Cheating and Honesty in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of the safest cities in the world. Though some super-rich have bodyguards, most people can go about their lives without having to worry about crime. One of the reasons the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens has been so successful is that people can go out partying and not worry about getting mugged. A policeman friend commented that tourists can get drunk in Wanchai and wake up the next morning in their hotel room and still have their wallet.

At the same time, many Hong Kong people live their daily life assuming others are out to cheat them. Hong Kong shoppers do not ask clerks for advice on what appliance to buy because they assume the clerk would steer them to the appliance that they make the most profit on, or the old model that is hard to sell. They are sometimes right, but overall, I’ve found clerks in large stores to be fairly helpful, if they speak Mandarin or English and I can communicate with them!

So it came as a bit of a shock to be completely taken for a ride yesterday on Tung Choi Street, AKA “Goldfish Street”. I needed to get one (or preferably two) fluorescent tubes for my aquarium light. The tubes I need are 6000K, which means they are designed to provide the light that is most suitable for growing plants. I went into one store where I have been before and the clerk (I realized it was a chain, or a large store divided into several nearby small shops, because the employees were wearing similar blue polo shirts with a company logo on the breast) told me that they did not have my brand, but they had a similar tube from another brand. Since I did not even know the Dazs brand of the old tube I brought with me, I said it would be fine. He checked in the back section of the store, but could not find it. But he told me that the 6000K tube I wanted would cost HK$130, while the regular light tube would only cost HK$25. In my experience, the stores charge pretty much the same price for most things, so while the difference did seem high, these were actually different products, so I reluctantly said OK. He said he had to go to another shop to pick it up.

We waited near the front of the store watching customers.  One group came in with two boys. One boy in a green t-shirt had surprisingly long eye lashes. His parents spoke to him in Mandarin. The other couple they were with spoke to their son in Cantonese. The boys first looked at the iguanas hanging from plastic leaves in a terrarium, commenting on their changing colors. I then was looking the other way when I suddenly heard a man who was not wearing the uniform come in and yell at the boy in the green t-shirt, “Siu pang-yau, lei you mo gao co!”  Apparently the boy had put his hand in one of the salt-water aquaria, or something similar. The whole group fairly quickly left the shop; his father was smiling broadly and giggling, in the way that some Asians do when they are embarrassed (which looks totally inappropriate to Westerners). A few minutes later, the boss yelled something out and an employee next to us told us “mo fo”, there is no stock. So we also left.

$55 for a tube... really!

I checked at a couple other places that did not have it, so then I went to a shop across the street that often has what I need but I have found fairly unpleasant. If nothing else, the small of their cat makes the store unpleasant. But I’ve always found the queen laobanniang (lady boss) at the till to be unsmiling and unpleasant. As soon as I walk in holding my old tube, she and an employee tell me to go to the back where they have the bulbs. The employee says he has one, but it is not for plants, but he says it is white and 6700K, and about the same. I don’t remember my physics, so can’t remember if that is really about the same or not, but decide to get one tube, so I can at least replace the one that does not turn on. He tests it to prove it works (they always do that in Hong Kong; once you buy it and leave the story, you cannot bring it back saying it does not work), I ask how much it is. He goes the 10 meters forward towards the counter. The store is very crowded (always is on weekends), but it is still quite clear that everyone is looking at me and does not know the price, but are embarrassed. The queen of the till then says, “Fifty-five dollars.” Now, I had been told that the regular light was only $25 at the first store, so I’m pretty sure I’m being ripped off, but I pay anyway. This is why I don’t like this store; I often get the feeling I’m being charged the special guai-lo price.

As we make our way home, I remember that there is a new store that sells imported Danish plants (this is real globalization: why should tropical aquarium plants come from Denmark! They must grow inside there, because of the winters, but could grow outdoors in Malaysia.). I think this store might have my “flora light”. But when we walk there, they say they don’t sell lights. But as we walk out, one of the employees kindly tells me that I should go across the street to another store, where they would have it. So I go there, and to my amazement, they have the same Dazs brand tubes. She tells me the price in Cantonese, and I think I’ve misunderstood her, but no: $28 each. So I buy two. But now I’m sure the first shop was trying to not just cheat me but rob me, and the second certainly did cheat me.

