Inside the bowels of a Hong Kong industrial building, Eric Pun was among two dozen people crammed into a classroom learning to drill holes — acquiring a new set of skills before heading abroad.
Savvy businesses have started offering crash courses in subjects such as home repair and hairdressing, capitalizing on a wave of people departing Hong Kong as China cracks down on dissent and strict COVID-19 pandemic rules upend the economy.
For Pun, a 35-year-old nurse emigrating to Australia with his family, taking the home repair class was both a practical cost-saving measure and a way to prepare mentally for the unknown.
Photo: AFP
“In Hong Kong, if there is a problem you can go to the property management office or hire someone from the mall ... but when my family lives in a house, I’ll have to rely on myself,” he said.
Spending a day at Renobro Co (?修兄弟), one of the handful of companies offering lessons in home repair, costs HK$1,980 (US$252.26) and courses are fully booked weeks in advance, company cofounder and instructor Lau Chun-yu said.
“More than a thousand people have participated in our course,” Lau said.
Photo: AFP
“When we first started, we didn’t expect so many people would be emigrating.” Lau said his students, who are mostly in their 30s and include doctors and teachers, race through a one-day syllabus of more than 40 skills, such as caulking, plastering and rewiring appliances.
“Most of them aren’t well-prepared, but ... they hope to go over as soon as possible,” he said, citing fears that foreign countries might tighten immigration controls in the long run.
Hong Kong is experiencing an exodus of local and foreign talent.
Many residents have baulked at Beijing’s sweeping crackdown on dissent following huge and sometimes violent democracy protests three years ago.
Stringent “zero COVID-19” rules also remain in place two-and-a-half years into the pandemic, restricting daily life and isolating the territory internationally.
The latest census figures showed a record dip in Hong Kong’s population, which fell 1.6 percent to 7.29 million compared with a year earlier. The labor force has plunged to 3.75 million, the lowest in nearly a decade.
Many of those leaving are families with school-aged children. Official primary school figures released earlier this month showed there were 70 fewer classes across 60 schools this academic year. More than 4,000 teachers have left their jobs in the past school year.
The UK became one of the most popular destinations for Hong Kongers after it announced a visa scheme that provided a pathway to citizenship, arguing Beijing had abandoned its pre-handover promise to allow residents key freedoms and autonomy. So far more than 140,000 people have applied under the British scheme since it was launched in January last year.
Other common choices for relocation include Australia, Canada and the US, mirroring a similar wave of emigration that occurred ahead of Hong Kong’s 1997 handover from Britain.
Despite their optimism for life overseas, many would-be emigrants said they were worried about job prospects and wanted to learn more skills as insurance.
Fashion retailer Kimi Chau, 35, took a series of hairdressing classes in preparation for her move to Britain along with her husband and five-year-old.
“I want to be equipped for a job after I’ve arrived... If I could learn more skills before I leave, then if the opportunity came along for me to open up a business, I would be more confident,” she said.
Chau said her concerns about Hong Kong’s education system amid a shifting political climate drove her to leave.
“Because I have a kid, the issue felt closer to home and I didn’t take a long time to decide,” she said.
On a sweltering August afternoon, Chau and other hairdressing students brought along friends and family members to the salon where they took their classes for an informal graduation ceremony, and a bittersweet farewell.
Instructor Jason Yip said the hairdressing industry has a relatively low entry threshold and Hong Kongers can get a job quickly, adding that about one-third of his students plan to emigrate.
Yip added that many of his students appreciate the social dimension of hairdressing, as a way to stay close to family members and to connect with like-minded Hong Kongers.
“For them, [hairdressing] can become a kind of hobby, and they are quite happy to have it after arriving in a new place,” Yip said. “That kind of joy is shared and there is a sense of achievement.”
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS