Why don't dogs and locusts get along?

I wandered around the state-of-the-art Hong Kong International Airport before embarking on my first business trip. Alas, this place was a shopping mall. Bookstores, free-duty liquor stores, pharmaceuticals, electrical appliance stores, coffee shops, and luxury shops with names I could never pronounce. Not to mention the numerous restaurants, familiar or foreign. After getting bored at PageOne, I ordered a latte at McCafe to go before heading into a Mannings to check out the shelves. That was where I saw this hilarious scene: a local staff holding a bottle of some supplement, was talking with a Gweilo (Cantonese for Caucasian men), in Mandarin. And the Gweilo was the more fluent one.

It was one week before the Lunar New Year holiday. Small wonder that this Dragonair airplane I got on from Hong Kong to Nanjing was filled with Mandarin speaking bothers and sisters. Even the flight attendants spoke Mandarin to everyone. I quickly found my aisle seat and in the window seat of the same row was an old Gweilo gentleman, sandwiched between the Gweilo and me was a young mainland brother. I knew he was from mainland because he kept checking me out while I was reading something in English. Finally it was time for the airplane meal. It took forever for the flight attendants to get to our row, and when they did they just handed two meal boxes to me and the mainland brother, muttering in Mandarin, “Fish and rice.” The pretty flight attendant then turned to the Gweilo and asked gently, “Would you like fish or chicken, sir?” That was blatant, systematic discrimination! So I cast a secret spell on all prejudiced Hong Kong people.

My spell worked a week later when I was back - Hong Kong people turned into dogs. That was also thanks to Dr. Kong Qingdong, a Peking University professor, who in a viral video accused Hong Kong people of being “dogs of British imperialists” for their snobbish attitude towards mainlanders and subservient manners around Western people. “They are tame dogs in front of foreign colonists, and bloodthirsty wolves in front of their mainland siblings.” Additionally he was annoyed by Hong Kong's unpopular use of Mandarin despite its 15 years of unification with the mainland. “All Chinese have the duty to speak Mandarin if their native dialects are not the same,” he said indignantly, “those who don't are bastards.”

Hundreds of protesters, many with their dogs, gathered outside of the China Liaison Office in Hong Kong to express their anger. This is hardly surprising at all. Two things Hong Kong people do better at than mainlanders: getting in line and demonstrations. Whenever something did not go their way, from Lehman Brothers mimi-bonds, disappearance of famous dissidents, mainland pregnant women giving birth in Hong Kong, “Occupy Central” to their latest pet peeve – luxury Italian brand D&G banning locals from taking pictures of their store, they hold demonstrations, in line of course, as if demonstration is the panacea of all problems. Unfortunately, some of them were even ignorant about what they are really against. “He called us dogs just because we don't speak Mandarin!” said one protester.

The news has never been so entertaining since Edison Chen's last photo shot. If I remember correctly, a few months ago Hong Kong people labeled mainlanders as “locusts” who flock to Hong Kong to take away their limited hospital beds, their imported milk formulae and dirty the streets with their spitting habits.

So why can't Chinese locusts and Chinese dogs get along? You can forget about all the fancy explanations of colonialism, economy and history. Leave that to scholars whose job is to complicate the simple. To me the answer is easy: because they are all Chinese. It is in our blood to hate another Chinese person, especially when that person is from somewhere different (read poorer) from your own. No one put it better than American-born Hong Kong star Daniel Wu who in one interview candidly said, “The Chinese people are the most judgmental people in the world...”

Don't get it? Let my childhood pal Mike break it down for you. Mike is from a small town of the same province as mine. He went to the UK for university after flunking his college entrance exams in China. One day Mike called me from the UK elaborating on how he decided to hate his Chinese mainland schoolmates the moment he learned that they were from the province of Jiangxi. “We Zhejiang people normally do not like people from Jiangxi, are we?” Later he said with a sense of proud discovery that in his class there was a boy from Hong Kong. From his changing tone and odd enthusiasm when it came to the Hong Kong classmate, I almost thought Mike was gay. That theory debunked itself when Mike had a girlfriend a year later.

I have my own mea culpa. During the weeklong stay in Nanjing, after work I had occasional walks near my hotel. With migrant workers everywhere spitting, and shouting in improper Mandarin, or simply looking third-worldly repulsive, I just could not keep that smirk off my face. Later when I got on a Dragonair plane again and saw all the gorgeous Hong Kong flight attendants welcoming me on board, I had a sinking feeling that it was the very smirk that Hong Kong people have when they look at me. And I was but one pathetic Chinese bastard who on one hand screams at the slightest unfair treatments, actual or perceived, and on the other hand, refuses to be part of an uncivilized population, and reads and writes in English when the rest of the world is learning Mandarin Chinese.

Wing Chun for wolves