This book started as a collection of lecture notes for students from mainland China when I was teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Currently, some 20,000 mainland students arrive in Hong Kong every year for an undergraduate or graduate degree. When faced with culture shocks in varied shapes and forms, and especially when experiencing the overwhelming anti-China sentiment among Hong Kongers stemming from intense conflicts between China and Hong Kong$^1$ for themselves here, mainland students often feel resentful or, at the very least, confused as to why people of Hong Kong would feel this way.

My name is Leung Kai Chi. I’ve witnessed the changes and transformations of Hong Kong in and out of the classroom during my eight years (2011-2019) at CUHK, teaching Hong Kong social studies and politics. Before my lectures which they come to from the mainland and other places worldwide, most of my students knew little about the causes behind various imbroglios that Hong Kong finds itself in. Explaining what Hong Kong is to such diverse groups of students year after year, I realized that even though heated public arguments are commonplace, both locals and outsiders seldom understand what they’re really arguing about.

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Footnotes from the translator

1 [sic]; Hong Kong is a “special administrative of China,” which is to say that it is a part of China. By “China,” the author meant “mainland China and the Chinese government” specifically. For all intents and purposes, this distinction will be left as one for the reader to recognize and remember instead of being made redundantly clear by the translator.

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