FILTH: the most maligned and misunderstood expats in HK?

Hi there guys. Allow me to revisit a topic that I had talked about a lot in the past - one of my best friends from gymnastics has just graduated from vet school and is now ready to work as a vet. He was going to try to get a job in Canada but that fell through, he then asked me, "can you teach me Cantonese and Mandarin please? My next job is going to be in Hong Kong but then that's just to start in the initial period, I would have the chance to work in various parts of China as well." I suppose the question you're all asking at this point must be: don't they have vets in Hong Kong and China? Well I'm sure they do, but my friend is going to be working for one of the top private vet practices in Hong Kong and China: the thing is that in vet school, my friend is trained to deal with all kinds of animals from the usual cats and dogs right through to horses, cows, pigs and sheep - the usual kind of animals one would typically find on a farm. Well if you want to make more money, then the obvious choice is to work for a private vet practice that will take care of the pets of the crazy rich and that's exactly what my friend has decided to do and he told me that the pay in Hong Kong is a lot higher than the next best offer he can find in the UK. "And another reason why I wanna do this is because it would be a chance for me to learn both Cantonese and Mandarin properly." So he's off to Hong Kong in January and I couldn't be happier for him - I think it is great that a young person like him is spreading his wings, broadening his horizons and taking the plunge to work abroad. He is going to learn so much by living and working in Hong Kong - it goes far beyond picking up a new language or two, but it is exposing him to a totally different culture that he has only had very limited contact with thus far.

However, the people in Hong Kong have always had a rather difficult relationship with British expatriates coming to work there - they call them FILTH: "failed in London try Hong Kong". This phrase has been around in Hong Kong for many years and it was the title of a book by Young Jingan. So, please allow me to explain the concept of FILTH: back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a certain kind of young British expatriate who would show up in Hong Kong after failing to find a decent job in London. Perhaps they weren't that talented, they probably went to a university on the wrong end of the league table, they didn't have the family connections to help get them an interview with a good company, they're not stupid but they have not done everything necessary to land them a good job in a place like London. So they get on a plane, land in Hong Kong where they realize that they were getting job interviews and were offered these well paid jobs that they would never ever dream of landing in London. The locals resented these British expatriates who usually weren't as highly qualified as the locals and couldn't speak any Chinese at all, but they often landed the better jobs, were offered far more generous packages and often got promoted over the locals. Now there are always two sides to the story: the locals often claim it was because of racism, this preference to higher a white person over a Chinese person. This was because Hong Kong was a British colony back then, so there were many British people in the top positions in the banks in Hong Kong then and then assumption was that a British boss would always pick the white candidate when presented with a choice of hiring either a local or an expatriate from the UK. The other side of the story is that the local Chinese candidates lacked the social skills for certain roles in the banking world: they sucked at sales, didn't have the social skills to conduct negotiations and whilst they were good at roles like accountancy and administration, you could never put a Chinese person in a client facing position: the reality is that both of these allegations have some degree of truth to them. 

Of course, the myth of FILTH is long gone in 2020 - whilst banks rarely insist that a candidate must speak Chinese (be in Mandarin, Cantonese or both), it is seen as advantageous to have a working knowledge of Chinese. Furthermore, with more Chinese people being promoted into senior positions of management, the myth of white expats helping each other has long disappeared: we are after all in the middle of a really deep and painful recession at the moment caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Companies are struggling to stay open, never mind make a handsome profit - banks are desperate to hire the best people who can help improve their business and make sure that everyone still has a job by this Christmas. During such extreme times, the focus has shifted to survival and that makes it impossible for a director to get away with nepotism (such as by hiring someone from his hometown) under such circumstances. On the other hand, many locals from Hong Kong have much better social skills compared to their parents - the culture is changing rapidly and these young professionals are quick to learn. Of course, white people no longer have a monopoly on being witty, funny and oozing charm during a business meeting; I am currently working on a deal with a banker from Hong Kong who was sent to a boarding school in England from a young age because his parents wanted him to acquire the mannerisms and social skills of the upper classes in order for him to succeed where other locals have failed. Ironically, this is kind of social skills still seen as a 'Western' thing - my reader Amanda told me how her Singaporean friends were utterly shocked when she had the balls to crack a joke during a job interview, as her Singaporeans friends would deem that to be too disrespectful, inappropriate or even just too difficult to pull off successfully during a job interview. Things have improved somewhat but nonetheless - there is still a rather long way to go when it comes to East Asians having better social skills.

