We Club promotes cross-cultural interaction in Hong Kong

On a muggy Wednesday night last month, a group of 20 people feasted on a Uygur chicken stew, at Ba Yi, a Xinjiang restaurant in Sai Ying Pun.

Before the group ate, Peter Gao Xing - president of the Hong Kong Association of Xinjiang Elites - gave a speech about his birthplace; a land, he said, famous for its fruit and sunshine, as well as having the largest wind-power plant in Asia.

Comprised half of expats, half of locals (a term which, that night, included mainlanders), it was the inaugural event hosted by WE Club. The group was co-founded by American expat Haley Meng Xiang and Guangzhou-raised Candy Tang Fang, to inspire cross-cultural exchanges between people from the West and East in Hong Kong.

"Even though it is an international city, Candy and I found there was little real interaction between people from different cultures in Hong Kong," says Meng.

Whether a WE Eat, WE Speak or WE Hike, each event aims to attract a mix of expats and locals. And while it is called a club, no membership is required.

Last month, WE Speak invited adjunct professor of anthropology at Chinese University Wang Danning to compare two student movements: the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in Beijing, which she took part in, and last year's Occupy movement in Hong Kong.