VIDEO: Judging Boyfriends by Their Housing in Hong Kong · Global Voices
Hong Kong is the world's most expensive place to live due to its rocketing property prices. For an outsider, the prices are just an unreasonable figure. For local residents, they become a nightmare that affects every aspect of life, sometimes even people's relationships.
This nightmare is depicted in an online short story called “Girlfriend brings you home for dinner” [zk] posted anonymously under the pseudonym “Golden Godfather” in popular online forum Golden Forum earlier this year.
Inspired by the story, <PERSON>, a political commentary video producer, later turned it into a mini-film titled “Public housing, Private-ownership apartment, Private apartment” that has gone viral in Hong Kong.
The video plays with some stereotypes of Hong Kong Chinese families in which the mother expects her daughter to improve her life by picking a relatively wealthy boyfriend. As the residential address of a person can reflect a person's economic status in Hong Kong, the first question the mother in the video asks the boyfriend is where he lives. There are three scenarios – public housing, government-subsidized housing under the private-ownership scheme, and a private apartment. 1001
And the mother reacts accordingly.
Within a short period of time, the video receives more than 100,000 views and many comments. While the video is clearly exaggerating the relationship between people by playing with the materialistic stereotype of the “Chinese mother”, many netizens believed it depicted reality:
KHL1U1001016: freaking true…
<PERSON>: sooooooo realistic…
<PERSON>: It's sad and funny because it's true. HK SAR people do judge people by where they live and their work…
Angelina <PERSON>, playing the mother in the video, is keen to know where exactly her daughter's boyfriend lives. Screen capture from YouTube.
The mother, portrayed by <PERSON>, an experienced artist in Hong Kong, has become the focus of the discussion on YouTube:
whwong2881: That guy should said : Na I don't like your daughter because you are a fuxking gold digger
abcnoman011: They are not gold digger , it just that the price of a apartment in hk is so unreasonable high , that a normal person can hardly afford . The mother is just want to make sure that the daughter is dating someone that have a private apartment or at least own one, so the daughter do not have to suffer later in live , it is sad but truth , the mother have a a good reason to do that , she may went through hell in the past to save up money to buy an apartment , so she do not want her daughter to go through what she had gone through . Sad !!!!!!!!
<PERSON>: fantastic actress, Ms <PERSON>, same set up three tone of performance.
As a mother she just hope her child get the best future.
However our society is deeply affected by the western culture and lost our the fundamental believe of human being.
We need more people to be alert and rectify our society back to the right track.
Of course, the ultimate problem is the crazy property prices because of the unlimited flow of investment and speculative capital in the city:
asuka k: Don't blame auntie, but the government! 1001