Many people look back on this period and use racism to explain the phenomena of FILTH in Hong Kong: the locals accused the white people of nepotism whilst the whites accused the locals of having really poor social skills. Rather, I see this as a simple mismatch of supply and demand in the labour market that persists to this very day. The East Asian approach to education may produce some good results in the teaching of subjects like mathematics and the sciences but social skills are not only neglected but totally sacrificed in the pursuit of getting straight As. When I was a student in the 1980s and 1990s in Singapore, the only way to gain these social skills would be to participate in extra-curricular activities, but parents and teachers alike frowned upon those as it was seen as an unnecessary distraction to the pursuit of academic excellence. The result of this is a generation of academic brilliant straight-A Chinese graduates who lack the most basic social skills to even survive a simple job interview, never mind handle complex sales negotiation situations at work. Some of the jobs in banking require quite a lot of social skills and that's simply not a subject that you can get a degree in at university - you simply have to sparkle at the job interview to demonstrate that you have heaps of personality and personality and can simply ooze charm effortlessly. Yeah, that's simply never ever going to happen with your average East Asian nerdy geek even if he has nothing but straight As at school and university. Contrast that to your expatriate from the UK who may not have attended a particularly good university but has enjoyed a far better work life balance which has in turn allowed them to develop much better social skills. Of course I can see exactly how that gap in the market being filled by British expats with better social skills, whilst the locals in Hong Kong refuse to acknowledge how their culture has created this problem in the first place but they insist on playing the racism card which is very unfair. 

The shift from favouring expats in the banking sector in Hong Kong to employing far more locals happened because this gap in the labour market was gradually filled by more and more locals who had access to a better quality of education and thus entered the work force with far better social skills to perform these more challenging jobs that do require complex social skills. This is not just a result of more rich families in Hong Kong sending their children abroad for a better education but rather this reflects a gradual improvement amongst both parents and teachers alike about the importance of social skills as part of a young person's education. Now at this stage, some of you may point out to me that there were loads of Chinese comedians from places like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore who were hilarious, witty and very popular - they had loads of social skills, so it wasn't like it was a Chinese problem, like we were totally incapable of producing comedians as a culture. Let's take a massively popular comedian from Hong Kong in the 1980s - Lydia Sum. As a comedian and compare, she had loads of social skills that enabled her to connect with the audience, but she was working in showbiz, she wasn't working for an asset manager or an investment bank in Hong Kong. People who had sparkling personalities like Lydia Sum tended to favour careers in the creative arts whilst those who thought they would be appreciated in the world of banking were the geeky nerds (or the nerdy geeks) who were brilliant at mathematics but couldn't even make small talk with a stranger they have just met at an event. This misconception has gone on for far too long - when I tell folks back home in Singapore that I work in banking in London, many of them make the assumption that I am valued for being good with numbers and I have to point out to them that I absolutely suck at mathematics. (Okay, not really, actually my maths skills are pretty decent, but in my company I'm valued for my excellent social skills instead.) 

