In the past few days, the news about Hong Kong Cathay Pacific has been on the hot search.
It turned out that on a Cathay Pacific flight from Chengdu to Hong Kong, a Mandarin-speaking tourist asked the flight attendant for a blanket, and as a result, he was discriminated against by the flight attendant. In contrast, Cantonese and English-speaking passengers received preferential treatment.
The tourist recorded the flight attendant's speech and posted it on social media, causing an uproar. Cathay Pacific apologized twice urgently, claiming that there was no discrimination and that it would investigate clearly.
Soon, some netizens left messages saying that they could feel the discrimination of Hong Kong against mainlanders who spoke Mandarin when they traveled to Hong Kong, but those who spoke English were superior.
Discrimination against mainlanders in Hong Kong seems to have become a social phenomenon, and all this has both historical and practical factors.
A period of symbiosis and common difficulties between Hong Kong and the mainland
From the end of the Qing Dynasty until Hong Kong's handover in 1997, Hong Kong was under British rule. Of course, Japan invaded Hong Kong in 1942, and three years later, in 1945, when Japan surrendered, Hong Kong returned to British rule, so Hong Kong has been under British rule for nearly 100 years.
And the local Chinese have always hoped to return to the embrace of the motherland. Especially in the 60s of the last century, several suppressions by the British government in Hong Kong strengthened the confidence of the Chinese in opposing the British government in Hong Kong.
In 1949, with the collapse of the Kuomintang regime, Hong Kong, with an area of just over 1,000 square kilometers, soon became a settlement for some smugglers, Kuomintang widows, foreign spies, and profiteers of the Hong Kong and British authorities, most of whom were dissatisfied with the Communist Party. At the same time, some pro-Communist figures also existed and gradually divided in Hong Kong.
The British government in Hong Kong has always adopted a detached attitude towards the left and right, suppressing both the left and the right. But the repression of the left is even worse, some of whom have been sent back to the mainland under the guise of "persona non grata."
With the rapid influx of immigrants, Hong Kong's population surged from 500,000 to 2 million. The Chinese can only do grassroots work in the government and have little to say. Public opinion can only be reflected through a small number of justices of the peace appointed by Hong Kong and the UK, and laws and government documents are only available in English, and ordinary people can neither understand nor fight for their rights. The top law enforcement officials were all British or white people recruited from other British colonies, and most of them had a strong discriminatory mentality against Chinese.
In addition to racial discrimination and apartheid-style rule, the British government also followed the model of "using China to control China", relying on the Chinese triad to maintain social order, resulting in widespread and serious corruption in the Hong Kong government. In the 60s of the last century, Hong Kong society under the British colonial rule in Hong Kong was full of various unstable factors.
On April 13, 1967, a labor dispute occurred in the Hong Kong artificial flower factory. Originally, it was only a dispute between workers and factories, but as a result, the Hong Kong and British authorities did not abide by the long-established rule that "the police will not be involved in labor disputes", and not only supported the dismissal of a large number of workers by management, but also dispatched a large number of military and police to "maintain stability".
On May 6, British authorities in Hong Kong bribed a worker to create a "beating" incident in an artificial flower factory. Taking this opportunity, the Hong Kong and British authorities sent a large number of military and police to intervene, injuring more than 100 workers on the spot and arresting 18 people, which is known in history as the "May 6th Blood Case." On May 11, more than 600 armed police and "riot squads" were dispatched to further carry out a bloody crackdown on San Po Kong.
Later, on May 22, the British authorities in Hong Kong dispatched a large number of police, plainclothes agents, and thousands of "riot squads" to launch surprise attacks in Hong Kong and Kowloon on mass groups protesting at the "Hong Kong Governor's House" and the courtroom, and at least 200 patriotic compatriots were seriously injured, and countless more minor injuries were injured, and more than 300 people were arrested. The escalating violence of the British authorities in Hong Kong has provoked even more fierce resistance from Hong Kong's patriotic compatriots.
At this time, mainlanders and Hong Kong compatriots stood together. The Chinese government has also expressed diplomatic support. Later, in the border area between the mainland and Hong Kong, the British military and police in Hong Kong provoked the mainland militia. In desperation, the mainland military opened fire, killing a total of 42 Hong Kong riot police and British troops, most of them shot in the chest. As a result, the Hong Kong people boasted whenever they met: "The People's Liberation Army is really a sharpshooter, and all of them have been hit in the chest." ”
After that, the British police of the British army were completely honest. In the days that followed, they did not dare to play prestige on the demonstrators, and the British police did not dare to patrol the streets of Zhongying. Hong Kong is slowly returning to stability.
In May and June 1991, six years before Hong Kong's return to the motherland, the "East China Flood" broke out on our mainland, and 18 provinces, municipalities directly under the Central Government and autonomous regions were affected! Among them, Anhui Province, the hardest hit, 48 million people became victims, accounting for 70% of the province's population. At that time, six years before the handover, Hong Kong responded positively and quickly: people in the entertainment industry filmed the movie "Night Banquet of the Giants", in this two-hour film, almost all Hong Kong Island entertainers appeared, and there were more than 200 actors with names and surnames alone, all of whom were volunteers and did not take any money. At the same time, the Hong Kong government also allocated 50 million Hong Kong dollars to help the disaster area. Hong Kong immediately set off a wave of donations to help the floods in East China. According to statistics, in just 10 days, the total amount of disaster relief fundraising in Hong Kong has reached HK$470 million, accounting for more than 44% of the total donations received by mainland officials from the mainland during the flood equivalent to 2.3 billion yuan (the Hong Kong dollar/RMB exchange rate was about 1.1:1 in the early 90s, and it was not until 2007 that the RMB exchange rate exceeded the Hong Kong dollar for the first time).
In 1998, when a catastrophic flood occurred in our mainland, people from all walks of life in Hong Kong donated 680 million yuan to us, which was the largest and largest donation among the disaster relief funds donated to us in the world at that time. SARS in 2002, snow disaster in southern China and Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, H1N1 influenza in 2009... In times of crisis, whether it is relief in disaster areas or donations for reconstruction, Hong Kong people can be seen everywhere.
All this is enough to show Hong Kong's support for the mainland.
Why do Hong Kong people discriminate against mainlanders?
Many mainland tourists engage in uncivilized behavior when traveling in Hong Kong and do not respect Hong Kong's environmental hygiene and civility rules.
Many mainlanders have an "upstart" mentality, thinking that when they go to Hong Kong for tourism and shopping, they think that every financial crisis in Hong Kong is the mainland's rescue of Hong Kong's financial and economic resources, and that mainlanders are the benefactors of Hong Kong people, and Hong Kong people should be grateful to the mainlanders for their grace and dripping water.
In addition, imported milk powder and foreign milk powder in various supermarkets and stores in Hong Kong are often "bought" by mainlanders and run out of stock, resulting in many infants and young children in Hong Kong often "sometimes without milk powder".
In previous years, mainland "double non-pregnant women" often crowded and filled the beds of obstetrics and gynecology departments in various hospitals in Hong Kong, resulting in Hong Kong's own pregnant women often not having hospital beds for childbirth and labor.
These have also led to Hong Kong's prejudice against mainlanders.
In short, they are all a family, why so much prejudice?