Job Discussion Forums

[organix]

Question: How do Hong Kong people feel about the mainland, and Shenzhen in particular.

I live in Shenzhen. Most of my experience in Hong Kong seems to confirm that HK people dislike the mainland, thinking it is dirty, corrupt, poor, etc. However today I met a young man who offered a different opinion. He said people were more open minded to alternative culture, and less judgemental in Shenzhen than in HK. Most Shenzhen people seem to think that HK is too crowded and tight. This is clear, in comparison to Shenzhen's wide open boulevards and landscaped streets with many trees. In general, it seems like the people of both cities dislike each other's cities. But since I don't live in Hong Kong, I can't speak for Hong Kong people. Since you are living there, you have better insight than me. So what do HK people really think of the mainland?

[bellabella]

the mainland is "dirty, corrupt, poor,etc". so this isn't really a belief among hong kong people, rather it is a fact.
and then the belief that hong kong is crowded it also true.
i personally love going to shenzhen as everything is so cheap. i usually have yum cha and go bowling and then head to walmart! but i could never live in shenzhen. mainly for the 3 reasons in the first sentence.

[Joachim]

I could never live in Shenzhen either. While I am not one of the many HK'ers who will recoil in horror at the suggestion of going over for the weekend, I do prefer to just cross, do my shopping, grab something to eat and head back.

The prices there are good, but I think that living there would be an even bigger test of my patience than HK is, not to mention my salary would be cut in half (at least) and I don't think I'd feel very secure (from what I've heard and read on this board about people who teach there).

And yes, HK is dirty, overcrowded, polluted and noisy. But we love it!

[poof]

Many Hong Kongers will tell you they loathe anything to do with the mainland. They don't want to associate themselves with backwardness and relative primitiveness. However, in the next breath, you will find out that many Hong Kongers still have living relatives in the mainland, so I find their distaste of mainlanders to be rather ironic.

I personally prefer HK to Shenzen because I don't walk around with a constant fear of getting mugged in HK. (I once had 5 mugging attempts in the space of 1 hour in Shenzen, one of which included a knife flashing.)

[Steppenwolf]

If there are genuinely personal opinions among the Chinese you meet they certainly won't be of the above stereotypical kinds.

Unfortunately, opinions are manufactured on both sides of the Shenzhen river. Fortunately enough, these manfuactured opinions get sandpapered through experiences and personal insights.

I personally believe SHenzhen is a very corrupt and unsavoury place but it's not China's role-model city of graft and nepotism - it's merely much, much worse than Hong Kong is.

Hongkongers still regard themselves as what the rest of CHina wants to be, and in this vainglorious image they are basking even though the mainlanders generally have pretty unfavourably biased ideas about HK such as crowdedness (why the heck do they "know" that when Shenzhen's Dongmen market is just as crowded as Tsimshatsui is, even worse, and with many more thugs and pickpockets?).

Mainlanders also regard Hongkongers as "arrogant", a point I can actually relate to (although the same applies to mainlanders who thus speak about Hongkongers - every mainland community identity creates in the minds of those people who share said identity a sense of superioroity - compare Shanghaiers and Pekinese, Chaozhouers and Guangzhouers etc.).

But it's advantageous to have separate identities; imagine Hongkongers had to share in the ignominy of being "Mainland CHinese" known for tacitly coexisting with corrupt rulers and businesses - it's oh so splendid we in HK are "ruled by the law" and not "by man"... even though those hundreds or thousands of fake-Rolex watch vendors and touts offering Indian-made suits are a serious challenge to HK's reputation as a "shopping paradise".
But we Hongkongers know where to source consumer goods more cheaply - just across the border, from our hillbilly cousins; we even write up shopping guides (in English!) for Hongkongers who can't find saunas, jewellery and even the Wal-Mart on their own when in Shenzhen...

Even the urban equivalent of 'patriotism', let's call it 'cityotism' comes at a price...we love it here because the community creates that international fame of being a "cultured pearl", but we love the cheap goodies with their ill-spelled names of foreign brands...