Car and motorbike owners modify vehicles despite risk of violating regulations
Reporters: Donna Shiu, Godric Leung, Macau Mak
Editor: Tommy Lee
On a Saturday night, a group of car owners gathered and parked their modified cars on the pedestrian street in Mong Kok. Given the eye-catching appearance of the cars, they caught the attention of the passers-by as well as the police.
Fortunately, on this occasion, the police officers did not impound the modified cars and merely told them not to park too closely together. Afterwards, the car owners immediately drove to a car park to continue their gathering.
The drivers say they used to drive their cars on hill roads to keep any possible disturbance to other road users to a minimum. But they have switched to driving and gathering in urban areas in recent years.
Gred Tong, a car owner, says police have been carrying out checks on vehicles on hill roads more frequently in recent years, and often impound cars that look out of the ordinary, even if drivers have not broken any speed limits. The vehicles would then be sent to vehicle examination centres where components such as brakes, tyres and lights are inspected. Car owners say quite a number of these vehicles subsequently pass the examination.
Some vehicle owners think the regulations are outdated and overly stringent. Motorbike enthusiast Water says he and his peers customize their bikes with spare parts that can actually improve the safety of the vehicles. For instance, by swapping out original Taiwan-manufactured tyres with ones that better suited for the roads in Hong Kong.
Most importantly, Water and his friends say they are conscious about the safety of each modification they make and stress they are capable in handling their modified motorbikes.
Five times a day, inside a commercial building in bustling Causeway Bay, a 59-year-old Indian man performs a ritual originating in ancient Persia. Homyar G. Nasirabadwala is the priest of the Zoroastrians in Hong Kong.
Dressed in all white, with his lower face covered by a veil, Homyar prays in front of a burning fire basin to welcome each section of a day, namely the dawn, noon, afternoon, evening and night.
Zoroastrians have an illustrious history in Hong Kong, though few people have heard of the religion. It is one of the world’s oldest faiths, founded by the prophet Zoroaster and with roots in what is now Iran. Zoroastrians believes in one supreme God, Ahura Mazda.
At the beginning of the 10th century, a small group of Zoroastrians left their motherland, Persia to escape religious persecution after the Muslim conquest. Those Zoroastrians moved to Gujarat, a remote state in Northwestern India where most modern Zoroastrians, known as Parsees, now live.
Homyar recounts a tale about the migration of the Zoroastrians. When they arrived in India, they met and petitioned a local King, called Jadav Raja, for shelter. At first, Jadav was unwilling to do so and he showed the Zoroastrians a vessel full of milk, saying his kingdom already had many people and could not take in more.
A wise Zoroastrian man added a spoonful of sugar into the milk and said his people would not create any population problem but would enrich the kingdom. The King was moved and decided to offer them shelter as well as religious freedom.
Although the number of Zoroastrians worldwide is small, they have produced outstanding leaders in business, education and banking as well as outstanding philanthropists.
Parsee merchants arrived in China the 18th century, from where they came to Hong Kong with the expansion of the business of the East India Company. The Parsees made great contributions to the city’s development in the early days of the British colony, helping to found such icons as Star Ferry and the University of Hong Kong.
But having survived 3000 years, the religion now faces is facing a population crisis. Worldwide, numbers are dwindling and in Hong Kong, there are now only 232 Zoroastrians, aged from 2 to 97. Strict rules about conversion and late marriage have contributed to the falling population of Zoroastrians.
Nevertheless, Homyar, the Zoroastrian priest is still optimistic about the community’s future. They have lived through waves of persecution and managed to hold on century after century. The Zoroastrians will be around for a long time yet, says Homyar.
In recent years, Hong Kong’s government and business sector have increasingly looked to greater integration with the Mainland for development and growth. It cannot be denied that Hong Kong has reaped economic benefits from acting as a gateway to mainland China, but is ‘looking north’ the best or only answer to Hong Kong’s long-term economic and social problems?
