White-collar workers who are hiding from the mid-life crisis, parents of chicken babies, and workers who seek high salaries, flock to Hong Kong and wake up from their dreams

Modern middle class

2024-05-28 13:53Posted in Beijing Cultural Creators

Lost in Hong Kong.

One

The girl Qiaoqiao casually sent a note in the Little Red Book, but she didn't expect the inquiries to come like a tide, wave after wave.

She wrote a part-time job at the Hong Kong Motor Show, earning 600 yuan a day, and asked her mostly "Is it true?" Is it so high? "How do I go to Hong Kong to work? ”。

Outside the window of her rented house, Hong Kong Kowloon is lined with high-rise buildings, neon staggered, and she struggles to look up to see a corner of the sky, and the footsteps are hurried and non-stop.

The city is flooded with more and more drifters. From Kowloon to Causeway Bay, job openings can be seen everywhere, with dishwashers earning 800 per day, delivery workers earning 30,000 per month, and concrete workers earning as much as HK$2,600 per day.

The Hong Kong Bureau of Statistics announced that in the fourth quarter of 2022, Hong Kong's local labor force fell to 3.46 million, a year-on-year decrease of 100,000, and it is expected that Hong Kong's labor force gap will reach 170,000 in 2026.

Last summer, Hong Kong's second-largest bread factory, "Xiangxiang Bread", collapsed with a bang, and the bread giant, which has been with Hong Kong people for half a century, closed down because it "couldn't hire people for a long time".

After the epidemic, the Hong Kong government adjusted its policies and relaxed applications, and a large number of outsiders began to enter Hong Kong to pursue their dreams.

24-year-old Xiaoya became a bakery clerk in Causeway Bay, "for the first time, I felt the pleasure of picking a job, not a job".

The bakery window is bright and clean, the air is sweet, there is no glue smell of Dongguan underwear factory, and the monthly salary has doubled to 17,000 yuan, and it will rise again after the apprenticeship.

To the west of the bakery, in the Central office building, Li Li, a white-collar worker in Shanghai, started a new career. There is less overtime here, no involution, and more importantly, there is no age discrimination, or you can avoid the 35-year-old unemployment crisis.

The piano teacher, who is older than her, sees the opportunity to go to Hong Kong as a straw in her life. Her husband is unemployed, and going to Hong Kong means a fresh start, not to mention the important educational resources here.

There are 50,000 candidates for the Hong Kong college entrance examination every year, while the mainland college entrance examination has more than 12 million candidates in recent years. There are 5 of the top 100 universities in the world, and after obtaining Hong Kong citizenship, they will be admitted to Hong Kong's top universities, with an enrollment rate of 40%.

There is a counterattack myth circulating in her circle of friends: a friend's child failed math in his sophomore year of high school, and after going to Hong Kong, he was successfully admitted to the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

In addition to mothers with dreams, there are also new home buyers among the people who go to Hong Kong.

This spring, the Hong Kong government abolished stamp duty on all residential property transactions, and the Hong Kong property market boomed.

During peak hours, mainland customers organize chartered buses to Hong Kong to see houses every day. The team at the sales office seems to be endless, and the performance of the agent in the two weekends combined exceeds that of the past six months.

After seeing the new deal, some white-collar workers in Beijing bought a ticket to Hong Kong for the first time, and after landing, they did not check in or eat, dragged their suitcases with their wives, and went straight to the sales office. ”

The two finally spent 5.08 million yuan to buy a new house of less than 28 square meters. He was burly and joked that if he was lying in the living room of the new house, his feet would not be straight.

However, that house is an anchor. Buying a house is to plan for the children who are about to be born, and the new house is located in the elite school area, which implicates the child's choice of school and education, as well as a future that will not fall.

In his book We Have Never Been Middle Class, anthropologist Haudus Weiss describes the middle class as an insecure group that is constantly in fear of falling.

In Luohu, Shenzhen, in the port hall, migrant workers, office workers, accompanying mothers, and speculators lined up in a long line, with T-shirts, dresses and suits mixed, hurriedly walking and surging.

