In the summer of 2000, Zoe Zhang Su left her native Beijing for the first time to join the undergraduate scholarship programme at the Chinese University. To the 18-year-old, Hong Kong was the stuff of Jackie Chan movies and a city of skyscrapers where business deals got done.
Today, it's hard to imagine Zhang was once a stranger in the city; her new life fits her like a glove. She works frantic hours auditing corporate accounts at one of the city's top firms. At lunchtime, she chats away in pitch-perfect Cantonese to colleagues, understanding every pun and joke. She banters back without missing a beat, using all the colloquialisms of someone who has grown up locally.
Zhang and others like her are reshaping Hongkongers' impressions of what it means to be mainland Chinese.
'Hong Kong society is changing its perception of mainland Chinese, particularly as we see China's increasing influence in the world. Mainlanders are no longer regarded as the economically disadvantaged lot from the north,' says Anna L.P. Cheung, a financial adviser working at a mainland-owned banking conglomerate.
The wealth of cross-border business opportunities, border openings, the flourishing of exchange programmes and an influx of mainland tourists have in the past decade created a new interpretation of modern China.
Its impact is visible across the city - through friendships between locals and mainlanders on local university campuses, working relationships in meeting rooms from Shanghai to Central, and retail staff eager to learn Putonghua.