In our Periscope section we take a look at whether the Mainland can offer solutions to some pressing Hong Kong problems:
Ever since the handover, Hong Kong’s greater economic integration with the Mainland has been touted as an engine for future growth. But in recent years, Hong Kongers have begun to view integration, especially when it extends beyond the economic realm, with suspicion.
Last month, the government acknowledged reports that it had considered a proposal to rent land in Guangdong province to construct a “Hong Kong Park” to house Hong Kong’s poor and elderly. Although it said the proposal has been deemed unfeasible, it highlights Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying’s belief that the answer to Hong Kong’s problems lies in greater cooperation and integration with China.
Without doubt, Hong Kong has benefited from its position as a gateway to China for the rest of the world, and as a source of expertise and international knowledge for China. But as China produces its own professionals and with more “sea turtles” – overseas educated mainland Chinese returning to China, Hong Kong’s role as a bridge between East and West is shrinking.
The April 2014 edition of Varsity takes a closer look at three major integration-related policies mentioned in this year’s Policy Address, in education, employment and elderly care.
In education, the Government is making it more attractive for Hong Kong students to study in mainland universities by offering cash allowances on top of the direct admission scheme.
Studying in mainland universities gives students greater exposure to Chinese culture and society; it can help them build up their personal networks in China. But what kind of an education will they be getting? Besides, those who study in the Mainland may be more likely to stay and work there and, in the longer term, this may add to Hong Kong’s workplace shortages as the city’s population continues to age.
The Chief Executive used the story of a young Hong Kong entrepreneur striking it rich in China to encourage young people to seek their fortunes in the Mainland. We talk to young people working in the Mainland and hear about the pros and cons. Doing business in a rapidly rising market brings lucrative opportunities, but also risks. There are failures as well as successes.
Figures from the Census and Statistics Department shows the Hong Kong workforce in the Mainland is actually shrinking, and ageing. Are the streets of China still paved with gold for Hong Kong’s young people?
Old age is not so golden for many of Hong Kong’s elderly. There is a serious lack of nursing and retirement homes here. The Policy Address acknowledges the problem by expanding local elderly care services to the Mainland.
But without mainland medical insurance and also hampered by a lack of trust in the mainland medical system, most of the elderly who retire to Guangdong, go to Hong Kong’s public hospitals for their medical treatment. Apart from the practical difficulties involved, we ask whether the best solution for the shortage of services in Hong Kong is to outsource them.
Underpinning these three stories, is the question of whether China is our best or only solution? By looking north for the answers to problems at home, could we be inviting more problems?
At the crossroads of Mainland-Hong Kong integration, pinning our fortunes and our future on China may be the most politically correct thing to do. But turning our backs on developing local potential to solve the problems on our own is not the self-strengthening “Lion-rock spirit” of which we were once proud.
Hong Kong encourages its students to enter mainland universities By Macau Mak and Sherry Tsui
Charles Sin Kwok-ching is in the third year of his history degree at Peking University. “I used to criticise them, and I thought they were conservative,” he says of his mainland classmates, “but now I know more, I know why they are like that. Even if you don’t agree with them, you can understand them more,” says the Hong Konger.
Sin did well in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) in 2010, scoring four As and four Bs. He applied to the History Department of Peking University and was accepted.
Charles Sin Kwok-ching, decided that rather than facing public exams in Hong Kong, he would study in Peking University.
In order to attract outstanding students, in 2004, the Ministry of Education (MoE) authorised Peking University and Tsinghua University to exempt Hong Kong students from taking the Mainland’s Joint Entrance Examination. In 2006, Fudan University followed suit.
For Sin, studying history at Peking University was a long-held goal because of the institution’s prestige and high ranking. But he concedes the fear of taking Hong Kong public examinations was a push factor. “I didn’t want to take the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE). I heard many people saying HKALE is very terrible,” he says.
Hong Kong’s public examinations are highly competitive and getting the grades needed to fulfill the minimum requirements to get into a local university far from guarantees a place. So it is hardly surprising that students are increasingly looking to universities in the Mainland as an alternative.
