Hong Kong has no friends.

Did you notice that Hong Kong has no friends?

Just a bunch of imaginary competitors and foes. We have no friends. Because we feel good to bully our neighboring countries, like Thailand, Vietnam, China, Taiwan. And we certainly want to do better than our competitors like Japan, Singapore and Korea. So in the end, what are you? Bermuda? An island where all foreigners will go mysteriously missing or dead when passing through?

When a country or city has no friends, it becomes easy, easy to manipulate.

Yes, Hong Kong is easy, easy to manipulate.

It says that when one does not stand for anything, he falls for everything.

When we don't have any friends, we fall for every scam.

That makes Hong Kong prone to all sorts of scams, local and international.

One thing that is obviously funny to foreigners is that we pride ourselves in being the least affordable city in the world.

For how many years, we feel excited to live in a city with skyrocketing prices? An average 2 bedroom apartment in any district of Hong Kong amounts to about 10 million HKD. And it is not even of good quality, just a two bedroom that can hardly accommodate a family of three.

For how many years we are manipulated to believe that our unaffordable housing is a sign of prosperity as a result of demand and supply? Oh, because we have too many people and too little land, that's why it is so expensive. Hong Kong is a paradise, everyone wants to live here, so fuck it and deal with it.

The fact that Hong Kong is the least affordable city feeds our ego. We feel good being unaffordable. Why? Because we feel sought after. We feel more 馨香 being the least affordable city in the world. We feel good living in an expensive place.

We have this idea that city life has to be expensive. So we market ourselves as "the world's least affordable place".

Again, this unaffordability thing that Hong Kong boasts about is funny. City life does not have to be expensive.

I lived in Manhattan for four years. I have to say that if you don't have to pay rent, everything else in New York is more affordable than Hong Kong.

Have you heard of the $1 manhattan shuttle that takes you to Flushing? $10 Chinatown bus that takes you to Boston for three and a half hours? Also, all you can eat good quality sushi at K town for less than 40 dollars? A michelin star restaurant in Soho that costs around 30 dollars for three course dinner? A 50 dollar dinner at Nobu?

Manhattan does not have cheap stuff. No Daiso dollar store. Every meal in Manhattan is at least 10 dollars. But a michelin star three course dinner is just another 10 dollars more. So there is a lot of price equality in New York, unlike Hong Kong. Hong Kong has a huge wealth gap, therefore its commodities also have a huge gap in both price and quality.

You can get really cheap stuff in Hong Kong because Hong Kong is a pirated goods haven. Hong Kong is flooded with low quality products if you take a look around Mongkok in ladies market. Hong Kong is a 山寨 city.

Let me tell you one more thing.

Hong Kong people are silly. They climb to the top just to bully whoever lower in ranking.

No other city or country does that in the entire universe. Just Hong Kong.

That's why Hong Kong has no friends.

Also, Hong Kong people are short sighted and fresh off the boat.

The richest nations are not white. They are brown, colored. They are Middle Eastern. Hong Kong is missing a big chunk of puzzle here when they look at world map. Also please take note of how big of an island Hong Kong is before inflating your ego.

Hong Kong is just a sleeping lion that has been living in its own fantasies for the whole century. It is still in some sort of coma waiting to be awakened. Stocks do not equate finance. They are two different things. Don't confuse them.

Hong Kong people are too obsessed with money.

Take this quiz as an example. You walk into a room and get shown a paper with 400 shapes. They can be pentagons, stars, triangles, squares, circles, rectangles and trapeziums. If you knew the instructions before you get shown the paper, this quiz would be hella easy, you just pick out whatever shapes they ask you to locate.

But unfortunately real life is often that you get shown this paper without any prior instructions. You will find these shapes almost impossible to figure out if you receive no prior instructions.

Hong Kong people are the type of people who just look for the $$ sign in the midst of an ocean of shapes. Hong Kong people are too preoccupied with money. So they walk into any situation with a preliminary mission to find the $$ sign but life often tells us that the true solution may sometimes be lying in the pentagon, for example.

You can say that Hong Kong people are money driven, or smart to get ahead. But in the long run, you need more than that to figure out life's puzzle.