I've had to get used to a lot of different things since moving to Hong Kong. The weather is very different, as I've mentioned before. Obviously, my surroundings are very different, having moved from a small town in the countryside where I lived on my own, to the middle of a big city where I live with three other people. There are the obvious language differences and, while Hong Kong (along with Singapore) is probably the "easiest" of entry points to the East, the culture is very different.
Culture is difficult to define and covers many different things but it's the little things that I'm noticing the most: no one seems to think twice about burping loudly here; there's a lot of hawking and spitting; people use toothpicks far more than I'm used to. The biggest thing - and I'm struggling this quite a bit more than I thought I would - is that we have a helper.
There are something in the region of 300,000 foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong - mostly from the Philippines but also from Indonesia and Thailand. The prevalence of foreign domestic workers (I'll just use "helpers" from now on) in Hong Kong is a great example of where two countries, on very different tracks, have been able to assist each other in an unusual way. During the 1970s, Hong Kong's economy was booming, causing labour shortages, whilst the economy in the Philippines was not doing so well.
Changes to labour laws in the Philippines encouraged individuals work abroad, whilst making it easier to bring money earned overseas into the country. The labour vacuum in Hong Kong hoovered a vast number of those individuals into the country, first from the Philippines and, subsequently, from other countries. It's one of the quirks of Hong Kong: every Sunday, all the helpers have a day off and they congregate in huge groups in various areas. Where we live at the moment is an Indonesian area, so on Sundays the local park is a riot of coloured headscarves and calls to prayer.
It's not all fun and games; some helpers are extremely poorly treated and there are often unscrupulous employers who cause issues around their terms and conditions of work. There's also been a long and acrimonious dispute about the helpers' legal entitlement to remain in Hong Kong. It's a complex and sensitive situation and I don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs of it. What it does mean is that every family that has a helper (and an awful lot of them do) is actually an employer - a situation which is very different to the UK.
So this role of employer is one that I have inherited since I moved here. I contribute to the expenses in running the house, the helper's wage is one of the expenses, therefore I partly pay her wages therefore I'm partly her boss. This new role is the thing with which I'm having the most difficulty since my move and I'm at a loss to explain why.
For the first few weeks, when I was at home during the day, I hid inside the bedroom and didn't come out if she was in the living room. Since then, I've gotten a little more comfortable - but not much. I seem to be almost completely unable to actually ask her to do anything - whenever I actually get the courage to do so, I feel terrible about it, as if I'm disturbing her.
She calls me "sir" - something with which I am deeply uncomfortable but am assured is right and proper. At the moment, as I write this, she's cooking me lunch and I had to be almost bullied and cajoled into asking her to do that. Perhaps it's a little working class squeamishness about having "staff" or a reluctance to have people "serve" me but I just find it very alien.
It's my problem, entirely: she doesn't have any issue with it at all. In fact, my insistence on doing a lot of things for myself - stuff that is, technically, her job - is probably a bit insulting. But it's the way I feel at the moment and I'm trying hard to change it. Of all the things that I thought I might find difficult, being a "boss" wasn't anywhere on the list.
No comments:
Post a Comment