Why Hong Kong?

I'm often asked why I've chosen to come to Hong Kong. This is a question I often ask myself.

Why would I want to live in Hong Kong? After all, this is the very place my parents fled more than 30 years ago. Since they left, many more joined them to settle in the supposed-paradise of Vancouver, for better or for worse. There's the high cost of living here, the tiny living units, the crowds, and the pollution to consider.

To be fair, the Hong Kong my parents knew is long gone. The streets are no longer filthy, the police no longer put out their hands for bribes, and there are far fewer rats and cockroaches in the city. This city is no longer the fledging centre of light industry and one-time trade entrepot it once was, but is now a bustling, cosmopolitan hub of finance, logistics, and even culture, a city that is sometimes mentioned in the same breath as London, New York, and Tokyo. But some things are worse than they were before: despite strict pollution controls within the SAR, polluted air blows over from the factories in the Pearl River Delta. Income and wealth disparities are as great as ever, and social mobility seems to be more limited than in my parents' generation. And though it's not as bad as in the 1980's and 90's, Hong Kong people are incredibly arrogant towards people from Mainland China (despite the fact that the vast majority of people in Hong Kong are merely one or two generations removed from Mainland China).

Actually, there was a time when I was quite anxious to live in Hong Kong. When I was studying in Taiwan in 2000-2001, I was actually quite disappointed that Taipei wasn't the ultra-modern supercity I expected it to be. I suppose my expectations were inflated by my Taiwanese immigrant classmates who moved to Canada against their will and who kept insisting how terrible Canada was and how Taiwan was so wonderful by contrast. I expected Taipei to be a sophisticated, beautiful, high-tech city of skyscrapers, but was disappointed to discover that it was instead a city of ugly, squat buildings and dirty streets. When I visited Hong Kong for the first time in my adult life, I found my ultra-modern Asian supercity.

To visit Hong Kong while living in Taipei was a real treat. I still remember my first impression of Hong Kong quite vividly: just stepping off the plane and into Hong Kong International Airport, consistently ranked among the world's best airports, was a huge contrast to my terrible experience at Chiang Kaishek International Airport in Taipei. Then, I was whisked to the centre of town in the Airport Express in only 20 minutes; my journey from Taipei to CKS Airport took more than 90 minutes (there is no rail linking central Taipei to the airport). Looking out the train's windows, I admired the beautiful symmetry of housing estates, some of them with gleaming towers of glass and steel arranged 10 by 10, and most of them taller than the tallest skyscrapers in Taipei at the time (Taipei is currently home to the world's tallest building, the Taipei 101, but most other buildings in Taipei are 10 storeys tall or so). And on my cab ride from Central to Happy Valley, I was mesmerized by even taller and more beautiful hulks of glass and steel, the ones that house the world's largest corporations.

What I didn't realise was that in the years between those visits to Hong Kong and my move to Hong Kong last year, I somehow lost my interest in the city. Well, perhaps I was different then. Back then, I had aspirations to work in the financial services industry, and what better place to work than Hong Kong? And if I were able to earn investment banker dollars, then I would have been able to enjoy world-class restaurants, world-class hotels, world-class bars, all the stuff not available in a small city like Vancouver. Anyway, I seem to have forgotten why I wanted to come to Hong Kong, and by the time I came here, I realised that there's really not much here that I long for. I realised that I didn't really want to work in the financial services industry. I realised that my tastes are quite simple, that my tastebuds don't need to eat world-class food made by world-class cooks. And though it would be nice, my ass doesn't need to sit in first- or business-class seats when I travel.

Hong Kong is still an interesting place, but I feel that Beijing and Taipei are much more interesting to me. The problem with Hong Kong is that almost everything I can enjoy in Hong Kong is also available in Vancouver, though perhaps at different prices. Food, clothes, news, movies.. even things like cultural values! Taipei and Beijing, by contrast, were totally unfamiliar to me, and I had much to explore, much more to learn, much more to experience. Yeah, the biggest problem is that Hong Kong doesn't feel "fresh" to me.