Two

In 2017, Zhang Ling, from a small city in Henan, took a seven-hour high-speed train ride and entered the port from Shenzhen on the night of a typhoon.

In the torrential rain, she dragged her suitcase alone and struggled to get to her accommodation. It is a dilapidated western-style building on Broadcasting Road in Kowloon, which is known to the tenants as the "slum of Broadcasting Road".

She and her three roommates live in a 16-square-meter small room, taking turns sleeping in the bedroom and the hallway, and each has to pay a monthly rent of HK$4,000. The room is leaking everywhere and the appliances are mostly ineffective.

Hong Kong in Hong Kong films is full of light, fireworks and dust, but after actually living here, the feeling is different.

The gears are running invisible, the system is roaring in the void, everything is so fast, pedestrians have to trot over traffic lights, and the closing sound in a café is crisp and clean.

Under the fast pace is high consumption. The takeaway fee starts at 15 yuan, and the taxi takes 20 minutes for 100 yuan, and the pipe is dredged two or three times, which costs seven or eight hundred ...... Hong Kong people like to say that people are warm and cold: when you count money, you feel cold.

In the Causeway Bay bakery, Xiaoya misses the free dormitory of the Dongguan factory. The factory has food and shelter, and she can easily save three or four thousand a month.

Now she stands in the bakery for eight or nine hours a day, eating and wearing almost harshly, and barely saving the same amount.

"The rent is 6,000 yuan, the meal is 3,000 yuan, and the water and electricity fee is 1,000 yuan......", every time she hands out a banknote, Xiaoya will think, "An hour has been in vain." ”

Like Xiaoya, many Hong Kong drifters have to do their best to maintain the same ordinary life as when they were in the mainland.

Stress pervades all levels. White-collar Li Li found that one-third of her salary was used to pay the rent of the old and the young, and the monthly savings level returned to the state of just graduated.

More than a dozen square meters of rental housing, the rent is more than 7,000 yuan, the subway fare is 12 yuan, the breakfast bun is 15 yuan, the cheap fast food at noon is also more than 50 yuan, and the tea restaurant near the residence is more than 70 yuan at night.

In addition to survival, the Hong Kong workplace she longs for has also shown its original appearance.

In Central, where financial companies gather, a suicide minibus with a speed of 80 kilometers per hour in the morning rush hour whistled and flew all the way through the red light and turned at high speed.

The driver braked suddenly, and the white-collar workers poured out of the door, squeezed into the convenience store, grabbed the sandwich, turned around and rushed into the building. At night, there are always lights in the high-rise buildings in Central that are not extinguished all night, and white-collar workers joke that "the whole Central will accompany you to work overtime".

Li Li's company does not require overtime, but that doesn't mean there's less work. Hong Kong people pay attention to efficiency, and she runs rapidly every day when she arrives at the company, but she still has to take home the forms that cannot be completed.

Those mothers who accompany the reading also find the cruelty under the halo.

In Hong Kong's elite education environment, chicken babies are unavoidable. Elementary school students will connect circuit boards in English class, and learn computer programming at the age of 10.

According to public media reports, Hong Kong households rank first in the world in terms of education expenditure.

A student who has experienced the Hong Kong college entrance examination said that the whole student life is like running a marathon with the strength of sprinting.

Those who are adrift in Hong Kong are like running in a different city, and they are running more lonely.

Cantonese is not understood, Hong Kong food is not used to eating, cultural differences make it difficult for them to make friends, and on weekends, some people would rather open a map and go around in circles on the navigation than speak Mandarin to ask someone for directions.

At the beginning of this year, a mother posted a photo of her daughter standing on the beach, the sea breeze blew the ends of her hair, and the accompanying text read: Lost in Hong Kong, beyond words.

Three

No matter what month you are visiting Hong Kong, the most common weather reminder on your mobile phone is a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius, accompanied by a thunderstorm.

It's a steaming city, with wild winds, but also high and low. A few streets away from the Kowloon cage house is the luxury residential area in Mid-Levels; Above the crowded subway is a luxury mall; Looking down from Victoria's high-rise buildings, all living beings are like ants.

