‘Wherever I am is Hong Kong’: Migrants build a new life in the UK

The days were short and so much colder than the ones they had known, when Eric Wong and his family set foot in London in the winter of 2020 to start new lives.
In Hong Kong, Wong had been an owner of a successful business selling milk tea, and his wife had been a school adminrator. In England, as a coronavirus lockdown stretched on, he played with their daughter, Trini, in their apartment and worried that his English was too poor to get him a job. It was difficult to make friends. And he missed the sun.
“I couldn’t see the direction in front of me,” said Wong, 46, who was a beneficiary of a visa program that gives British overseas passport holders in Hong Kong a path to citizenship. “Nothing was clear.”Best of Express PremiumPremiumPremiumPremiumPremium
A year and a half later, Wong has found his footing and is doing what he likes best: making and selling Hong Kong-style milk tea — which he hopes will gain traction in this country of tea drinkers — and bringing a taste of home for newcomers from Hong Kong who have taken advantage of the new visa program.
Britain has called the program a humanitarian, postcolonial responsibility after a crackdown in Hong Kong the Chinese government, saying that Beijing is violating the terms of a handover agreement in 1997 that would leave the former British colony untouched politically.
People lay flowers before a candlelight vigil remembering those killed in China in 1989 during protests at Tiananmen Square, in Taipei, Taiwan, June 4, 2022. (The New York Times)
From bustling cities like Birmingham in the Midlands to vibrant towns like Kingston, south of London, tens of thousands of people from Hong Kong have spent the past year searching for jobs and new homes. They have settled into fast-growing communities of other people from Hong Kong — a comfort for many, but at the cost of leaving behind a city where they had once hoped to grow old with their children, often having to say painful farewells to loved ones.
So far, the new arrivals have been mostly welcome in Britain. That is in contrast to efforts the Conservative government of Prime Miner Boris Johnson to send some asylum-seekers to Rwanda. Even a program for refugees from Ukraine has been mired in bureaucratic delays.
“The expectation is that this is going to be quite a dinctive migration wave because of how high-skilled it is and the kind of contributions it can make to the knowledge economy,” Peter William Walsh, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, said of those arriving from Hong Kong.
According to government statics released in May, there have been 123,400 applications for the visa people from Hong Kong since its introduction, with as many as 322,400 people expected to come in the first five years of the program.
Children from families who came from Hong Kong play soccer in the London borough of Merton, March 27, 2022. (Mary Turner/The New York Times)
In Sutton, about 15 miles south of central London, hundreds of families from Hong Kong have passed through the same residential towers, advising friends back home who are thinking about making the move.
There, former firefighters from Hong Kong drive Amazon delivery trucks as they plan their next moves. Old school friends bump into one another on Sutton’s streets. Others attended campaign events together in the lead-up to local elections, buoyed the novelty of being eligible to cast ballots in England, even as the democratic process narrows in Hong Kong.
“It has changed the face of our cultural mix in Sutton, which is wonderful,” said Hannah Miles, an assant pastor at a local church, speaking of the new arrivals. “We should take this opportunity to make these people feel like family.”
So far, the newcomers there say they have felt welcome.
Before Kago Ng, a former designer, arrived in London last year with her husband and 4-year-old son, Kaspar, she said she wept every night, worrying that they would not find jobs or like the city. “They said in the U.K., we would be second-class citizens, but in Hong Kong, we did not feel like first-class citizens,” she said, referring to sentiments they had read online and in the news.
The tall buildings of London’s center rise in the dance, seen from a window in an apartment complex where many newer arrivals from Hong Kong have settled, in suburban Sutton, England, April 1, 2022. (The New York Times)
London, Ng said, has been much better than she imagined. She is taking on some freelance work and staying at home to care for Kaspar, while her husband has found a job repairing watches for Rolex.
But like many others, Ng worries about a backlash. Housing prices in the area, like elsewhere in Britain, have risen during the pandemic, and it is difficult for children to find coveted places in one of the neighborhood’s schools, she said.
“Maybe the local people will think we will dilute the resources,” said Ng as she played with Kaspar in their apartment before a dinner of hot pot, a popular meal in Hong Kong. Her brow furrowed with worry. “Maybe they will hate us.”
Settling into their new lives in England has not been without its challenges.
Volunteer Lorraine Lui uses puppets to tell a story about a Hong Kong migrant at a social gathering organized for recent arrivals from Hong Kong, in Sutton, England, a suburb of London, April 2, 2022. (The New York Times)
The arrival of all of the newcomers from Hong Kong, fleeing repression China, has caused rifts with Chinese people in Britain who support the government in Beijing.
Pro-democracy groups from Hong Kong have organized protests in British cities, but they say they are regularly harangued online supporters of Beijing. Some people from Hong Kong fear speaking publicly about their political views and say they avoid restaurants where the menu is in the simplified Chinese used in the mainland.
People from Hong Kong have a strong sense of identity that is very dinct from people from mainland China, said Richard Choi, a Sutton community leader.
David Wong, a cell who played beside pro-democracy protesters on the street during demonstrations in 2014, said he liked the sense of community and support he had found in Sutton. He often encourages Wong, the tea maker, to practice his English more.
“If you don’t connect with each other and help each other and do things for each other — what do you do?” he said.
The two strangers became friendly when they were neighbors living in the same residential tower.
“We feel this is Hong Kong; the community is here,” said Wong, the cell. “Wherever I am is Hong Kong.”