In the 2012/2013 academic year, the MoE and Hong Kong’s Education Bureau collaborated to launch the Scheme for Admission of Hong Kong Students to Mainland Higher Education Institutions. Under the scheme, Hong Kong students are exempted from taking the Mainland’s Joint Entrance Examination. In the first year, 63 mainland institutions joined and this year, the number has been expanded to 75. More than 6,500 students have applied since the scheme started and around 2,200 have been given offers.
In this year’s Policy Address, the government further announced the Mainland University Study Subsidy Scheme to encourage Hong Kong students to study in the Mainland. The plan offers students on the Admission Scheme a means-tested bursary of up to HK$15,000 per year during their study period. There is no quota on the number of students who can benefit and payments will begin in the 2014/15 academic year.
Executive Councillor Starry Lee Wai-king, who is also a Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong legislator, supports the scheme. She says there are a lot of advantages to studying in the Mainland. For instance, students can gain greater understanding of Chinese culture and the mindset of people in the Mainland, as well as build up personal networks. “To know the way of thinking of the mainlanders, you have to stay there and communicate with them. Going to their schools to study is the fastest and most straight forward method,” says Lee.
Tang Tsz-kin is the owner of supermarket chain Ecosway
Opportunities and challenges for Hong Kongers working in the Mainland
By Donna Shiu and Zoe So
Philip Fung Kwok-on believes there are many opportunities for architects in China.
It is 7.00 a.m. and the Lo Wu Control Point is bustling with people from all walks of life. Mixed in with the crowds of young students and cross-border parallel traders are thousands of white-collar workers. Some will return to Hong Kong the same evening, while others will stay on the Mainland for the week.
These cross-boundary Hong Kong workers are just the tip of the iceberg. Many others cross at the other five control points while some commute by plane. Some have even made the Mainland their home. According to the Census and Statistics Department, over 170,000 Hong Kong permanent residents now work in China either part-time or full-time.
In this year’s policy address, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying urged Hong Kong’s young people to consider career opportunities in China. He cited the story of a young Hong Kong entrepreneur who started a business in the Mainland after finishing his master’s degree. This young person is said to be now running a HK$100 million a year wine and food import business in Guangxi.
While the identity of the said entrepreneur remains unknown, there is nothing new about Hong Kongers heading north for jobs. The trend was given a boost after the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, or CEPA was signed in 2003. This gave Hong Kong’s goods and services preferential access to the mainland market and allowed for the mutual recognition of professional qualifications.
Indeed, the mainland market is a big draw for professionals like architect Philip Fung Kwok-on. Apart from working for a year in Hong Kong after his studies, followed by two years in Switzerland, Fung has spent the majority of his 13-year career in China. Having worked in Beijing, Shanghai and Shantou, Fung is now based in Shenzhen.
Fung says China’s vast area gives architects like himself more space to work with and the freedom to experiment with different types and styles of architecture. His latest project was a hot-spring villa in Chaozhou. He says the project would not be possible in Hong Kong as there is neither the space nor geological conditions for it. Instead, Fung says architects in Hong Kong are limited to designing commercial and residential estates and are under pressure from property developers to maximise floor areas.
That is not to say it has been an easy road to success for Fung. Even after he set up his own studio, Elsedesign, in Shanghai in 2007, he was still required to cooperate with a mainland firm. The mainland company does all the official paperwork and, on paper, Fung works as a design consultant.
Under CEPA, over 412 individual architects registered in Hong Kong obtained the Mainland’s “class one” architect qualification between 2004 and 2009 but they are still barred from setting up their own practice there. Starting from 2011, architects registered in Hong Kong have to take another exam in order to set up their own business and even then, only in Guangdong.
According to the Hong Kong Institute of Architects (HKIA), more than 200 Hong Kong architects have taken the exam but none have been approved to set up shop. An HKIA survey in 2013 found fewer than 10 Hong Kong architects working in Guangdong after qualifying through CEPA.
