Arriving in Hong Kong in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, British journalist Tabby Kinder leaves the city two years later, when the health restrictions that applied to travelers have just been relaxed.
A situation that is far from exceptional, as she points out in the Financial Times : Since the start of 2022 alone, Hong Kong has seen its population fall by 1.6%. About 121,500 residents preferred to leave, an average of 260 departures per day.
“Many of my friends, colleagues and contacts have moved to Singapore, the UK or returned to Australia, Canada or the US. And they have no intention of coming back.”
However, despite all the inconveniences linked for three years to the particularly severe management of the health crisis by the local authorities, the journalist admits “in love” of life in Hong Kong. So much so that she would have stayed if an opportunity had not arisen to continue her expatriate adventure in San Francisco.
“Twenty-five years after Hong Kong was returned to China, the boundless energy Rudyard Kipling evoked more than a century ago still flows through the teeming streets of Hong Kong.”
“The privilege of being able to leave”
For expatriates, life in Hong Kong during the pandemic has been woven from “vertiginous contradictions”, underlines the journalist. Threats of border closures and quarantines weighed on daily life, but every weekend you could continue, as if nothing had happened, to drink champagne on the top floor of a tower or on a junk and make an appointment for a hike “breathtaking” around the city. As for the political unrest, it seemed to concern another part of the city.
“Expats who work in the business district faced tear gas attacks from police or protesters during the 2019 uprising, but many are happy the national security law put an end to the riots and allowed them to return to work normally.”
And of all the expats who have recently decided to leave the city, not many have done so in reaction to the political changes taking place. They were rather tired of “multiple drawbacks” they had to endure in their daily lives.
Today, dozens of pro-democracy activists are awaiting trial for alleged breaches of the national security law, recalls Tabby Kinder. But in Hong Kong, “the privilege of being able to leave is worn casually.”