Dim sum or hot pot?

Discovering Hong Kong culinary world is a journey in and of itself. Cantonese cuisine is known for the freshness of ingredients and cooking methods that are meant to bring out their flavour best: steaming and stir-frying. One of the specialties of Cantonese flavouring is dried or preserved ingredients like dried scallops, small shrimp or fish, salted duck egg, fermented tofu and black beans, etc. Herbs tend to be limited to garlic, coriander leaves and spring onions, while spices hardly ever go beyond ginger and white pepper.

Your eating experience can be enhanced if you share it with Hong Kongers: the Western menu is thrown out the window and the true local experience comes in. To fully enjoy it, one does have to stay very open-minded, though. Westerners may have a hard time adjusting to fully accept some local food like organ meats or chicken feet. A special place in local cuisine belongs to roast or barbeque meat: duck, goose, chicken, pork. Cantonese cuisine also offers some of the best fresh seafood: most seafood restaurants would keep water tanks with live fish, crabs, clams, prawns and other sea creatures.

Eating traditions are also very peculiar. It is very uncommon to order a dish for oneself; that only happens in restaurants catering western cuisines. In the Chinese dining etiquette, food is meant to be shared. Orders are normally made for several dishes, which are placed on an elevated rotating board in the centre of the table, so that everyone could easily reach out to every dish. One of the traditional ways to serve food is dim sum – small portions served in steaming baskets or on small plates. Famous “hot pot” is also based on idea of sharing where all diners will dip fresh meat and vegetables into the boiling broth to cook.

Wednesday night at the race course?

Hong Kong offers many things to enjoy for different tastes.

A morning walk in the park leaves an impression that people here lead a healthy lifestyle: you will see a lot of joggers and groups practicing Tai Chi. It is not uncommon to follow up your outdoor or gym effort with a foot massage. Reflexology is very popular here and many do take advantage of it.

Hong Kong is surrounded by water and very picturesque islands. Some deep bays form beautiful beaches (but unfortunately, often dirty) and provide a haven for surfers and windsurfers alike.

This is also a dream place for an avid hiker: despite the striking population density, only a quarter of the territory of Hong Kong is developed because of the mountainous terrain, which, to the joy of outdoor lovers, is criss-crossed with hiking trails stretching for several hundreds of kilometres.



The high-rise skyline of the Hong Kong Island circles the mountains that offer some of the most striking views of the Victoria Harbour traversed continuously by super fast ferries, modern luxury yachts, cruiser boats and beautiful traditional Chinese junks under full sails. No less breath-taking are the serene views from the peaks of Lantau Island or Sai Kung Country Park in the New Territories. 

One of the featured Hong Kong pastimes is horse races. Marketed as betting entertainment, rather than gambling, they are equally popular among locals, expats and tourists. A Wednesday night at the racecourse is a must-do at least once: study the horse odds, make you bets, blend into the crowd and just allow adrenaline pump through the evening. Know your measure, or else your adrenaline might take another pitch in the morning, when you find your wallet empty. Or full!

Business culture highlights

One thing that strikes me as the most remarkable about our local colleagues is that they are wonderful listeners. They would never interrupt you. If you expect questions or comments after your presentation, do not get offended: they won’t come right away. But do expect them a day or two later and plan an opportunity for that. You’ll be surprised by their relevance, complexity, insightfulness and added value for the team’s agenda. 

By the similar token, consensus takes time for individual reflection and side discussions. Do not mistake the nods around the table for agreement, they mean: “You’ve been heard, we understood.” If you happen to take the lack of questions for disengagement of your audience, you are likely to miss a very valuable message: your Hong Kong colleague would never rush expressing an opinion or asking a question that is not substantiated by thorough thought; it is a sign of respect to you.

Hong Kongers are known around the world for hard work and you do find working late hours commonplace here. It has to do with doing everything thoroughly. They won’t ever come to a meeting unprepared and won’t give you a sloppy draft of a presentation or document. I do not believe this perfectionism is about making a good impression or being afraid to lose face; rather I think it has to do with respect for the other person and their time.

An island of diversity and the unknown

I was recently asked to write up a bit for an internal corporate publication about my impressions of Hong Kong. This was an opportunity to summarize all those things that used to be new, different or shocking and ...are not anymore. I have not posted much here lately for lack of time, so let me just share that little summary in several pieces...

 “City of contrasts” has become way too commonplace to be descriptive of any city. Yet, I cannot think of anything that would better portray Hong Kong. You get to see a luxury hotel next to a slum, the high-rise jungle beside a natural park, a Lamborghini swooshing by the elderly crouched over trash they collect for recycling.

I had always thought Hong Kong was an island. Well, it is, but a much larger part of the city is located on the Mainland across from the Island: Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories. The truth is, at some point it was fully confined to the Hong Kong Island, but ended up growing as a colony. The British, who were in control since 1840s, leased the New Territories in 1898 for 99 years from China to offset the growing influence of other European powers in this part of Asia. When the lease expired 13 years ago and New Territories had to be passed on back to China, the city would have ended up broken apart, had the handover to China not included the Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.

Several people asked me why addresses in Hong Kong do not cite China as the country: isn’t it part of China? It is. It is a Special Administrative Region (S.A.R.) with a very special status. Following the “one country, two systems” principle, Hong Kong has different governance and economic system from China, a different currency, separate phone country code, internet domain, etc. Even immigration regulations are different: more often than not, one would need a visa to China, but not to Hong Kong.