By: Ming Min AW YONGEdited by: Kate Zhang

Yang Yuhe will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in advertising from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2024, but she has no plans to stay. From Hubei Province in mainland China, she moved to Hong Kong to attend university in 2020. Yang said she plans to go to the United States for graduate school as soon as possible. “The housing here is oppressive, and I would not need to withstand it in the mainland or the US,” she said. “Besides, universities in the US can give me more and better internship opportunities with a higher salary.” Like Yang, more mainland students are coming to Hong Kong to study but fewer are staying after graduation. Students and experts say the reason for mainland graduates leaving Hong Kong is a weakened labour market and unaffordable housing prices. In 2020, the government issued 31,123 student visas to mainland students, an increase of 68% from 2015. But in the same year, 6,125, fewer than 20%, applied for an IANG visa, the work visa available to non-local students who graduate from accredited programmes in Hong Kong. This is down from a peak of close to 10,000 IANG applicants in 2019. Even fewer are applying for permanent residency, available after seven years of continuous employment in the territory. In 2019, immigration data showed that 3,117 were granted permanent residency under the IANG program, meaning around 10% of mainland students educated in Hong Kong end up making the city their home. “Mainland students are the bridge between the mainland and Hong Kong in business and many other fields. Their increasing leave means loss of connections,” said Kaxton Siu, a professor of social sciences at HKBU who has mentored students from the mainland for nearly eight years. “The number of mainland students leaving Hong Kong has increased because of …

When Chan Pak-yu immigrated from Hong Kong to Sydney in 2021, she thought her fluency in English meant she could fit right in. But not so. She was 32, a professional in e-commerce and has been working in English. “Text me as ping me, Mcdonald's as meccas. I really didn’t understand when I first heard of these,” Chan said. Since the emigration started in 2021, Hongkongers have been facing all kinds of challenges in their new home. The language barrier is often the first obstacle. “When I heard my colleagues use slang like this, I had to ask them what they meant. It made me feel embarrassed,” said Chan. She believed it all boils down to cultural differences. “I don't know how to imitate their accents. But you can imagine when they are speaking too fast, I can only understand half of the conversation and then I need to guess what they are talking about,” she added. According to the 2021 Australian Census, 29.1% of the population were immigrants and 17.4% were Asian Australians. Sylvia Tam, 27, is a psychiatric nurse who moved to Melbourne from Hong Kong a year ago. Working in a hospital in Melbourne city centre, Tam meets patients from diverse backgrounds. She feels it’s important to improve her conversational English. “For my speciality, we mostly assess patients and provide tailor-made therapies for them through casual conversations,” said Tam. “The patients I'm taking care of struggle with mental health concerns, it is more difficult for them to express themselves compared to others.” Although Tam is comfortable with her English ability in her professional setting, she still feels the need to communicate with local people and understand their “talking styles”. Tam is not alone. Li Yan-yan, 30, is a theatre nurse who moved to Tasmania last year. She …