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Jenni Marsh

"Why would anyone leave Hong Kong?" wrote a friend on Facebook recently, beside a picture of a beautiful sunset at Repulse Bay.
"Why does everyone leave Hong Kong?" might have been a more pertinent question.
Since moving to this land of neon signs and HK$20 noodles three years ago, my friendship circle has changed countless times, as expatriates routinely wrap up their two-year-ish flings with the city.
The nine months of sunshine; efficient transport; delicious dim sum; beaches; brunches; and a low tax rate just weren't enough to make Hong Kong the One.
Although, obviously, many expats do end up staying longer, why do so many newcomers leave after short stints? Is there a fundamental reason for this trail of break-ups?
During last year's Occupy protests, scmp.com ran a picture captioned, "Foreigner protests in Causeway Bay."
Only the white man pictured wasn't a foreigner; he was born in Hong Kong.
"But he's not a Hongkonger," local Chinese friends told me. "He speaks Cantonese, and his wife is Chinese," I argued. His status, they said, would depend on how deeply he'd connected with local "culture".
What is a Hongkonger then, if not someone born in Hong Kong?
In the multicultural British capital, a Londoner can be of any skin colour, eat any type of cuisine and have a mother tongue other than English. To describe a British-born man with Indian parents, say, as a "foreigner" might well spark a riot.
If a lifetime spent in Hong Kong can't make you a Hongkonger, if the children you might have here can't access that identity (at least, not in the eyes of some), perhaps this city - despite the ease of life that welcomes newcomers - isn't a natural place to call home, after all.


Are you a true Hongkonger? It depends who you ask

Jenni Marsh