Hong Kong said that Hong Kong is full of possibilities, but there is no room for cruelty. It's just that the people outside the siege don't want to believe this.

In October 2022, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee announced the cancellation of the QMAS application quota.

Since then, more and more people have been consulting about high-talent applicants. On social media, there are all kinds of strategies and pitches.

However, regardless of whether you enter Hong Kong in the form of study, high talent or excellent talent, obtaining an endorsement is only the first step, and the most difficult thing is to renew it.

The renewal requirement is to have a well-paid job in Hong Kong for seven years.

People who have come over said that the key to staying in Hong Kong depends on whether the applicant has created enough income and paid taxes. At present, 80% of the talents have failed to transfer to permanent residence.

"If you can't renew and transfer to permanent residence, all the benefits are a dream."

In order to renew their visas, many people go all out to find jobs, but Hong Kong has a limited range of jobs due to the lack of industry variety.

Many of her classmates could not find jobs in Hong Kong and moved to the mainland, where they stayed in finance or logistics, without a professional counterpart.

Insurance becomes the last resort. In the discussion groups for the renewal of various talents, it is common to see people who graduated from prestigious schools asking: "Is there any recommendation from an insurance company?" ”

In front of the Vocational Training Council Building at 27 Wood Road, Wan Chai, at the end of each insurance intermediary qualification examination, insurance companies distribute leaflets with a bold and eye-catching temptation: Hong Kong identity.

Even if you stay, the difficult journey has just begun.

Jojo, who works part-time at the auto show, has been interning at an art company for two years. In addition to school and internships, she only has one day off a week, and she travels from place to place part-time.

Mr. Zheng from Hunan Province successfully passed the job interview in Hong Kong, but eventually gave up. The annual salary of 400,000 Hong Kong dollars is still unable to meet the needs of a family.

Agents in Hong Kong admit that the cost of living in Hong Kong, as well as the cost of children's education, are not affordable by ordinary middle-class families. Most people just want to take advantage of the policy wind and get tickets first, and as for what the future holds, they are still at a loss.

When she was in college, Xiaoya had watched "Sweet Honey" many times, and Maggie Cheung wore McDonald's red overalls, while cleaning the window, she smiled and said, "Wishing you prosperity." That was Xiaoya's initial impression of Hong Kong: always vibrant.

Now, Hong Kong is still vibrant, but Xiaoya herself is exhausted.

Before she arrived, she had heard that in Hong Kong, it would take half an hour by taxi to the foot of the mountain or the beach, but for five months after she arrived, she was only working mechanically day after day, and she had no energy to go out and play.

She planned to wait for the apprenticeship period to pass, save up money, and return to Dongguan.

"Hong Kong is beautiful, but it's not for ordinary people." A Hong Kong drifter girl who plans to leave at the seven-year period said.

In an interview with the media, a Hong Kong drifter's mother replied that after coming to Hong Kong, she sighed, "It is difficult for ordinary people like us to really go to the wilderness." ”

Zhang Ling, a Henan girl who teaches at a public school in Hong Kong, takes the subway every morning to cross the sea and return to her rental house after work.

After staying in Hong Kong for almost seven years and moving several times, she is about to wait for permanent residency, but buying a house is still out of reach. She still had to continue to drift and change her residence.

The social circle is limited, there are few friends who can play and talk together, and I don't know when I will meet the ideal marriage partner. For a while, her family felt sorry for her hard work in Hong Kong and persuaded her to go home to take the public examination.

But Zhang Ling said that she has no way out, and can only bravely bear the consequences of choosing to stay, even if the future is unknown.

She understood Eileen Chang's Hong Kong, "a beautiful and sad city", with "a bleak sky and sea".

In the subway, on HR's mobile phones, job search news from the mainland is still pouring in.

People go in and out of the besieged city, and their dreams are extinguished and they wake up, like the lights of the night in Hong Kong, which never goes out.

(The names of the characters in the article have been changed)

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