Batgung

If you couldn't leave Hong Kong, would you still have chosen to move here?

I'm not suggesting you're about to be arrested, or the border will close. But what if air travel was so limited that you could only expect one flight to bring you here, then another at the end of say three years when your contract finishes and you fly home?

George Monbiot's book 'Heat' started this line of thought. The book is about the problems he forsees from global warming, and the solutions he propses. His main theme is reducing the amount of carbon dioxide we generate, and as part of that he proposes drastic reductions in air travel.

It would make a big difference to our life, and I suspect to the majority of expats that live here. No long flights back to our home countries to visit family and escape the Hong Kong summers. No holidays or long weekend breaks to local countries in Asia, and no more business travel around the region.

It seems hard to imagine now, but really the option of low-cost air travel is still a very recent idea. If we say the expat experience in Hong Kong covers the last 160 years or so, flying has only become commonplace in the last quarter of that time. Before that you'd probably have arrived by boat, stayed several years, then taken another boat home.

I guessed that without air travel, coming to Hong Kong would be considered more of a hardship, and that people with families would be less likely to move here. Maybe that's not the case though, as the 1901 census showed that around 24% of the western population was aged 15 or under, i.e. a significant number of families must have moved or started here. Surprisingly the figure for the Chinese population at that time was just 17%, so maybe the opposite was true? That people who could travel relatively easily from their hometown to Hong Kong would be more likely to be younger and travel alone, with the intention of returning home to settle, whereas if you were moving here from overseas you'd be more senior (older), and would bring your family with you?

Would there be fewer expats in general? I expect there would be fewer regional offices of overseas companies based here, and so fewer expats. Without the ability to fly around the region, there would be no major benefit to being based here instead of in a European or US head office.

Personally I think I'd still be happy here. I'd certainly miss the trips back to the UK, both for keeping in touch with family, and for giving our daughters at least a taste of what life there is like. On the plus side, the Internet makes staying in touch a lot cheaper, and more effective, with photos shared almost instantly, and webcams to show the grandparents how the children are doing.

I'd miss the holidays around the region too, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. I hear people say they need a regular trip away from Hong Kong to stop them going stir crazy. For me it's more about getting away from the crowds and the city, and there are plenty of places in Hong Kong to do that.

We could also hope that a much improved train system would lessen the shock of the change. Mr Tall described a friend who often takes day trips to Shanghai and Beijing on business. That's extreme, but many business people need to travel there several times a year. We took the train to Beijing on holiday a few years back. It was interesting - but took over 30 hours! I see the journey time today is close to 24 hours, but still that's too long for a business trip. But if they could increase the speed to that of the French TGV trains, the journey time would drop to 8-9 hours, making overnight sleeper-train travel a possibility.

Still, not much help for travel back to the UK. I once travelled by train back to the UK. If you take away the time for stopovers, the journey lasted 9-10 days. A week on a train with a one year-old and a three year-old? I think not!

If could see air travel moving out of your reach, would you stay or catch the last flight home?

MrB