In Hong Kong, the mainland Chinese don’t always assimilate easily. “It’s unusual for a mainlander to be friends with Hong Kong-ese,” says James Gao, 30, a lawyer in Hong Kong originally from Shanghai, who only after five years in the city has managed to make a few good local friends and learn a bit of Cantonese. “You always try to avoid talking about politics,” he says. That hasn’t been easy since the outbreak of the so-called Umbrella Movement, which has paralyzed the city and dominated conversations between Gao and his friends for over a month. The pro-democracy demonstrations, triggered by China’s limits on the city’s first direct elections in 2017, carry a hidden edge that most protesters and supporters have tried to downplay: the deep and growing resentment toward millions of mainland Chinese immigrants and tourists, seen by many Hong Kongers as invaders who are irrevocably changing their city for the worse.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 17:25:54 +0000
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