Hong Kong bid farewell to Tung Chee-hwa, its first post-colonial chief executive, with a state funeral that carried the unmistakable imprint of Beijing's authority — a ceremony as much about the present political order as the man it honored. Selected rather than elected, Tung governed through financial collapse and epidemic, and left office under the quiet weight of lost confidence. His passing invites a reckoning that official ceremony alone cannot settle: what does a city inherit from its first leader, and who gets to write that accounting?