But of course, there is bound to be a lot of tension between the imperial powers and the colonized natives in any colony - therefore it wouldn't take much for tension to spill over into conflict. Of course, the myth of FILTH varies depending on whom you talk to: the locals will claim that these young, clueless British expats could get off the plane at (the old) Kai Tak airport and be given extremely well paid jobs despite lacking the requisite skills or experience. The British expatriates working in Hong Kong would tell quite a different story: they recall Hong Kong being like the wild west back then, there were plenty of opportunities but the streets of Hong Kong were not paved with gold - instead, you had to hustle, you needed loads of chutzpah to be able to compete with the best and it was a world away from London, where you really needed to be of the right social class, you had to have the fine manners of the upper class before people would take you seriously in the world of finance which was dominated by other rich, old, posh people. But in Hong Kong, the idea of social class was far less clearly defined: so a Londoner who was bright but working class would find it far easier to succeed in a place like Hong Kong than in London, because there was far less discrimination against people of a working class background. Indeed, many of these British expatriates were counting on the fact that the locals in Hong Kong didn't understand British culture well enough to figure out that not all 'gwailos' (white foreigners) are equal, but there is a very clear pecking order and social class system in British society. Thus if you're at the wrong end of the British social class system, it is far easier to try to forge a career for yourself in a place like Hong Kong than to try to do the 'My Fair Lady' makeover to try to fit in with the upper classes in London. But of course what I am describing here was the situation back in the 1980s - Hong Kong is a very different place today whilst the UK hasn't changed much in terms of the class system.

Since I mentioned Lydia Sum the popular comedian and actress from Hong Kong, we do have a large number of comedians in the UK who are extremely popular but did you know that many comedians tend to mostly target their own social class? On one end of the scale, we have the posh comedians like Ian Hislop, Alexander Armstrong and David Mitchell who have upper class backgrounds and make no effort to hide their privilege - in fact their posh backgrounds is often something they draw upon in their comedy routines. Then on the opposite end of the scale, there are comedians like Sarah Millican, Lenny Henry and Russell Howard who have come from very humble working class backgrounds and they too often use their class identity as material for their comedy. Then you have the more mainstream comedians like Rowan Atkinson, Richard Ayoade and Jennifer Saunders who try to appeal to everyone. It gets even more confusing than that: comedian Simon Bodkin has a rather privileged upbringing, but he has an alter-ego called Lee Nelson who is this inarticulate working class chav that has become so popular, many people in the UK believe that Lee Nelson is a real working class comedian, rather than just a character that Simon Bodkin plays to make fun of class issues. Likewise, there is a gay comedian called Tom Allen who has all the manners and trappings of privileged upper classes, but he revealed that his parents are actually working class and this is but an image that he has chosen for himself. It suffices to say that the issue of social class is extremely complex in the UK and you need a lot of social skills to learn the rules of the game and adapt accordingly if you want to get ahead in a society very obsessed with social class - thus for some bright, working class British people, it was just far easier to fly off to Hong Kong than to navigate the British class system.

This phenomena of moving from where you were born to a place where you have far more favourable working conditions has been going on for a long time - since emancipation in America, black Americans have often moved from the southern states to the northern states in search of better education and employment opportunities because the northern states were less racist. Back in Apartheid South Africa, some black people did move to Zimbabwe to access further education there because the South African universities then were reserved mostly for the white minority. In the 16th century, a large number of French Protestants (known as the 'Huguenots') fled France to various countries like the UK, Canada and America because they were experiencing a lot of discrimination at the hands of the Catholics in France. But that's still nothing compared to the kind of discrimination the Jews have faced throughout history, where they had to flee from one country to another in desperately search of a tolerant host population that wasn't anti-Semitic. When Poland joined the EU, many gay Polish people took advantage of the freedom of movement that they now had as EU citizens to flee homophobic Poland and move to other more gay-friendly European cities like London, Amsterdam and Berlin. I could go on but people have been discriminated over everything from their skin colour to their religion to their sexuality to their social class. So if there's somewhere else in the world where you know you're going to have an easier time pursuing your career, where you're going to face far less discrimination over who you are, why wouldn't you move then if you knew the door was open for you to simply get on a plane and start a new life there, especially when many have already done just that? For many working class British people - Hong Kong was that promised land where they could avoid discrimination.

