Question: is it time to leave hong kong?
 

Is it time to leave beloved Hong Kong? | South China Morning Post


In my family, we like to joke and call my father the "insurance man". An insurance consultant for more than 40 years, he goes to extraordinary lengths to minimise risks in any and every situation. As such, he's tried to ensure the family has a soft landing, should anything untoward happen.

In 1989, amid uncertainty over the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, my parents took out the ultimate insurance policy: they moved me and my sister with them to Canada, where we obtained citizenship first before moving back to our home city.

Now, 25 years later, I am thinking about putting that insurance policy into action and leaving Hong Kong permanently for Canada.

I recently moved to Bonn, Germany, temporarily for research, and like many millennial transplants abroad, I followed Beijing's decision on elections in Hong Kong through online news reports, Facebook posts and Skype calls home.

When I first read the news on my phone during my morning train ride, I couldn't help but get emotional, my eyes welling up with tears right there in a crowd of German commuters.

I wanted to be with my fellow Hongkongers at this vital moment. But, more than that, I was moved to tears out of frustration, because this is the latest in a string of disappointments for our city.

Over the past few years, I have grown steadily less hopeful about Hong Kong. At 30, I should be contemplating buying a flat and starting a family, but neither of these prospects entices me. I resent that being a homeowner in Hong Kong means saving for over a decade to buy a miserable hovel in the boondocks. I cannot contemplate having a child when the only options in education are pressure-cooker local schools and overpriced international institutions.

My friends and I stopped going out - there were too many tourists everywhere. I no longer know where to shop. With affordable stores disappearing and visitors crowding the ones that remain, buying clothes, shoes and basic necessities became a daily battle.

Then, there are the signs of Beijing closing in: the plans for national education in 2011, and the white paper released in June proclaiming China's comprehensive jurisdiction over Hong Kong.

The right to vote for our leaders might not change all the things that are wrong in Hong Kong, but at least, with a ballot in hand, we could take ownership of our problems and try to resolve them. With Beijing's announcement, these hopes have been dashed.

For those of us who moved all those years ago - to Canada, the US, Britain, Australia and beyond - we had a very clear idea of what we were running from. Images of the violence and bloodshed in the Tiananmen crackdown were etched in our memories. The same thing could befall us, we thought. If ever a tank rolled over the Lok Ma Chau border, we could take our passports and run.

What we didn't visualise quite as starkly was a threat of this kind: the gradual encroachment on our way of life, and the sustained restrictions on our ability to decide how our home is governed.

I care a great deal for my city. I believe inherently in Hongkongers' ability to innovate, endure, thrive and reinvent ourselves. But I'm not sure I have it in me to stay.

Leaving is not something that any of us talk about lightly. It feels like desertion and betrayal. But I suspect that many, like me, are starting to have that conversation - not because they do not love Hong Kong, but because they can't bear to see the home they love slip away.

This had nothing to as an aviation thread.

Go away.

Maybe not but it is a matter that concerns all of us living in HK
Don't be so flippant and blow people off so quickly

Yes it's time for you to leave. Goodbye.

"Buying clothes, shoes became a daily battle"

Says it all really.

I read this as although I've no real interest in HKG, never been there either, and that's from choice as it's never appealed to me, I will probably be making a stopover there later in the year on the way to Guangzhou (sp?).

Those of you shot down the person who posted originally, shame on you. First of all he was not the writer, he was quoting a newspaper article, and secondly it was a relevant, sensitively written and well-constructed piece about someone who feels he is about to be driven out of what he considers his homeland by a changing and threatening political climate.

In fact, having read the article, I may decide not to go via HKG (and to save some of you saying that, yes, it won't be a great loss to HKG!)

I think the piece is entirely relevant, local or expat.

It is time to leave when you are no longer excited to come to work, AND you have alternate employer elsewhere that compensates you adequately. So, start sending out those resumes/CVs.

I wouldn't concern myself too much with the housing prices.

Beijing's geriocracy can't resist it's obsessive/compulsive need to meddle in HKG affairs. The mother of all corrections is coming.

"Buy when there's blood in the streets".

So What Has Changed?
 

Just like colonial times
Taipans ruled HK
Locals could not be trusted with the vote
The PRC sent spies here
But not in the numbers seen on the streets today
And to introduce an aviation and nostalgic note
BA and CX ruled the airways

Monster330
Just cos you ain't got a life and your like on here everyday reading pprune , and on the union forums doing the same , it doesn't mean it's a strictly aviation 100% of the time ......this forum is clogged with crap.... And faaarken **** loads of it .
Remember the title of this forum is ' Fragrant Harbour' not 'Melbourne !'
Get over ya self

monster330,
Good advice. Take it!

Goathead,
Learn grammar and punctuation; grasp the nature of the website.

Basil,
You're redundant. Redundant

There are too many people worldwide with dual citizenship. You, too, are entitled to the hk passport after 7 years here. Will you reject it? One more passport, another safety net for your family.

Jeez, who rattled your cage to invoke that invective?

Having a passport/citizenship of another country does not generally make you a burden to that country, and usually incurs certain obligations and costs to the holder.

By your reckoning I'm a 'slimy lowlife' too, so is my son who holds two but is entitled to three, and so, I would imagine, are hundreds of thousands of people all over the world and no doubt many Ppruners too who hold multiple nationality.

Edit : Add : In the case of HK, I don't know, but I know that in our cases there was no requirement to rescind another nationality.

Soul Planet - thanks for the advice - I already left.

monster - are you still there in HKG? Seems that your bitterness might extend from some of the things raised in Soul Planets post, start taking some of the advice.....

Does anyone know where we can find accurate stats on expats leaving HK? It is alarming how many are departing, not just our industry, but it seems to be all the traditional expat employing industries are haemorrhaging expats? Or is it just me thinking this?

A good post by the OP.
Can ad the other things, food of suspicious quality and origins from China and air from China. The writing is on the wall I am afraid...

I visited Honkers last year, was planning on staying for a week to do sightseeing before heading off to the 'flips for a spot of beach vacation.

Landed, smelled and tasted the air, stayed for 2 days and vowed never to return until such time air quality is fit for humans. And the only reason I stayed for the second day was that I couldn't rebook my flight to an earlier departure.

So if you value your health at all, yes, it's probably better to find another place to live.

PS
Didn't fly CX :E

With 7 years you get PR, not a passport. You don't have to revoke anything. Load of Bollox.