In this morning, I read an article on Medium which is about commuting in Hong Kong. It is a research and interview about people commuting in Hong Kong by Jake and his teammate Ryan. In the article, they first created an empathy map to brainstorming and found that there are two main factors that cause the bad commuting. Environmental and social conditions, such as too crowded, disruptive people and long travel time.
Although they have not suggested any solutions to solve it. But I think it is still a good article, because it makes me think more about the city where I am living and inspire me a lot. After reading it, there are many thoughts that come into my mind and I want to share my personal opinion of the problem that Hong Kong is facing in the recent years.
To no surprise, there are two things come into my mind, living and schooling. First and foremost, the living problem. This is the problem that many of us need to face everyday. Such as, buying food, paying rent and taking the transport. These things should be the most common and cheapest one, because you need some of them to survive. But in Hong Kong it seems not like that. In the year of 2022, a lunch set in Hong Kong cost around 50 to 60 HKD. If you are eating outside for three meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner, it will cost over 200 HKD, almost one third of your daily pay. If you feel buying food in Hong Kong is kind of expensive, I will say you underestimated the live spending of living in Hong Kong. The most terrible is the rent. I would like to compare Hong Kong to New York City. You can get a 300 feet house with 15000 in Hong Kong. If you pay 9000 more, you can get a house with 4 bedrooms, 3 washrooms and a huge living room in New York City. In my view, both city are modern city with high technology and mainly work in economy, how can it have a huge difference. After doing these research online, I think the high living prices really make HongKongers feel stressful and powerless. They need to worry about their pocket to see is there enough money for this month. They can’t buy things that they want. It causes bad mental health.
On top of that is the schooling problem. As a student in Hong Kong, I can truly say that the education system of Hong Kong is completely broken. We went to school everyday for 12 years, the only thing that we got from the school are those subject knowledge. Because teachers and parents always told us, ‘you need to get good marks in the public exam and get into the university.’ The cramming education and high expectation. Students have zero time to develop their interest and hobby. They fully focus on studying and reduce their sleeping time. Studying under this environment, every student has a high stress level. It is harmful to their health. In addition, the degree of university is becoming meaningless, every student has one. This trend makes being a university student a basic requirement, those who don’t have it will be less competitive when finding a job. Therefore, more teenagers choose not to work. Pull the toll on the employee market.
To conclude, there are lots of problems that Hong Kong need to solve and it is caused by many different reasons. From the lack of spaces, poor education system to the job requirement. People should be more aware of their city. We can try to release stress and think about whether the place that you are living is suitable for you.