The problem is that many in Hong Kong failed to understand what was going on in British culture. Oh Hong Kong may have remained a British colony much longer than Singapore did, but people in both Singapore and Hong Kong are equally ignorant of British culture. You see in Singapore, the term they use to describe white people is Angmoh (Hokkien, literally 'red hair'), in Cantonese the equivalent term used in Hong Kong is Gwailo (literally 'ghost man'). The problem is that this is an umbrella term used for all white people regardless of nationality, religion, social class, social status, gender, age, sexuality or any other way you could possibly use to define an individual. The locals in Hong Kong didn't know the difference between a rich, posh civil British servant of a very privileged background and a working class chap from Essex (generally considered a rather poor part of England) trying his luck in Hong Kong in 1985. These two white people were both British, they both spoke English, they both looked different from the locals, they both don't speak any Cantonese and so they were both somewhat lazily lumped into the Gwailo category by the locals. However if we create an artificial situation whereby these two individuals were to be stuck in a lift that broke down and they had to wait an hour to be rescued, the two British men then realize that they may as well try to pass the time by making polite conversation since they are stuck in there together. They will then realize that they really have very little in common and had they been back in England, their paths would never ever cross because of their very different social backgrounds. It doesn't mean that they will automatically hate each other, no - I'm sure they would somehow manage to make polite conversation as they wait to be rescued but the moment those lift doors open, they will walk out of that lift and say goodbye, knowing that they will never see each other again because they move in totally different social circles - even if they both live in Hong Kong.

The irony is that the rich elite in both Hong Kong and the UK probably have a lot in common given the way they enjoy a very similar kind of lifestyle that their wealth can afford them: most importantly, they would have had the same kind of education. I had a colleague who attended Eton and his classmates included people like members of the Nepalese royal family and sons of rich Chinese tycoons. Whereas the working class in the UK would have very little in common with the working class in Hong Kong - they don't speak the same languages to begin with: the working class in Hong Kong would usually speak little or no English, they would have grown up watching different TV programmes and movies because the way they consumed entertainment was guided by the fact that they spoke Cantonese as a first language. I could go on listing the ways these two groups are so incredibly different but I am really struggling to find anything they have in common apart from the fact that they are both considered working class within their own societies: but that's just a label that we use to describe a certain social class: they have little or nothing in common apart from this label. Thus the rich elite in Hong Kong would be able to tell the difference between an equally privileged British expatriate and a working class chap from Essex just trying his luck in Hong Kong, but somehow, out of sheer ignorance, the working class in Hong Kong put all Gwailos into the same category and afford them the same high social status as part of the elite, British ruling class given that Hong Kong was still a British colony then. It is a ludicrous situation of course - if they genuinely viewed these Gwailos as a threat, then taking the time and effort to understand their culture would be hugely advantageous when it came to dealing with the enemy, rather than simply treating all white British people as a monolithic entity 'gwailo'.

However, it was this very ignorance that created the opportunities for the British working class to strike it rich in Hong Kong back then. They had gone from being at the bottom of the pecking order in the UK to being associated with the ruling classes simply on the basis of the colour of their skin (and the locals being too ignorant to figure out the difference). This ignorance persists till this very day in China - there is a booming rent-a-white foreigner industry in China, for a small price, you can rent a white person to pose as an executive in a meeting as a PR stunt, to give your company a far more international image by including a white person. This perceived prestige that white people would bring to a Chinese company's image is to try to convey the message that they are not just a small business operating only in Sichuan province but a big enough company to have international operations hence the presence of white people on the team. Yes there is an element of 打肿脸充胖子 here, but it is an easy way for these white expats in China to earn a quick buck - they probably are earning peanuts working as English teachers in China and they would actually make more in an hour than they would in a week by turning up an a business meeting or opening ceremony posing as a company executive. Yes, the prestige associated with white skin is still very prevalent in China today, this was the case back in Hong Kong in the 1980s and attitudes haven't changed that much, despite the fact that people of Hong Kong has been exposed to Western culture and media far more than their counterparts to the north in China. So if you told a white British working class chap in Essex that he could make good money in a place like Chengdu or Tianjin for simply showing up at events and posing as a company executive (without actually doing any real work), then why wouldn't he say, "yes please, get me on the next plane to China, that sounds so awesome. I hate my current job anyway and I am earning peanuts in Essex."

