Luckily for scared rabbits, China's children prefer hard cash

HONG KONG LETTER:When it comes to gifts, Lunar New Year is Christmas and New Year rolled into one

ANIMAL WELFARE groups in Hong Kong are fretting about the amount of real live bunnies being offered as Lunar New Year gifts to mark the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese zodiac. After all, no one gave oxen in the Year of the Ox two years ago and there were few enough rats presented as gifts in 2008.

But children in the territory are more interested in the lai seered envelopes filled with HK$100 bills to worry about whether they get live bunnies or not.

All are interested in food. Everything in China, both in mainland China and in the special administrative region of Hong Kong, is predicated on top-class nosh.

On the mainland, just a few kilometres north of Hong Kong, the focus is on jiaozi dumplings, delicious parcels of pork served boiled and piping hot, occasionally with a coin hidden in one of them to represent a family’s wishes for prosperity.

In Hong Kong, there are similar principles of food as celebration at work, but it’s a little less basic.

The territory’s chief executive, Donald Tsang, wished Hong Kong “good health and happiness in the Year of the Rabbit” together with his wife and four children in traditional costumes. No mention of prosperity there.

It’s implied, says a Hong Kong- Chinese resident, working in the banking sector and surnamed Liu, who is discussing Chelsea’s league prospects in a cockney accent and knocking back more than a few beers before he heads home to a dinner, which will stretch into three full days of family commitments. He outlines some of the differences.

“We have jiaozi too, but much more we have food that celebrates prosperity,” he says. “Tonight we’ll have sea cucumber, expensive mushrooms, abalone, lots of pricey seafood. It’s all about the cost. I went to school here and university in the UK, so I find it a bit old-fashioned, but my folks and grandparents love it, so I’m not fighting.”

Living in China and visiting Hong Kong, it’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore what is emerging as the greatest challenge to stability in this thriving region: the gap between rich and poor is becoming so pronounced that even the very wealthy are getting concerned.

For Chinese people, Lunar New Year is Christmas and New Year rolled into one. It is without parallel in the calendar.

Looking down on the gleaming skyscrapers from the Peak that overlooks the city, it’s hard not to reflect on what has been a prosperous few years for the territory. In fact, it’s been pretty smooth sailing for Hong Kong since 1997 when Britain gave the crown territory back to the mainland, although there were wobbles during the Asian financial crisis in 1998.

On a stroll along Lugard Road, there is a “For Sale” sign beneath a lovely 1950s house. The sale has been divided between four real estate agents. Less than a year ago, a five-bedroom house in the Mid-Levels area, which is Donnybrook to the Peak’s Killiney, went for €42 million. Who knows what this property will fetch? Hong Kong residents are enjoying the fruits of a closer relationship with their northern cousins, but most of the priciest properties are being bought by mainland Chinese.

China-driven bubble fears are in every conversation here.

This complicated relationship between Hong Kong and China was exemplified this year by the “bus auntie” incident.

There are tours, costing about €3 a go, which are reminiscent of the booze trips to Newry, in which mainland Chinese are packed into aircraft or buses and brought to Hong Kong and encouraged, or forced, to buy stuff in the territory.

A female tour guide who berated clients for not spending enough in Hong Kong was captured on the Chinese version of YouTube, and everyone feared a massive deterioration in cross-border relations.

Not so. In the first two days of the National Day holidays, 230,000 mainlanders went to Hong Kong, a 37 per cent increase on last year. No one minds a bad auntie, it seems.

Meanwhile, north of the border, in chilly Beijing, are President Hu Jintao, top legislator Wu Bangguo, prime minister Wen Jiabao and top political adviser Jia Qinglin. Here they eat the pork dumplings, home-made by grandma, and watch the world’s most popular TV programme, the Spring Festival extravaganza on CCTV.

Chinese New Year is a serious political event in the mainland political calendar. In the run-up to the holiday, Mr Wen went to visit petitioners for the first time in Communist Party history. He was depicted yesterday holding the hand of a villager in Anhui province.

How the world has changed. Mr Wen reviewed 2010 and said how China had successfully dealt with the global financial crisis, kept sustainable economic growth and achieved all the major targets of the 11th five-year plan. This is having your jiaozi and eating it.