I’ve just learned from the HK Golden Forum that my favorite
wonton noodle haunt Sum Kee (森記) on Percival Street has just closed
shop. The reason? The shop landlord has asked to increase the monthly rent from
HK$100,000 to HK$400,000, the last straw on the camel’s back. For a modest
wonton noodle and congee shop like Sum Kee, which has been selling a bowl of
wonton noodle for HK$21.00 for the last three years, paying HK$100,000 rent is
already quite ridiculous, not to mention four times the amount. Only I didn’t
realize that my last visit in December would be the last.
Each year I visit Hong Kong, the place seems a little more
distant than the last. In Causeway Bay, streets are packed to the point that
it’s easy to feel claustrophobic. Mainland shoppers towing big and small
suitcases jostling with locals. Self-important, curtained Guangdong-licensed
cars competing for roadways with local cars. Strange faces. Unfamiliar
Putonghua. Forever changing shop facades in the vicinity of Time Square.
Sum Kee, which has been around for twenty years, is the last
victim of crazy shop rents. The next is predicted to be another old-timer:
snack shop Yiu Fung (么鳳). Replacing Sum Kee will be a
luxury watch shop that is the love of mainlanders. Of course, their love takes
precedence over mine and that of other Hong Kongers, because in the eyes of big
businesses and developer landlords, these outsiders are the much coveted big
spenders. They can afford anything that ranges from obscenely expensive luxury
apartments, ludicrously overpriced European luxury brand-name clothes and
shoes, to private hospital baby-delivery services, university places reserved
for mainland students and everyday necessities like baby formula milk powder
and sundries. It is probably an understatement that these people are the cause
of greedy shop rent hikes that lead to the surmise of many small old-time
businesses and of consumer price inflation in Hong Kong.
The D & G protest that has ultimately forced a belated
apology out of the shop is only one detonator that ignited Hong Kong people’s
long repressed fury over the dire consequences of Hong Kong’s too laxly
managed border. Wealthy mainland tourists have spoiled the big businesses so
much that they don’t even realize they are stepping over the line by
discriminating against locals.
It is certainly no coincidence that a recent survey finds
that more Hong Kong people choose to identify themselves first as
Hong Kongers. It is becoming clear that the basic divide between Hong Kongers
and mainlanders is one of civic values, as this latest incident shows:-
[Some mainlanders were eating cup noodles and made a mess on
the seats of an MTR train. A Hong Konger told them it’s against the rules to
eat in the train and immediately got angry and vociferous rebuttals. A couple
of other Hong Kongers joined the fray. Security was called in. The mainlanders
insisted they had done nothing wrong.]
Such kind of rude behavior is already less obnoxious than
that of some who unashamedly use public space inside shopping malls as toilets.
On a deeper level, the unbridgeable gap seems to be between
(Hong Kongers’) acceptance and (most mainlanders’) rejection of or aversion to
universal values like rule of law, democracy, equality and liberty. It is not
through the latter’s fault that they find these values alien; it’s just because
they have been living under a political system that has infiltrated them with
the idea that those are not Chinese values and therefore no good for them. The
system has taught people that all they need worry about is the economy and how
to make money and practically nothing else. Morals aren’t important. Corruption
can be tolerated. There is of course no lack of intellectuals in China who
have refused to be brainwashed and who truly embrace universal values, but most
of them unfortunately are rewarded with either political exile or
incarceration.
It goes without saying that the only Hong Kong people who
welcome mainland tourists, immigrants and shoppers are developers and their
cronies (real estate agents, contractors etc.), especially those who are large
shopping mall landlords. Even for retailers, whether or not they can benefit
from the influx depends on whether the products they sell are mainlanders’
favorites. As for the rest of Hong Kongers, all they can feel towards the
swamping inflow is resentment.
At the end of the day, Hong Kong society has its
own unique cultural characteristics, which are different from those of other
mainland cities or regions. It should be every Hong Konger’s duty to try to
preserve those characteristics for posterity. And it would be dead wrong to try
to supplant or dilute Hong Kong core values which coincide with universal
values.
I only visit once a year. Yet I can feel how dispossessed
many Hong Kongers must feel. It’s time to act now to protect that border,
before the city becomes a totally alien place.
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