Turn the air-conditioning down, drain your dehumidifier to water the plants and tell your maid to buy Ecoballs for the laundry. Do not give a clock as a gift, do take insistent advice with good humour, try to avoid the number four, and don’t think pushy people are rude — they’re just ambitious.
Welcome to Hong Kong, where fast-moving sophistication meets old-fashioned superstition to produce a haze of thorny issues for the thousands of newcomers who move in every year to navigate.
Surprisingly, the market is not flooded with cross-cultural guidebooks. That mismatch of demand and supply goes a long way to explaining why two recently published guidebooks are selling out their first printings.
Going Green in Hong Kong, by Catherine Touzard and Fabienne Malaval Dupre, is soon to appear in a new edition before it is even a year old. Hong Kong Life & Culture, by Emily L Y Chan, is winning plaudits from expatriate groups for its ability to confront the chasm between the West and the East head on.
Green issues are moving to the top of the agenda around the world. Hong Kong presents special issues and a certain urgency: Air pollution is dimming the once-spectacular views of harbour and mountain and causing concern among new arrivals for their health. The area also has long, hot and humid summers — so damp that the cooling effect of air-conditioners is not enough to prevent mildew from seeping into books and clothes.
Touzard, a French mother of four who has lived in Asia since 1989, and Dupre, a textile entrepreneur, tackle the immediate concerns (use low-energy fans instead of electricity-guzzling air-conditioners) and the broader issues.
The biggest problem for eco-warriors is that so much of her sound advice seems counterintuitive for a Hong Kong lifestyle. The city thrives on rampant consumerism; a favourite recreation is to go shopping in air-conditioned malls. Apartments are so small and neighbours so close that insulation means creating an air-conditioned cocoon of otherness.
And since the weekly shopping in Hong Kong is often done by a domestic helper, Touzard offers a chapter on how to eco-train the maid. She should take her own shopping bag, buy Ecoballs — plastic dispensers for organic detergent that can be used up to a thousand times — and use tubs to collect water for cleaning instead of letting the tap run.
Chan’s book is useful in the more general way of putting Hong Kong life into cultural context. Chan, a native Hong Konger and volunteer language teacher who lived in the US for six years, said she wrote the book because “so many expats I’ve taught would ask questions and the questions were always the same”. Her skills lie in explaining the mundane details of daily life so that even people who have lived in Hong Kong for decades can learn something from the book.
Chan also offers real assistance at getting out of one of the classic awkward moments for newcomers to Hong Kong: a conversational impasse. A Chinese acquaintance might offer unsolicited advice or comments on appearance, offending the Westerner. The Westerner might confide all kinds of personal details and love-life sagas to a Chinese friend, who finds it too soon in a friendship to even think of mentioning such matters. The trick, Chan advises, is for both parties to be aware that the other means well, and that sensitivity to difference is the way to avoid offence.
Or take the hoary problem of yes and no. A Chinese might say “yes” to a Westerner’s question to be polite or avoid a confrontation. The savvy Westerner will be able, with Chan’s help, to deconstruct that response, realise that the true answer is “no”, and say “yes” in reply to show that it is understood.
International Herald Tribune
