Before the handover, Bremer [head of the US Coalition Provisional Authority] said a long goodbye.
Unemployment before the handover, at about 2% of the workforce, was almost negligible.
An autonomous HKSR was established before the handover of the sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
Before the handover, Archers Point was a place "people came to get lost in", as Hale puts it.
Paul's is an old Portuguese fort that was converted to a museum by the Portuguese shortly before the handover.
These pressures have spurred the growth of a robust local independence movement — something few could have predicted before the handover.
Before the handover, the few remaining British soldiers spoke of how strange it had been to see Bastion wind down.
Although he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth shortly before the handover, Sir Donald nowadays prefers to be called Mr. Tsang.
It also granted American citizenship to those who could prove they had been born in the tract before the handover.
Mrs Chan said before the handover that if she were ever forced to act against her conscience, she would resign.
For a time, Chinese insistence that troops enter before the handover threatened to scuttle talks between Beijing and Lisbon.