Can sending elderly to Guangdong solve Hong Kong’s care home shortage problem?
by Total Lam and Brian Wong
Uncle Cheung sits bundled up in a thick jacket and wears a knitted wool hat. It is a cold wintry day in Zhaoqing, Guangdong but the 83-year-old Hong Kong retiree is comfortable in his surroundings. “I tried out staying here for a month first. I was satisfied with the accommodation, food and services. So then, I chose to live here,” he says of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Helping Hand Zhaoqing Home for the Elderly.
Cheung is originally from Guangdong and came back with his wife two years ago. Their daughter had emigrated to the United States and the couple had no other family in Hong Kong, but they have a son who lives nearby in Zhaoqing.
The vegetable patches in Zhaoqing home
What Cheung likes about the centre is the space and the facilities. Whereas elderly homes are crowded in Hong Kong, here there are spacious corridors, huge television rooms, landscaped gardens, exercise equipment, a fishpond and vegetable patches.
He can also receive acupuncture to alleviate recurrent pain in his lower back in one of the two rehabilitation rooms at the centre. Massage and traditional Chinese tuina therapy are offered too.
Cheung is one of only 25 Hong Kong elderly people out of the 103 residents at the home, which opened its doors in 2001 with the aim of providing accommodation and services to elderly people from Hong Kong as its priority. The Hong Kong Jockey Club also has another centre in Shenzhen, the Society for Rehabilitation Yee Hong Heights, providing similar services.
The centres were built to help alleviate pressure on the demand for places in government-subsidised nursing and care homes in Hong Kong. Figures from the Social Welfare Department show that close to 30,000 elderly people were on the waiting list for such places at the end of January this year. They can expect to wait for an average of 35 months for a place in a nursing home and 20 months for a care-and-attention home.
In this year’s Policy Address, the government stated it plans to purchase 300 to 400 residential care places in the Zhaoqing and Shenzhen homes for those on the Central Waiting List for subsidised residential care in Hong Kong. This follows the implementation last October of the Guangdong Scheme for Hong Kong residents aged 65 or above living in Guangdong. Under the scheme they will keep receiving their Old Age Allowance without having to return to Hong Kong every year.
The government insists the policies are aimed at providing the elderly with more choice and are not an attempt to “outsource” Hong Kong’s increasing elderly population.
So far, more than 9,000 people are benefitting from the arrangement. Legislator Chan Yuen-han, of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, says the federation’s mainland service centres have received many enquiries from elderly Hong Kong people in recent months.
Chan says many of the elderly who retire in Guangdong do so because that is where they originally came from and they do not have many relatives in Hong Kong. “Goods and food are cheap. Living spaces are bigger than in Hong Kong, and most importantly, relatives are here [in the Mainland],” says Chan.
She says there are also groups of friends without prior social networks in the Mainland who retire there together. Some may have bought property in the Mainland when prices were lower. However, as they grow older and their health deteriorates, depleting finances and the cost and quality of medical care become concerns. The appreciation of the renminbi adds to their woes and some choose to return to Hong Kong.
Green funerals face obstacles in traditional Hong Kong
by Mavis Wong and Edith Lin
Smouldering sticks of incense, elaborate floral wreaths and the burning of paper replicas of worldly goods and money for the afterworld are common features of traditional Chinese funerals.
For many people, a funeral is not just a traditional rite but also an event where family and friends join together to bid farewell to the deceased.
However, they also use up a lot of material and generate a lot of waste. A typical funeral flower basket uses around 5 kg of flowers, and a traditional hardwood coffin is made from about 150 kg of wood.
As society has become more aware of environmental issues, green organisations have started to promote green funerals in Hong Kong. They are exploring whether traditional customs can be modified to achieve sustainability.
Green Life provides a free renting service of ribbon funeral floral wreath
Some people are already waking up to how wasteful a traditional funeral can be. Angela Siu Tsui-yee, recently helped to arrange her father-in-law’s funeral says, is one of them. “When I saw his coffin being put into the grave, I felt it was very wasteful, the wood was so thick… a lot of trees were probably cut down to make it,” says the 49-year-old. What is more, Siu says the funeral cost the family more than HK$100,000.