$28 per tube...

This blog entry is my revenge. There are also layers of hell for people who cheat (I know, because I saw them in the Disneyesque park of Fengdu, China). 

Notice that both pictures have a "Top Sun" 升輝 shop in it. Tung Choi Street appears to be one small shop after another, and I have long tried to get a student to do research on why Hong Kong still has such a bazaar economy. But now, I see multiple shops with the same name. What is going on? The shops are not obviously specialized, but staff now, as mentioned, also wear uniforms. 

Corporate Doublespeak

Mobile phone carriers in Hong Kong and the US claim that a small minority of users abuse the network by downloading a huge amount of data. CSL in Hong Kong says that 5% do 50% of downloading; that seems a bit more than a "small minority", and it makes me wonder about their claims of "abuse".  In principle, what they says makes sense, but I'm suspicious because they seem to be using this idea to move away from unlimited data plans. The whole effort seems to be a way for them to increase their revenues (or to find a "new revenue stream").  I'm especially suspicious because of the way they justify the new charges.  The statement from CSL in Hong Kong is laughable; don't they have their PR people read these things?!

     Nothing has changed and that’s why we have heard what our customers have said
     about our policy and that’s why we are moving to adjust it;

Huh? No change, but an adjustment? Are we quibbling here?

     Only abusers who may impact the experience of all our customers by using a
     very high amount of bandwidth will be affected by our policy. At the moment
     approximately 5% percent of customers are very high bandwidth users;

In order to gain the approval of the majority of customers, attack a minority (your best customers, from a certain point of view), and label them "abusers." Slick.


And they move towards giving priority to some users over others, which has been very controversial in the US and Europe:

     Our broadband network is like a high speed motorway. When traffic is light all users can
     move as fast as their cars (or devices) will allow them. When traffic is heavy at peak
     times we guide the heavy vehicles (unless they pay for special access to the fast lanes)
     to the slower lanes so that they do not hold up users who want to have access to the
     fast lanes.

This is a very clever use of the highway metaphor, except that congestion charges and special prices for fast lanes have not been accepted for the Internet.  So I think the doublespeak and PR fluff is, after all, designed to misdirect us from the fact that they are moving to controlling who gets Internet access at what speed, all in the guise of "fighting abuse."

Business Anthropology

Another example that some of the best ethnography appears in the business sections of major papers.  This NY Times article by Steven Davidoff contrasts the values and modus operandi of venture capitalists with those of private equity. Though the terms are often used interchangeably, the difference can be important. The VC are Silicon Valley based, and form a community, so share the spoils. The PE are typically NY based and take over companies to restructure them, or make them run better, before they re-sell them. Often they sell them highly leveraged, or the profit comes out of tax breaks and other accounting shenanigans, which is why many are critical of PE. In the case of Silver Lake selling Skype that is discussed in the article, Silver Lake as a PE could not care less whether they are liked or not, so will not spend the $1 million it would take to allow employees who have left Skype to cash in their options.  On a $4 billion deal, they could afford to make this problem go away. But they are PEs, so they don't care; VCs would have, since you never know who you'll have to work with again in Silicon Valley. Great article.

Gillian Tett, anthropologist and journalist

Gillian Tett is assistant editor at the Financial Times, and this article in The Guardian should be read by all anthropologists. It notes how her anthropology helps her in her work, and how anthropology, along with experience in Tajikistan's civil war and in Japan, has prepared her to see the world as culturally created and frail at that. When struggling because of her lack of financial knowledge when she needed to write about foreign exchange, "I thought, you knownwhat, this is just like being in Tajikistan. All I have to do is learn a new language. This is a bunch of people who have dressed up this activity with a whole bunch of rituals and cultural patterns, and if I can lern Tajik, I can jolly well learn how the FX market works!" Well said.

See "On The Money" by Laura Barton in The Guardian (31 October 2008)