Since moving back to his native UK from Hong Kong, fellow Post columnist and former deputy editor Cliff Buddle has been chronicling his new life in the county of Kent and drawing contrasts between his corner of Britain and today’s Hong Kong.
It seems the grass is greener on his side.
He also says: “Home-grown fruit and veg is not easy to find in Hong Kong.”
Why Hongkongers love omakase – will their loyalty survive coming test?
Why Hongkongers love omakase – will their loyalty survive coming test?
Well, that depends on how one defines home-grown. Yes, most of our food comes from over the border in mainland China. But the mainland is basically next door. A lot of our food comes from produce and meat farms in Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong. Some would say that’s pretty much eating local.
Many Hong Kong residents still assume that produce from the mainland is either inferior, fake or produced using cheap, unhealthy methods.
Yet that’s what we mostly eat on a daily basis – unless you can afford only imported goods at pricey gourmet grocers, which goes against all eco-ideals of local eating.
It is worth noting that some of our freshest organic vegetables are actually farmed in the Pearl River Delta, where land is available and cheap. It is also how most local goods can be made available at such low prices and with such tiny carbon footprints.
Even if those farmers were in Hong Kong, they wouldn’t be able to just leave their choi sum on a cart with a coin box for everyone to self-pay. We don’t have the luxury of such bucolic behaviour.
Hong Kong is a city of over 7 million citizens. The population density here is close to 7,000 people per square kilometre. Kent, the county in which Cliff now lives, has fewer than 500 people per square kilometre.
It is untenable to assume we can all buy fruit and veg grown in Lantau, Lamma or Yuen Long. If that’s your definition of home-grown, then I think you’re a little too stuck on semantics. It would be just as silly to think Londoners can grow all their produce within the city’s metropolitan area.
I believe Hong Kong, as a major municipality, is probably among the most locavore and sustainable of big cities. Where other municipalities have weekly farmers’ markets, we have even more ubiquitous wet markets serving exactly the same purpose.
Can we do better at eating local and sustainable? Sure – we could better explore city gardens and rooftop farms, but I would argue there is as much home-grown food in Kowloon as in Kent.