In contrast, a green funeral should be based on environmentally friendly principles and should use the least materials possible. Those at least are the tenets of Hong Kong’s only specialist eco-friendly funeral home, Green Life Passage, which advocates the use of reusable materials yet avoids sacrificing Chinese traditions altogether.
Green Life Passage suggests people replace fresh flowers with flowers made of ribbon or making donations to charity in lieu of floral tributes. It uses paper coffins instead of traditional hardwood ones, and substitutes the traditional attire worn by the deceased with their regular clothing, while family members are encouraged to re-use or recycle their mourning clothes.
People often assume the elderly treat death as a taboo, and the subject should not be broached. But Lam Ka-hei, chief executive of Green Life Passage, says the opposite is true.
Lam says the company once held a talk at an elderly centre where members of staff were afraid that showing a real coffin to the elderly people would scare them. To their surprise, the seniors were actually interested to know more. “The elderly love to take a look at or even touch the coffins,” says Lam. “[They might think] this is a matter closely related to me, of course I want to learn more about it beforehand!”
Although an increasing number of green organisations have started to educate people about green funerals, an environmentally friendly send-off still faces numerous challenges in Hong Kong.
The first challenge is overcoming traditional practices. Angela Siu says her husband’s eldest brother expected the family to organise a large-scale funeral just as other relatives had in the past. He was afraid people would laugh at them otherwise.
Also, members of the older generation may think that the more material is used in a funeral, the more respectful the mourners are. These deeply held views are hard to shake.
Michael Cheung Quan-bik, assistant funeral services manager at the Kowloon Funeral Parlour, says these traditional thoughts are the reason they rarely promote eco-coffins. He explains the rate of usage of eco-coffins is very low. Sometimes, not even one can be sold in a month.
Chan Yung reading The Birds of Hong Kong and South China
Just 15 minutes away from the Sheung Shui train station, the sounds of the city fade away; the crowds of commuters and parallel goods traders are out of sight. A mere two kilometres separates Long Valley from the densely-populated concrete jungle. But the distance is enough to transport the visitor to stretches of farmland as far as the eyes can see.
Out here, 48-year-old Chan Yung can escape the hassles of urban life and listen to the chirping birds. Until he discovered birdwatching 14 years ago, the school science lab technician only saw districts like Mongkok or Tsim Sha Tsui as the vibrant side of Hong Kong.
After taking up birdwatching, he has explored different rural and natural areas such as farmlands, forests and coastal areas. He has also learned to observe changes in the four seasons, not only from the features of birds, but also other natural details in his surroundings.
“People living in the city would not understand those in villages. They do not know there are villages in Hong Kong and people farming. They have never thought of this,” Chan says.
It took Chan a year to learn the required skills on his own, with the help of the bible of birdwatching, The Birds of Hong Kong and South China, which was first published in English in 1977 and in Chinese in 1992.
At a talk on birdwatching, Chan met some British birdwatchers who were looking for a fourth person to join their team for the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Big Bird Race. The annual birdwatching competition requires participants to plan their own routes and record the birds they encounter. The team that identifies the most bird species through sight or sound wins the prize.
After joining his first race, Chan discovered that birdwatching had kept his teammates very fit, physically and mentally. They had sharp eyesight and hearing and were very knowledgeable about birds.
It could be because the British have a long tradition of birdwatching and are pioneers of birdwatching in Hong Kong. Colonial officials discovered the territory was a paradise for birds and set up the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society (HKBWS) in 1957.
Although Hong Kong is small in area, the territory boasts mountains, forests and wetlands, which provide habitats for different species to breed. At the same time, it is located in the middle of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Every year around 90,000 migratory birds, representing hundreds of species, will stop by.
Hong Kong’s wetlands, in particular, provide a rich environment for the birds. Yet, in the 1970s, it was proposed that the 116-hectare, Fairview Park residential development in Yuen Long be built on the Mai Po wetlands, an established habitat for hundreds of bird species.
