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I wonder how long will this migration of Hong Kong/Macau immigrants will last?
The Mainland is just too culturally different from HK/Macau. It'll take generations to educate Mainlanders on social etiquette, alone. The Mainland lost too much during the Cultural Revolution.
For example, here in Macau. The locals Chinese here put up little 'earth god shrines' outside of their businesses and residences. The put out food, and light incense. They are to be respected. I've seen Mainlanders use those as ASHTRAYS! I mean, they really have no respect or interest in respect. Many of them just don't know anything about their own culture, or respect for their historical culture, let along other cultures. We've all seen a plethora of stories of young Mainland Chinese defacing Egyptian hieroglyphics with nothingness. I see it at some of the tourist sites in Macau as well. We also have signs that say 'no standing on toilet seats' and other things posted everywhere, because many of the Mainland tourists need to be told simple things. And if you've ever seen a Chinese tour groups....shouting/yelling/carnage/pushing...with garbage thrown everywhere.
I don't want to go into a Mainland rant here...but I love Macau/Hong Kong people....and Taiwan people. They really make me love Chinese culture and I just like the way the people are in these three places.
But Mainland China....you just have too many people walking around with arrogance and obliviousness. Part of the reason so many people leave HK/Macau for Taiwan, is because both HK/Macau are being over-run by extremely large numbers of Mainlanders all of the time.
I have heard the argument that another 30 years or so, by the time HK/Macau lose their sovereignty completely, that Mainland China might be such a different place (i.e. more educated/more public education campaigns/etc). I mean, they are REALLY trying....China is revoking passports of irate mainland tourists...because they are creating such a horrific image of China abroad.
BUT...that being said...it gets tedious...and yeah, people who grow up and live in HK/Macau, do see the 'writing on the wall', that their cities will ultimately just be overwhelmed by (an uneducated, unaware, oblivious, disrespectful group of 'other')...and they find that TAIWAN strongly shares their actual heritage (Taiwan/HK/Macau are traditional Chinese, and have maintained pretty much everything that CHina discarded - Chinese traditional medicine, traditional Chinese writing script, Chinese culture, and kept intact the older ways of respect/shrines/reverence and all the rest...)
The majority of Taiwan residents today were the descendants from recent immigrants from the mainland. There are aboriginals like Native Americans in Taiwan, but the number is negligible.
But, wait, why do they bother to immigrate to Taiwan where the economy is worse? Isn't Canada the most popular choice among Hong Kong people?
While Taiwan is 98% Han, the vast majority of the Taiwanese population are NOT descended from recent immigrants from the mainland - if you're referring to the post 1949 influx of people with the KMT regime. They and their descendents account for about 12% of the total population.
Canada was the most popular choice for HK emigration in the 80s and 90s. I'm not sure if that's the case now.
If there had been another island below the Guangdong province at the same distance as Taiwan is from China, maybe a little bit more and maybe about the same size as Taiwan, there likely would have been a large influx of Cantonese speaking moving there and creating another extension of a Cantonese speaking region and if the British had purchased the island's ownership instead of leasing it, it never would have been returned to China and it would have been it's own Cantonese speaking island country permanently and many from Hong Kong/Macau would have migrated there to maintain their own culture and their own political/social cultures and another popular Cantonese entertainment could have evolved rivaling against Hong Kong's. Like Hong Kong, the British would have allowed them to keep their culture/language.
Or had it belonged to Republic of China before 1949 and if it had been the same distance from the mainland like Taiwan's distance from the mainland, the communist party most likely would not have been able to seize it because like Taiwan, it would have received protection from the US and United Nations to not allow it, especially the sea's length between them would have allowed the UN to be able to protect it with military in the oceans and it could have been a long extended remaining land of Republic of China and since now they are more accepting of keeping the regional Chinese cultures/dialects like Taiwanese Hokkien, Cantonese would have been one of the accepted cultures/languages and with now the similar political/social beliefs like Hong Kong/Macau, it would have been an ideal island for many of them including people from Guangzhou and Guangdong province to be settling there and to be around people of their own culture/language for comfort.
If there had been another island below the Guangdong province at the same distance as Taiwan is from China, maybe a little bit more and maybe about the same size as Taiwan...
So you're implying that Hainan ought to have been some 80 miles further away from the Mainland coastline?
The Mainland is just too culturally different from HK/Macau. It'll take generations to educate Mainlanders on social etiquette, alone. The Mainland lost too much during the Cultural Revolution.
