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School policy regarding admission and application for exchange programmes is one of
the hot topics mainland parents discuss in chat groups

20 years. Most of their children were should not be like these. Parents can
born under the mainland’s one-child contact one another, but they should
policy. just share how their children are do-
Parents also make use of these chat ing, or chat with others when they feel
groups to “check on” their children. lonely,” says Jack.
For example, some parents post group
pictures of students took in orienta- Faces behind chat groups
tion camps. When other parents rec- Zhu Xin, established a CUHK
ognize their own children in these parent chat group (香港中文大學內
to keep their fingers on the pulse of pictures, they will start talking about 地家長群) on WeChat with another
what is going on in Hong Kong, infor- their children who joined the same parent in 2013. Its
mation about the latest programmes, event in the chat group. original inten-
exchange and internship opportuni- A Hong Kong University of Sci- tion was shar-
ties. These parents then share such ence and Technology student, who ing experiences
information with their children. They reveals his name as Jack, complains of getting a
also seek comfort from each other these parents’ chat groups go be- student visa
in the chat group, as they all have to yond their original purposes of shar- since the appli-
bear separation from their children ing school information. “These chat cation procedure
who lived under their care for nearly groups can exist but the content was complicated. Lit- Zhu Xin

Sources: CUHK parent chat group (香港中文大學內地家長群)