The Third Impression of “ The Pearl in the East”

For the last century, Hong Kong has been regarded as “The Pearl in the East”. It is gifted with so many advantages that other places cannot match: a natural harbor, a great location facing The South China Sea, and mostly importantly, a diversified culture as a combination of Chinese traditional society and Western modern civilization.

For me, at first Hong Kong was a mysterious place that only can be sneak peeked from TVB dramas and songs from “Four Kings”. After visiting there twice, it was a great tourism destination and giant shopping center. But this time, I’m going to live and work here for two months, which means I have the chance to deeply merge myself into the local life and observe how PR functions here. For the next a couple of weeks, I’m going to record my life and work as a PR practitioner in Hong Kong.I’m pretty confident that this would be both meaningful and fun.

————————————————————

Hong Kong is not a stranger to me, but someone I knew for a long time, met twice but didn’t really get the chance to make friends with. As imagined, Hong Kong has hot and humid weather, very good food and tiny size room. After living in Los Angeles for one year where no car equals no feet, I was surprised by how convenient life is here–There’s always a restaurants and a convenient store which open till very late night or even 24/7 within steps; the MTR (what subway is called in HK) can almost take you anywhere without walking out of the stations; the streets are crowded even at midnight so you don’t have to worry about being harassed by homeless people on your way back home.

(Picture: Hong Kong MTR 11:00PM)

However, I also got some new observations this time in trying to “localize” myself

” Everything here is FINANCE”

One of the world’s financial center is a major title of Hong Kong. Born with great location and raised with advanced transportation and information system, Hong Kong has as many banks, insurance companies, securities companies as convenient stores. People here cares about financial news more than those in of most other places. When taking MTR to work in the morning, I saw people primarily read two kinds of news: finance and entertainment.

Financial industry also creates a large amount of employments in Hong Kong. An obvious evidence is that in Hong Kong the streets are full of people wearing suits and ties during rush hours. Certainly, this phenomenon can be seen in other big cities like Los Angeles and Beijing, but only in business areas like downtown or Jianguomen CBD. Here, it is all over the MTR, not to mention in Central, where the major financial institutions are located. It’s like a huge runway of business wear.

I got to know Zane, a local young people who graduated from Hong Kong Polytechnic University with Master’s degree in Social Work, and ended up working in a bank. When asked why he chose to work in finance while his major was not so relevant with it, he said with a little frustration, ” You really don’t have many options, do you?”

“ Free but undemocratic”

Over the last week, the two biggest news in Hong Kong are: 1. The 23th Anniversary of June 4th Tiananmen Square massacre.2. The investigation and discussion around the luxury life of the Chief Executive Donald Tsang.

I was lucky enough to go to the memorial event for June 4^th Tiananmen Square massacre and observe on the spot. I cannot say I participated because I was just stood there and watched. However, it was exciting enough for someone like me who was born and raised where political demonstrations are barely seen.

(Picture: Victoria Exit, Causeway Bay Station, Hong Kong MRT, 19:40PM, June 4, 2012)

Crowded as it was, the event was pretty peaceful. I saw people holding signs and flags, wearing memorial T-shirts and marching along the street with the police keeping the order. Several stages were built by those who wanted to give speeches. I even saw a rock band performing in the middle of the street.

(Picture: young people quietly demonstrate)

News said that  more than 1.5 million participated in year’s memorial event in Victoria Park. In fact, over one hundred demonstration take place in Hong Kong annually, including several regular ones, which usually attract more than ten thousand participants.

However, reading the two news together seems ironic to me: Hong Kong people enjoy every kinds of freedom—free speech, free publish and free demonstrate, even so, corruption is unavoidable. Only three weeks are left for Donald Tseng’s term in office, why couldn’t they investigate earlier? A true democratic government should be transparent and fair, which Hong Kong government apparently isn’t at least for now. In Hong Kong’s case, freedom doesn’t equal democracy, and this place still has a long way to go.