Sunshine Recorder

What it means to be “Chinese” in Hong Kong

It’s not that Hong Kong people don’t feel “Chinese”; in fact, there are some who claim Hong Kong is more Chinese than the Mainland, because it was spared Mao and his destructive Cultural Revolution. There are wedding traditions, funeral customs, and even holidays celebrated here that are no longer part of regular tradition north of the Lo Wu border. In other words, Hong Kong people celebrate their Chineseness and are proud of it, but they don’t like the connotations that come with the phrase “Chinese”. If somebody is “Chinese”, it generally means they come from China, and China isn’t one big monolithic entity. Thus, Hong Kong people feel the need to point out they aren’t just Chinese, but they are Hong Kong Chinese.

Why is this? Let’s start with history. The longer I’ve been in Hong Kong, the more people I’ve met people who had ancestors who belonged to the KMT, or fled China at great personal risk during the Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution. One former colleague’s family lost everything in the 1970s, and that memory is a bitter one. These people came to Hong Kong to be free (relatively, in comparison), make money, and be left alone by the government. What lingers, even decades later, is a deep mistrust of the Mainland and its current regime, which filters down to mistrust of people in China. There are people in Hong Kong who are amazed that I will take a taxi in Shenzhen by myself, lest something untoward happen to me. Part of this is sheer ignorance, but part of it stems from a real fear of China that has been passed down through the generations, through no fault of their own. It’s just not safe there.