Insulted, humiliated, shunned: Hong Kong’s mainland Chinese immigrants face unending discrimination in struggle to feel at home, survey shows
- Even those who learn Cantonese say their mainland accent is enough for Hongkongers to shun them
- Discrimination makes it hard for mainlanders to assimilate, affects mental health, experts say
Demi Cao walks an extra 10 minutes to buy groceries each day because she became tired of the market vendors in her neighbourhood telling her to go back to mainland China.
Over five years living in the city, she has been rejected for jobs because she is a mainland immigrant, and even when she landed work as a waitress or supermarket cashier, her Hongkonger colleagues and superiors excluded her and made her do more work.
Cao, 29, says they insulted and laughed at her, and called her names for wearing high heels instead of trainers or speaking Cantonese, her mother tongue, with a mainland accent. Once, a supermarket colleague deliberately locked her in the freezer for an hour.
“I was called ‘Princess Mainland’. I felt upset at first, and then I grew numb,” Cao says.
A new study released last month by the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO) found that among those surveyed, nearly three in five adult mainlanders and about one in three child immigrants from the mainland or those born in Hong Kong to mainland parents faced discrimination.
Like Cao, many complain about being insulted, ignored and treated unfairly by local Hongkongers in daily life and at work, saying this persists no matter how long they have been in the city.
