Then & Now | Hong Kong’s school-uniform culture: a history of conformity
Why Hong Kong’s deep-rooted fixation with traditional English school uniforms shows no signs of abating
From Tai O to Sha Tau Kok, crocodiles of young children traipsing along in neatly laundered school uniforms have remained an iconic Hong Kong sight for decades.
In Hong Kong – Epilogue to an Empire (1988), Jan Morris described the scene that greeted her while walking on a remote Lantau path: “a line of small girls in almost exaggeratedly English uniforms, crested blazers, pleated white skirts, small neat knapsacks on their backs”.
Visiting writers who documented local life during the desperately overcrowded, poverty-stricken 1950s and 60s often commented on how immaculately Hong Kong’s schoolchildren were turned out when they emerged from hillside squatter huts and densely packed tenement buildings. Many school uniforms – then as now – were primarily white, which made laundering in such conditions all the more challenging.
Hong Kong’s school-uniform culture, as in other parts of the world, is a social leveller in the classroom, playground and on the street; outwardly, at least, everyone is the same
Uniforms help mark out job roles and worn in the same way as those for nurses, firefighters, police officers or other occupations, school uniforms provide an early introduction to the disciplined world of work. Uniforms signal a professional cadre to the outside world, while colour, style and badge variations indicate hierarchy to those within an organisation.