Tung Chee-hwa, who died at 89, was the man history placed at the hinge between two eras — the last breath of British Hong Kong and the first steps of Chinese sovereignty. As the territory's inaugural chief executive from 1997 to 2005, he bore the weight of a promise encoded in treaty language: that one city could belong to two worlds at once. His passing invites reflection not only on a life of governance, but on the enduring question of whether such a promise was ever truly kept.