Taipei as a place to escape from Hong Kong, especially for the young
Updated: 2014-05-13 07:27
By N.Balakrishnan(HK Edition)
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People in Taiwan are even more worried about economic stagnation and income inequality than Hong Kong people. The ratio of affordability for a residence in Taipei is even worse than in Hong Kong. In other words, though the price of an apartment in Hong Kong is more expensive than in Taipei, the incomes in Hong Kong are higher which means that an average wage earner in Taipei has to work longer to afford a place to live than his counterpart in Hong Kong.
But the grass is always greener on the other side. A prominent Taiwan financial professional told me that after he gave a public talk recently about Taiwan he was surprised to find that a young person from Hong Kong came to him after the speech to tell him he was thinking of migrating to Taiwan. When asked why, he told the Taiwan speaker that his dream was to start a small coffee shop or a farm in Taiwan, something that he could not realistically or profitably do in Hong Kong!
It is easy to dismiss such thoughts as a young person suffering youthful follies. But after a recent visit to Taipei, I must say that I can sympathize with the views of those young people. While walking around central Taipei I was struck by the large number of cafes. There was of course the obligatory Starbucks, but there were also many other local cafes, including one chain which calls itself Cafe Philo. The Cafe Philo had earnest people with laptops, books and black boards with drawings of French writer Albert Camus and also Albert Einstein.
Even the bar scene in parks such as Huashan 1914 Creative Park of Taipei looked cheaper, more innocent and filled with younger people. In Hong Kong places such as Lan Kwai Fong are not only more expensive, but filled with older people carrying fatter wallets. Young people in Lan Kwai Fong seem to be reduced to buying cheap beer from 7/11 and then hanging out in the streets. The atmosphere in Hong Kong seems more frenetic in contrast to the innocent feeling in Taipei.
What accounts for the difference between Taipei and Hong Kong youth culture, or the lack of this, is no doubt due to many historical and cultural reasons. But the cheaper rents in Taipei do allow the young people to experiment with the knowledge that if they don't succeed with their cafe or a shop selling unique T-shirts, they can pick themselves up and try again.
In Hong Kong many young people are pressured into the financial sector, or to become an accountant or a real estate agent. But the sad fact is that not many people end up making a lot of money selling real estate or managing other people's investments in the financial sector. So the risk-reward ratio in the so-called "safe" jobs may be no better than those opening cafes in Taipei. The same number of young people may "fail" in both Taipei and Hong Kong, but those in Taipei may be having more fun while they are failing. More importantly, they may learn something from the failures, regroup and go on to succeed the next time.
So if a Hong Kong young person and a young person from Taipei were to meet at the "Philosopher's Cafe", I am sure that the person opting for a career he dreams of doing will win over the person whose options are much narrower and constrained by pure monetary considerations.
The author has been living and working in Hong Kong for the past two decades. He is currently the CEO of a company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
(HK Edition 05/13/2014 page9)