Visiting a Colleague’s New Home (Oct 12, 03)

Being in Beijing for more than a year, local colleagues seldom organized home gathering. We always eat out or go for picnic but never a home gathering.

This Saturday, one of my colleagues bought a new apartment and invited all of us to visit her home. It’s a newly developed community next to the forth ring road, a 150sqm, 2-bedroom apartment with spacious dining and living room. Newly furnished with modern deco, next to the entrance, was a specially made “tea room” because the couple likes to drink tea. This is my very first experience to visit a local colleague’s new home and it helped me to learn more about the local life. Even this colleague has already have a new and spacious home (to most of the HKers), she still wants to buy a bigger one if she can. She is now studying for other professional examination for further qualification.

In fact, this is a typical young working class in Beijing, since I am in the technology industry, everyday when I walk by the desks of the local colleagues, there are always tens of books on it. They are always studying, especially the technical people. This is quite different from the people in HK indeed. Sometimes, I feel that local colleagues in Beijing are far more competitive than those in HK, in fact, Beijing colleagues seldom work long hours, but they tend to study and equip themselves whenever they can. There is always this question in my mind, “When would HK people lose their edge in mainland?” I, of course, don’t know the answer yet, but all I can say is that I am quite happy to compete with ones who are capable and energetic.