myself for the 72 hours over that period," the intense young artist recalls.She got 72 different people to record what they would be doing at that time and each hour the picture that she was looking at inside the blindfold would be changed to one taken by her 72 collaborators.At this exhibition Cheung is showing three remote-control police cars, each one made from 350-kilogram stone slabs. The cars will move on a dodgem-type space and viewers can pay to be in control."I hate our fascination with destroying the old and the way my city is increasingly looking like every other city," she says.Cheung likes Shanghai very much because "you can see time in its physical form, you can see these amazing new buildings, very now, maybe even of the future, but at the same time you can see old buildings and when you see these old buildings you can visualize what was happening back when they were new. They stimulate your imagination in a way that increasingly homogenized cities don't."