Year of the Dragon Dog?

We went to Guangzhou to usher in the Year of the Dragon, but returned to Hong Kong to learn it's really the Year of the Dog.

Or so it would seem. This owing to a a clash between Hong Kong and mainland China over a YouTube video that showed a few Hong Kongers chastising a mainland visitor on the train for feeding noodles to her daughter and making a mess on the floor. The video went viral in China, leading to a Beijing University professor appearing on television and throwing gasoline on the fire.

The meat of the disagreement was that the people in the video overreacted and insulted each other, while the professor's comments cranked up the resentment that some Hong Kongers feel towards what they feel are 'locusts': mainland Chinese who visit Hong Kong only to take advantage of the city's resources (the biggest complaints are the filling of maternity wards and the bulk purchasing of baby formula).

The professor's diatribe included this statement:

For example, consider a Hong Kong person. You say that he is a Chinese person. According to what I know, many Hong Kong persons do not consider themselves to be Chinese. They often say, "We in Hong Kong, you in China." They are bastards. These kinds of people are used to serve as running dogs for the British people. Today they are dogs. They are not humans. I know that many Hong Kong persons are good people. But many Hong Kong persons are still dogs.

What we have here is the inevitable culture clash I predicted after the handover in 1997. You can't expect people to change overnight after 150 years of British rule; the professor was way over the top. On the other hand, many Hong Kongers are indeed arrogant towards mainlanders, in particular when less-educated visitors display horrific manners.

Yet Hong Kongers can be rude too. One of the most striking things we noticed between the people of Guangzhou and residents of the Big Lychee was the behaviour on trains. In the Guangzhou Metro commuters patiently waited to board, and every time an elderly or pregnant person or parents with an infant boarded someone would immediately jump up to offer the seat. I only saw one person eating, and almost no one used their mobile phone or was loud. Most folks were conscientious and civil. Everywhere we looked we saw signs, videos, posters, and well-marked platform instructions indicating proper behaviour.

But in Hong Kong's MTR people often barge in before others can depart, not many give up their seats willingly for those in need, lots of commuters eat, and loud conversations are an epidemic. In this alone Hong Kongers should be ashamed; if they visited Guangzhou they might not feel so smug (then again, when we went to Shanghai for Chinese New Year last year, we observed that people in the metro stations were much ruder).

It all boils down to this: no one in this disagreement is civilised and everything is relative; the people in the video, the professor, and the subsequent reactions all go too far. Instead of pointing fingers folks ought to consider an attitude adjustment and admit that no one is perfect. If someone is acting like a jerk, it's his problem, not yours.

The Year of the Dragon is supposed to be auspicious, not acrimonious.

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Big White Guy is the personal web site of Randall van der Woning, who hails from Canada but has lived in Hong Kong with his wife Mabel for the past 13 years. Randall is a photographer, photography teacher, and writer.

Seriously ... Big White Guy? The nickname was given in Canada but was shortened to BWG, because this wouldn't be the Internet if we didn't initialise everything.

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"You have an eloquent and insightful way of telling us how it is and offer a unique view for the other side of the coin ... "