In the massive city of Hong Kong, the definition of personal space blurs. On a crowded train, who gets the pole space and who gets the corner next to the door? With 7 million people floating around and not enough acres to spare, personal space becomes a rare resource.
In my Associate degree studies I did a course about global/local cultures and I studied about personl/public space. In the traditional Chinese society, my teacher said, public/personal space is a very vague concept. The allocation of space is just an unspoken agreement among villagers, and when violation occurs there is not really a law against it. There was no local court, but instead, there was a village head office. Farmers and chicken herders argued who get to sell their goods at a street corner and their reasoning would be 'I go there a lot to sell my stuff' or 'I go there first'.
I would not dare to say Hong Kong is a classier Chinese city compared to its inland counterparts, but I feel confident to state that we Hong Kong-ers in general have a better grip of personal space. Everyone is polite enough to hide their face in books and iPads and most of the time when the weirdest of events happen we tend to pretend we don't see it. The ability to ignore seems like a genetic trait in all metropolitan city-dwellers.
However everyone has a different definition of courtesy. Like right now a guy is blatantly staring at my computer screen. That is the primary purpose of this article. Thank you for reading.