For example, here in Macau. The locals Chinese here put up little 'earth god shrines' outside of their businesses and residences. The put out food, and light incense. They are to be respected. I've seen Mainlanders use those as ASHTRAYS! I mean, they really have no respect or interest in respect. Many of them just don't know anything about their own culture, or respect for their historical culture, let along other cultures. We've all seen a plethora of stories of young Mainland Chinese defacing Egyptian hieroglyphics with nothingness. I see it at some of the tourist sites in Macau as well. We also have signs that say 'no standing on toilet seats' and other things posted everywhere, because many of the Mainland tourists need to be told simple things. And if you've ever seen a Chinese tour groups....shouting/yelling/carnage/pushing...with garbage thrown everywhere.
I don't want to go into a Mainland rant here...but I love Macau/Hong Kong people....and Taiwan people. They really make me love Chinese culture and I just like the way the people are in these three places.
But Mainland China....you just have too many people walking around with arrogance and obliviousness. Part of the reason so many people leave HK/Macau for Taiwan, is because both HK/Macau are being over-run by extremely large numbers of Mainlanders all of the time.
I have heard the argument that another 30 years or so, by the time HK/Macau lose their sovereignty completely, that Mainland China might be such a different place (i.e. more educated/more public education campaigns/etc). I mean, they are REALLY trying....China is revoking passports of irate mainland tourists...because they are creating such a horrific image of China abroad.
BUT...that being said...it gets tedious...and yeah, people who grow up and live in HK/Macau, do see the 'writing on the wall', that their cities will ultimately just be overwhelmed by (an uneducated, unaware, oblivious, disrespectful group of 'other')...and they find that TAIWAN strongly shares their actual heritage (Taiwan/HK/Macau are traditional Chinese, and have maintained pretty much everything that CHina discarded - Chinese traditional medicine, traditional Chinese writing script, Chinese culture, and kept intact the older ways of respect/shrines/reverence and all the rest...)
Someone told me that not all rich Chinese are well mannered or well educated. Some were poor peasants in the past but just became rich these past two decades from owning valuable land and making big profits off of it. Such people of course think too highly of money as if they are bosses of the world with money. That's what comes from not having money for so long that they cannot hold off the pressure any longer. Not all Mainland Chinese are like that though and there certainly are Hong Kong Chinese who are equally as boorish as their Mainland counterparts. Sheesh, Americans in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls region complained the same thing about Canadian tourists in the past, that they leave trash everywhere in shopping mall parking lots, etc, and Americans are not always the cleanest or most respectful people either. My point is, there are many valid reasons for Hong Kong Chinese to leave Hong Kong but I don't think etiquette is a particularly valid one.
Of course, Singapore is normal, it's an international city.
I mean Taiwan is the last "normal" place with Chinese as the majority population and language.
Hm I don't get it. Sure these figures are a few years old but Singapore is majority Chinese by far (75%) and Chinese is the predominant language spoken as well (36% for Mandarin, 17% for other dialects of Chinese)
An interesting fact for Cantonese speakers moving to Singapore though is that the Cantonese language (and all Chinese "dialects" other than Mandarin) are actually banned from public broadcast/use. Obviously people are free to speak in whatever language they want, but if a new HK movie comes out it will only be available in cinemas dubbed in Mandarin, TV shows on public TV are only available dubbed in Mandarin (although there is a pay cable channel that allows you to get some of them in the original language). Local radio does not play any Cantonese language songs, etc.
This was kind of weird for me when I lived in Singapore. In fact, we took a few trips just across the border to Malaysia to watch new HK movies so we could watch them in the original language (like when Ip Man came out :-) )
Of course these days with internet tv, and internet radio this is not so much of an issue. And lately the Singapore government is starting to relax some of these restrictions, but it was still weird to me when I lived there that the government essentially banned public broadcast of the ancestral languages of 70% of their people (hokkien, hakka, teochew, cantonese, etc.). The Indian movie theaters could show movies in any Indian language they wanted to, they weren't all forced to dub things into Tamil (one of Singapore's official languages). And of course French movies, or Italian movies, or Japanese movies, etc could all use their original language too.
Yeah, my family that lives in Singapore is mostly Hakka and Teochew so it's interesting that their kids are somewhat forced to be Mandarin-only speaking.
To be honest I do think some people might not see Singapore as normal...some of their restrictions on "freedoms" are far more similar to China than the western world.
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