Then & NowHong Kong’s elderly forced to choose family over friends as they follow children who’ve emigrated – but it’s been this way for generations
- As a generation of Hongkongers moves abroad, ageing parents must decide if following their family is worth a drastically reduced friend group far away from home
- This is nothing new, though. Hong Kong people have been emigrating in search of sun or to escape post-war trauma for the past century. At least now we have Zoom
Emigration has been a local theme ever since Hong Kong’s mid-19th century urban beginnings.
Until the early 20th century, most emigrants passed through the British colony from southern China, on to destinations as far flung as Trinidad and Mauritius. From that time, however, Hong Kong itself became a source of emigrants keen to create new lives elsewhere.
In the immediate post-war era, Brazil was regarded among those with Portuguese heritage as a sun-drenched land of the future, with personal horizons as broad and welcoming as the southern hemisphere skies.
In this respect, Brazil, then, had much the same appeal as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Rhodesia did for British transplants, who were only too grateful to escape bomb-scarred cities, winter fuel shortages and the tyranny of ration books.