Page 163 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

47. The Cultural Saga

Different culture, eating habits, life style, religion and
value system

Hong Kong was dominated by Chinese population. In our branch we had
four Indian Expatriate Managers. One Indian Junior Manager and one
Indian Assistant out of total staff of 52. Out of curiosity, I asked my
secretary Christie, "How did you acquire the Christian Name like most
of the Hong Kong Chinese have a Christian name prefixed to their Chinese
name?" She told that during the British rule in the early era, the British
Governor wanted to give new Christian name to each habit ant. The local
population then insisted that British resident in Hong Kong should also
acquire a Chinese name along with British name. Since then, there was
a practice of having two names for Hong Kong citizens.

My next question to her was, "Which religion do you practice, Christie?"
I was amazed at her reply! She said with a twinkling in her eyes, "Sir, all
of us in Hong Kong have one common religion and that is 'Money'. We
can't survive in Hong Kong without enough money that comes before
our religion." Her jovial comment indeed was true. Every human being
has to earn money to survive. But in Hong Kong, it was a race for making
money for survival as well as for maintaining a decent standard of living.
In India, we have a broad range of incomes of our people but in Hong
Kong the range was much narrower due to western influence,
materialistic race and more so, demonstration effect of open consumerist
capitalist economy of a city state.

When we started for Hong Kong, we had thought we would be returning
financially better off than before. When we reached there, we found
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