My Hong Kong | Mole hair for luck, long pinky nail as status symbol and split queues to save time – Hong Kong’s cultural oddities are one of a kind

After I wrote about the Chinese virtue of frugality in this column a couple of weeks ago, I received some readers’ feedback. They found it interesting – even admirable to an extent, and some found it slightly odd that Chinese people often go to great lengths just to save a few dollars.

Canadian comedian Russell Peters summed it up perfectly in one of his comedy acts about how a Chinese shopkeeper could drive a hard bargain. In one of his most popular stand-up sessions, Peters describes an encounter in which he deigned to haggle with a Chinese salesperson, who only offered him 50 cents off on an item and justified it as follows:

“Fifty cents is a lot of money. You save 50 cents here, and then maybe you go somewhere else and save another 50 cents. Then you have 1 dollar. You take that dollar and go to the dollar store and you buy something else.”

Bargaining is acceptable in most shops in Hong Kong, and locals enjoy it as being a big part of the fun and pleasure of shopping, and it’s also amusing to watch for onlookers.

Hong Kong is full of surprises, and cultural oddities are often held in high regard as local customs here. Understandably some local cultural oddities that Hongkongers consider to be totally normal may raise a few eyebrows among non-locals.