Was it that easy for white working class British expatriates in Hong Kong to earn big bucks back in the 1980s? Hell no, it wasn't. The fact is these people came to Hong Kong because they wouldn't even get past the interview process in London - it would be hard to hide their working class background from the CV once you look at details like their post code or the schools they have attended. Even if they do make it as far as the interview, then their working class accent is a major issue - they may not even wear the right kinds of clothes to the interview as what is perfectly acceptable within their social circles may be totally unacceptable in a formal interview situation. But this is not the case in Hong Kong, after all, if they have made it as far as showing up for a job interview in Kowloon, there is clearly a sense of determination to succeed: these people don't want to return to Essex in six month after having exhausted their savings in Hong Kong and failing to find decent employment - no, they are super keen to prove to the folks back home that they will succeed in Hong Kong and will work super hard to succeed if given the chance. These people were denied the chance in London not because they were stupid or lazy - no, they were often denied the chance simply on the basis of their social class. The fact is only those who are especially determined to succeed would get on a flight, leave Essex (or whichever corner of the UK they came from) and try to make a fresh start in Hong Kong. Hence this ensures that those who do actually show up in a job interview in Hong Kong have that fighting spirit, that determined desire to succeed at any cost. This is of course the migrant mentality in reverse, except that we normally apply this to people from places like Hong Kong settling in places like London. So whatever success the 'FILTH' have earned, it certainly wasn't handled to them on a silver platter like the white expats in China who are working in those rent-a-white foreigner businesses - no, they earned every bit of it. Needless to say, countless others have tried this route and failed, only to return to the UK after they have exhausted all their savings in an unforgiving place like Hong Kong where there is no safety net for those who have failed.

My friend who is moving to Hong Kong represents the new generation of young Brits looking to spread their wings and see the world once they are ready to join the working world. His parents have both lived and worked abroad before - incidentally, his mother has lived many years in Singapore and thus I did a double take when he referred to beansprouts as 'taugey' (the word for beansprouts 豆芽 in Hokkien) as he was the only white friend I have who would use that word from my mother tongue Hokkien. Mind you, he already speaks three languages fluently and is very determined to learn both Cantonese and Mandarin whilst he is in Hong Kong - quite unlike the generation of British expats in Hong Kong who are of his parents' age: they may have lived in Hong Kong for decades but probably know no more than a handful of words in Cantonese and/or Mandarin. His sister is about to get a new job to move abroad as well - not because she can't find a job in the UK (she is in fact currently gainfully employed) but once again, she is young, keen for adventure and new experiences and at the back of her mind, she knows she would have to get married and settle down one day, that would make it far harder for her to pursue new opportunities in another country if she has two kids in school. Heck, I have another friend who moved to work in Tanzania after she graduated - the pay there is obviously quite low compared to what she could earn in London, but the fact is she wasn't worried about earning money: her parents are rich, she has the rest of her life to earn money. She simply wanted adventure and fun, she knew she could get plenty of that in a place like Tanzania and hopefully, the work experience she gains in Africa will serve her well in her future endeavors. The common theme here is this yearning to see the world, seek new adventures and learn about new cultures - but of course, my friends are rich kids who have had a great education and supportive parents who have encouraged them to work abroad.

Let's contrast this with an incident that happened three years ago - I was flying back from Melbourne to London via Singapore, I had a seven hour layover in Singapore so I had more than enough time to get out of the airport and see my family for dinner. I had suggested going to Changi Village for dinner - there is a hawker center there and it is quite close to the airport. My parents objected to that because they were afraid of getting lost - they were unfamiliar with Changi, they knew the way to the airport and back but couldn't remember how to get to Changi Village. My sister offered to drive them using Google maps, but my parents adamantly refused: they then said we won't come to see you - either you take a taxi and come and visit us for dinner or you go to Changi Village with your sisters, but we won't come. My father even claimed that I would get lost in Changi Village and miss my connecting flight - there was no convincing them to go to Changi Village. In the end, we compromised: my sister found a nice restaurant within Changi Airport itself for us to have dinner then my parents went home after that - I then went on to Changi Village with my sister, brother-in-law and my nephew where we spent a few hours before it was time for me to return to the airport for my connecting flight. My parents were furious with me for insisting on going to Changi Village but I had a good seven hours in Singapore, there was just no way I was going to miss my connecting flight. The explanation was simple: never mind traveling to another country, my parents were terrified about traveling to another part of Singapore (like Changi) which they were not familiar with. Some people simply don't have the confidence to travel abroad (never mind work abroad), thus for them, they would always seek to find employment as close to home as possible. So that's fine, they do whatever they need to do to feel safe and happy, but they assume that everyone else has the same goal: to try to find a job as close to home as possible. 