Honestly, when it comes to "interesting", I feel that I'm more interested in living in Beijing than in Hong Kong. Taipei is interesting because civil society in Taiwan is much more robust than anywhere else in the Chinese-speaking world - where else can you see protests, rallies, symbollically violent election campaigns, and fistfights in the "national" legislature? I also really like Taipei's night markets, but it's not like I'd go to those every day. Taiwan seems to be more "religious" than Hong Kong or the Mainland, but I don't care much for religion anyway. As for Hong Kong, the city is great for shopping, but I don't shop very much, and besides, I don't have the money to shop for all of this top-notch stuff here. And of the three cities, Hong Kong is probably the most beautiful, not just the outlying island and the mountains in the New Territories, but also the skyline. I suppose Hong Kong's history is quite interesting, but it's a small place, and it's got a rather short history. Why Beijing, then? What makes Beijing so interesting to me is not the all the stuff available at low prices, not the concentration of great monuments, not even the many places of historical value. What makes Beijing so interesting to me is the people (wow, maybe I AM a sociologist or anthropologist). I really got to learn a lot about Chinese people while I lived in Beijing, people from every part of China, in addition to local Beijingers. Also, when I was in Beijing, I always felt that something big was happening. Big stuff does happen in Taipei and Hong Kong, but even bigger stuff happens in Beijing. Well, unfortunately, having lived in Hong Kong for a while, I don't know if I can tolerate the challenges of living in China if I were to move back there tomorrow. Let's just say that Hong Kong is a compromise.


As for food (oh yes, food is a VERY IMPORTANT consideration when it comes to where I choose to live), it's not that cheap to eat in Hong Kong, but at least the food tends to be pretty decent and only very rarely bad. I grew up eating Cantonese food, so Cantonese food is comfort food for me. Food can be cheaper in Taipei (for students), but there's less variety, and even if ingredients are fresh, food tends to be less well-prepared than in Hong Kong. I do miss the snacks available in the night markets there, though, as well as the Japanese-style hotpot known as "shabu shabu". There's much more variety of Chinese cuisine in Beijing, and it's much much cheaper than in either Hong Kong or Taipei, but I can never be too sure about the quality of the ingredients, and it's also quite hard to find decent Western and international food in the capital. If I had to choose one city out of the three for the food, I'd probably choose Hong Kong (though I'd rather pay Beijing prices).


Having said all this, I'm not too unhappy about being in Hong Kong. Life here is actually quite comfortable when compared to life in Beijing. The simple matter of taking a bus in Beijing can be quite a tiring experience, with long walks to bus stops, long waits for buses, the absence of queues and subsequent jostling to board already-crowded buses, standing in buses (the seats are almost always occupied) while stuck in traffic, smelling the odours of passengers (some of whom don't necessarily bathe every day) in un-air-conditioned buses, and pushing my way to the exit when I want to get off. By contrast, bus stops in Hong Kong aren't too far apart, buses run rather frequently, people queue in an orderly fashion to get on, there are almost always seats available (even during rush hour), almost all buses are air-conditioned (shame on you, Kowloon Bus Company! Get with the times!), and traffic is almost never bad. Taking a bus in Taipei isn't nearly as bad as taking a bus in Beijing, but still, the buses aren't as new and clean as the ones in Hong Kong, you have to flag down the bus you want to catch (and they don't always stop), English-language route information is almost never available, and traffic can be horrendous in certain parts of the city. Yeah, Hong Kong ain't so bad after all.


(By the way, I can tell you that I'm NOT in Hong Kong for the pop culture. Although I must admit that I was at one time into Cantopop and Hong Kong movies, I was only interested in Hong Kong pop culture because I wanted to fit in with the immigrant kids in high school, who outnumbered Canadian-born Chinese kids like me by 5-1. I haven't listened to Hong Kong pop music in more than 12-13 years, though I must admit that I do indulge in Hong Kong movies.)