Hong Kong Chinese used to laugh at mainlanders. We seemed to think they were all country bumpkins. We had a name for them: 'Ah Charn' - a character straight out of a soap opera on TVB in the early eighties. Ah Charn was an illegal immigrant to Hong Kong. He was uneducated, unkempt and unbearable. He did not possess an atom of sophistication. He only managed menial tasks and languished on the floor. He never succeeded with women and was always awkward. Even the working-class Chinese in Hong Kong thought Ah Charn was inferior. We all seemed to regard him with disapproval and contempt. It was a rather unpleasant kind of prejudice and snobbery. Maybe this was understandable in the eighties. Deng Xiaoping had just opened up China. The nation was only beginning to regain a modicum of sanity and confidence. Mainlanders knew they had lost time, lost education, lost precious life. They all wanted to catch up and learn and get on. They didn't mind being inferior because they felt it. But they were determined to make a difference. And what a difference these Ah Charns have made in the past 25 years. When they first arrived in Hong Kong, legally or illegally, they were dazzled by the city; blinded by the lights from the looming skyscrapers; blinded by the clusters of western cafes and restaurants and nightclubs and shops, and fleets of Rolls-Royces and Mercedes-Benz, and dominoes of apartment blocks and mansions, not to mention the tonnes of expensive and delicious shark's fin, abalone and bird's nest. Then there were all the tai-tais and young women in their twisting stilettos and lizard handbags traipsing round lunches and teas and charity balls. These women, especially the younger and beautiful ones, seemed untouchable. But 25 years on, things have changed. The Ah Charns have done a reverse takeover on us Chinese in Hong Kong! Certainly, we don't use the term any more. We wouldn't dare regard mainlanders with that old disdain. On the contrary, so many of us in Hong Kong now seem to think friendships with mainlanders might be the best thing since sliced bread. It has, of course, everything to do with the new-found wealth among the mainlanders. No self-respecting businessman in Hong Kong fails to drop a name or two from the mainland; every initial public offering is only complete with some mainland components; and no business plan is sustainable without a mainland ingredient. Indeed, the whole Hong Kong economy seems to be dependent on the mainland. Just look at tourism alone. Over half of our visitors are from the mainland, and I doubt that too many fancy shops paying rents through their noses would be profitable without mainland custom. Indeed, the mainlanders are now the ones in possession of much of the affluence that permeates Hong Kong. So Hong Kong is beginning to be overrun by mainlanders. The Ah Charns are having their last laugh on us. And they are humbling us on the mainland as well. This week, I went to eat at a place called the Lan Club in Beijing. This makes most of what there is in Hong Kong, put together, seem rather parochial. The constellation of 18 private dining tents in this night spot were so sumptuous and inviting and dramatic and alluring that I thought I was in a dream. I was staggered, and I am not easily staggered, by its cutting edge. Ah, that cutting edge! We are desperate for a bit of cutting edge in Hong Kong. But there ain't much of it around. All we have is more committees and more phoney consultations, and heaps of mediocrity piled on even more mediocrity. As I left Beijing, I was, at the immigration desk, confronted with an electronic box of six buttons marked 'very good', 'good', 'very fair', 'fair', 'poor' and 'very poor'. I suddenly realised I was being asked to assess the attitude of the immigration officer in front of me, on the spot. I looked at him. He was beaming and very polite. I pressed 'very good'. Even down to the mundane things of life, Hong Kong now seems to be behind the mainland, oblivious to the cutting edge of manners and smiling countenances in officialdom - all too sadly lacking in our own dreary world of Tsangean bureaucracy. David Tang is the founder of the China Club and Shanghai Tang