This is why so many people who lack the social skills, language skills and confidence would never ever contemplate working abroad - they see people like the Indian nationals on construction sites as well as the Filipino domestic workers as examples of people forced to make this difficult decision because of extreme poverty. Trying to understand why my friend would choose to work in Hong Kong or why my other friend moved to Tanzania for her first job upon graduation is baffling to say the least for them - I can just imagine my mother exclaiming, "aiyoh, your friend to move to Africa to work, like that not safe for a young woman! Why can't she get a job in England, so much safer!" The problem with the poor, working classes is that their mindset has always been linked to survival: let me give you another example. I had just returned from a holiday in Italy - I told my mother and sister about how good the pizza is in Italy compared to what they have in Singapore, especially because the crust is extremely thin and crispy as opposed to what you get in Singapore which is thick, bread-like and too doughy. My mother's gut response was, "ani kwan jiat bueh pah" (Hokkien: 这样子吃不饱 - like this you won't get full.) You have to understand that my mother grew up in a very poor family where she was severely malnourished, so the concern about "jiat bueh pah" (吃不饱 or not having your stomach filled) was a constant fear that dominated her childhood, hunger was a big part of her childhood. She simply couldn't understand why I would pay good money for a pizza that was a pleasure to eat but may not completely fill my stomach because it was so thin and crispy. For a working class person like her who has suffered so much hunger, food wasn't something you eat to enjoy but simply something you stuffed into your mouth to satisfy those hunger pangs. So never mind a thin and crispy pizza, you try explaining to my mother how some rich people would indulge in expensive caviar just for that extremely brief moment of glee and indulgence in their mouths as they bite down on those delicate fish eggs but it would never fill their stomachs.

So people like my mother would make the assumption that my friends have decided to work abroad simply because they couldn't find a job in London, thus were forced to look elsewhere: hence the term FILTH. I do think that this label is rather misleading because it does look at the situation almost entirely from the point of view of the locals in Hong Kong without actually considering what the other side of the story is - why someone from England would pick Hong Kong over London when there are always two sides to any story, especially one as complex as this. However, the situation is far more complex than that and we're currently dealing with a younger generation who have never suffered hunger the way my mother has. Instead of being obsessed about survival, this younger generation is more interested in having fun, seeking new experiences and finding new adventures - they would throw caution to the wind and move abroad once they have a job offer in a way my parents never would. Finally, were the majority of the FILTH generation working class? No, in fact there was a mix of different social classes amongst the British expatriates who ended up in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s - I am just pointing out that social class did play a major role in this process. Indeed, my friends who are now moving abroad are anything but working class: take my friend who has moved to Tanzania for example, her filthy rich parents are saying to her, "have a great time there and don't worry about money, just stay safe and take good care of yourself in Africa!" Working class parents will never have the luxury to utter the words, "don't worry about money" quite simply because they are a lot poorer. The FILTH narrative only serves to disparage and mock the British expatriates in Hong Kong, without making any effort to try to delve into the more complex social reasons why some working class British people will be better off in a place like Hong Kong than London even if they were indeed born and bred in London.

So there you go, that's it from me on this topic: what do you think? Do you think young millennials are so admirable in their spirit of adventure, their desire to seek new experiences in a way their parents never would? Would you go work for a few years in a poor African country like Tanzania knowing that you would not earn much money there but would have the most awesome adventure of a lifetime? Why do you think the FILTH generation in Hong Kong were so misunderstood and maligned? Have you ever been to the hawker center at Changi Village and how do you feel about thin and crispy Italian pizza as opposed to deep-pan pizza? Please do leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.