Hong Kong at 25: where mainland ‘drifters’ have made their home

Name: Hong Kong after the handover: the highs and lows of 25 years under ‘one country, two systems’
Uploaded: 2022-07-02T10:30:11.000Z
Duration: 25 min 33 s
Description: Hong Kong after the handover: the highs and lows of 25 years under ‘one country, two systems’

Covid-19 travel curbs and a strict national security law are spurring hundreds of thousands to leave Hong Kong, surveys warn

But for thousands of gangpiao, or mainland ‘drifters’ who first arrived to work or study, Hong Kong is where life happens

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Hong Kong after the handover: the highs and lows of 25 years under ‘one country, two systems’

Kristin Huang

Published: 6:30pm, 2 Jul 2022

Hong Kong is emptying out, warn the surveys, as people flee prolonged pandemic-related restrictions and a strict but ambiguous national security law imposed in 2020.

The destination – regional rival cities like Singapore or Dubai for the expats and professionals, and Western nations like Britain or Canada for Hong Kong families or youth under expanded visa schemes.

But there are also droves of others, for whom Hong Kong is forever home.

“I once thought Hong Kong was my second hometown, but now it’s the first,” says Joan Wang, class of 2009 at the University of Hong Kong – the city’s No 1 institute of higher education.

Wang chose HKU after receiving high scores in the gaokao, the hugely competitive university entrance exams in the Chinese mainland.

Back then, she knew little about Hong Kong beyond the basic historical facts she had learned for a school competition to celebrate the city’s handover in 1997.

But 17 years on, that unfamiliar and apparently temporary stop has ended up bearing witness to every important stage in her adult life – her first job, getting married, buying her first home and starting a family.