Opinion | Hong Kong people cling to ‘cold’ Japan when they should warm to China
Peter Kammerer says China has the superior destinations and its people are less aloof, making Japan’s enduring appeal as a travel destination among Hongkongers a mystery
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Setting a country as large and diverse as China beside Japan is obviously unfair. Three decades of spectacular mainland growth and 20 years of Japanese economic stagnation have brought the two closer development-wise, although there is still a gap (a comparison of public toilets being an obvious marker).
But for all the mainland has to offer, I know a number of Hongkongers who much prefer Japan. They go there for holiday two or more times a year and rarely, if ever, venture to the north of their own country, explaining that they like the cleanliness, the politeness, the food and the shopping. Of the first two I can’t argue, but with Japanese restaurants and products so prevalent in Hong Kong, I don’t buy the latter.
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As a blind person, I also wonder just how caring Japanese are. In no other country have I felt so helpless when travelling by myself. That’s not to ignore the abundance of public aids for the visually impaired like yellow tactile surfaces in train and bus stations, in department stores, along footpaths and sound signals at street crossings and on escalators; few countries can compare. Rather, I’m referring to the people, so self-absorbed in themselves that they have no time to notice a guy who obviously can’t see and who is floundering about and has plainly lost his way. I’ve a feeling that if there had been an open manhole cover and I’d fallen in, no one would have come to the rescue (although this is purely hypothetical; in Japan, there is no such thing as an unattended, open manhole cover). Invariably, when help was offered, it was from a foreigner, usually a mainland or Hong Kong Chinese.