Bena Smith, the conservation manager of Regional Wetland Projects for WWF Hong Kong
This sparked a huge protest from conservationists and birdwatchers. They asked the government to enact laws to restrict further development around the Mai Po Nature Reserve. In the end, the birdwatchers won and kept Mai Po untouched. The widespread media coverage of the issue raised public awareness and interest in birdwatching.
“Birdwatchers saved Mai Po. It was the very early successful conservation story in Hong Kong,” says Bena Smith, the conservation manager of Regional Wetland Projects for WWF Hong Kong.
Mai Po and Inner Deep Bay are now officially designated as a “Wetland of International Importance” under the Ramsar Convention, which promotes the conservation and wise use of these wetlands in the context of sustainable development.
The high level of protection of the reserve might give the impression that everything inside the preserved area is in a raw state of nature. But some areas have actually been “human modified”. Sometimes, says Smith, “nature needs a hand”. As an example, he cites an island across from the bird hide. Conservationists have planted bamboo plants and native trees on the island with the aim of turning it into a breeding site for birds.
Another successful human intervention is the introduction of buffalos, which are unwanted from other parts of New Territories. Although the buffalos do not belong to this habitat, their grazing keeps the grasses short, making the habitat comfortable for the birds to live in. Their daily routine saves the WWF money it would have had to spend on cutting the grass.
Compared to the United Kingdom and Nigeria, where he has previously worked, Smith says that on paper, conservation in Hong Kong is very good but “in practice, perhaps not so effective”.
Smith says the government does not have enough experts in its ranks. However, he sees the situation improving as more training is now provided in universities and the government is hiring more scientists.
Indeed, 10 years ago, there was insufficient and inadequate understanding and knowledge of birds. People reacted with panic when wild birds were sighted as they were seen as the source of avian flu. The discovery of a dead bird on Hong Kong island triggered the government’s mass cull of poultry in the New Territories.
This initially made things tough for birdwatchers, but in the following years scientists proved that the wild birds were unfairly blamed. The problem was with inappropriate practices in poultry farms.
Exquisitely presented dishes are placed on the table in a fine dining restaurant. The food smells as inviting as it looks, yet none of the diners make the tiniest attempt to enjoy the feast before them. They are too occupied with taking pictures. For several minutes, the only sound is of the snapping of camera shutters.
This is a typical scene from the world of food blogging, where cameras and smartphones are whipped out before the food is touched. After these dinner gatherings, reviews will be uploaded the very next day. Every day, food bloggers repeat the cycle of visiting different restaurants, taking photos and writing online food reviews.
Supersupergirl, top ranking food blogger on OpenRice
It has become a way of life for Supersupergirl, currently the top ranking food reviewer on Hong Kong’s leading online food review platform OpenRice. The food enthusiast who works in creative publishing often scouts the city for new restaurants to try out. At other times, she attends food tastings with fellow OpenRice reviewers. After a hectic day of eating, Supersupergirl goes home and blogs about her foodie adventures.
“Eating good food is partly luck, at the right place, at the right time and moment the food is served,” she says. “Try anything on the menu. If it’s new, try it out as you might be surprised; if there is something you don’t like, try it out as well.”
Supersupergirl has been a foodie since childhood. She started writing on OpenRice in 2006, inspired by a bad food experience. “I went to this restaurant in Discovery Bay and I drank this smoothie. What happened was they blended the plastic lid into the smoothie,” she recalls. “I was really angry so I went home and wrote a bad review.”
Many food bloggers start off as food enthusiasts like Supersupergirl. Through blogs and online food review websites they gradually gain fame and popularity. More and more people have joined the ranks of food bloggers in recent years, changing the way food reviews are written and received in the foodie heaven of Hong Kong.
Lung Siu-yeah, another popular local food blogger
It can take years of experience in the media, the food industry or both, celebrity or impeccable connections to become a food critic in the traditional media. In contrast, anyone can become a food blogger.
“The so-called online food critics are no different to ordinary people. You can become one if you open an OpenRice account. No job interviews required, you just need your taste buds,” says Lung Siu-yeah, another popular local food blogger.
