Page 308 - Cultures and Organizations

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Light or Dark?

n its special Christmas edition, at a time when people in the tradi-
Itionally Christian world are supposed to be merry and happy, the

well-known British magazine The Economist once published the follow-

ing story: 1

Once a week, on Sundays, Hong Kong becomes a different city. Thousands
of Filipina women throng into the central business district, around Statue
Square, to picnic, dance, sing, gossip, and laugh. . . . They hug. They chat-
ter. They smile. Humanity could stage no greater display of happiness.
This stands in stark contrast to the other six days of the week. Then it is

the Chinese, famously cranky and often rude, and expatriate businessmen,
permanently stressed, who control the center. On these days, the Filipinas
are mostly holed up in the 154,000 households across the territory where
they work as “domestic helpers” or amahs in Cantonese. There they suf-
fer not only the loneliness of separation from their own families, but often
virtual slavery under their Chinese or expatriate masters. Hence a mystery:
those who should be Hong Kong’s most miserable are, by all appearances,
its happiest. . . .

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