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"Red Heart Moon" a WEST MEETS EAST China Weblog -- by Kevin Hart
Cross-cultural musings about life straddling the Pacific.
last modified Jun 16, 2004 at 17:43
Having now been in Hong Kong for a couple months, I am amazed to see the differences between Hong Kong people and mainlanders in general, and attitudes concerning the "One Country Two Systems" policy. First of all, Hong Kong feels to me a lot like more Vancouver, BC, than it does Chongqing, China, although at first glance, they have the same skyscrapers, growing like uneven teeth on either side of Victoria Harbour in HK, just as they do from the banks of the Jialing and Yangzte Rivers in CQ. The "gums" in these cases are the equally even, not-too-tall and not-too short mountains that surround the cities.
Of course, Hong Kong blames Guangdong Province and Shenzhen on all its pollution problems (rightly so, I reckon), but compared to gritty Chongqing, the environment here is outstanding in terms of air quality, cleanliness and overall climate. I venture to say that air quality is quite good overall, better than I expected before coming, that is for sure, and on par with Toronto.
When Hong Kong people say refer to the language "Chinese", they mean Cantonese, which is indicative of their "not-China" mentality. Mandarin for them is "Pu tong wa", the common speech. Similarly, I guess after a 100 years of being a foreign colony, HK is HK and China is China. Quite often, in both Chinese and English, you will hear someone say, "I am going to China", which implies that HK is not. I know that in some ways it is just linguistic force of habit, just like when I am in Canada and Chinese people tell me I speak very good Mandarin for a foreigner.
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