Last year, I was offered a chance to move to Hong Kong and work for a bra company. To me, it was a great opportunity, and, setting aside for a moment the fact that it didn't work out, I'm very glad I took it. I don't claim to be an interesting person, but it is part of an interesting story: got laid off from software job in the UK, so went to make bras in Hong Kong and Sri Lanka instead. Although this may be one of the odder stories of how someone ended up in Hong Kong, the fascinating thing is that pretty much every Westerner in Hong Kong has an interesting story of their own - or in a few cases, their parents' story. The other thing, again not claiming anything about myself, is that a lot of people would have turned down the offer I got. The Westerners here in Hong Kong aren't particularly heterogeneous, but we do have the common thread of having decided, at some point and for some reason, to move to the Far East.

In terms of 'standard of living' - whatever that means - Hong Kong ranks up with 'the West' (western Europe, the US, Australia/New Zealand, etc.). It's a modern, civilised, globalised, wealthy and law-abiding society. However, so are Canada, the US and the UK - three of the countries supplying large numbers of expats to Hong Kong. Most migrants in the world are moving for economic or political reasons - either they are moving to escape persecution or what they feel is an unfair or unfriendly society, or they are looking for a way to earn a better living and give their children a better life. In general, these are not the reasons why westerners move to Hong Kong; the economic reason, however, does apply to most/all of the temporary migrants from South-East Asia who are here working as Foreign Domestic Workers (i.e. maids) and sending their money home, often to a family left behind. So why are the Westerners here?

I was discussing this with a friend over a beer at the weekend, and he inadvertently agreed with my point. He said that he was an economic migrant, because the best job he could find in the US was as a store manager for Starbucks. I don't know what Starbucks pay - except that they apparently throw in a pound of coffee a week - but I've no doubt that it's well above a minimum living wage, for store management, and with the growth of the company, there's sure to be opportunities for advancement. There are certainly many people in the US, and many more throughout the world, who could be very happy with a job like that. He, however, chose to move to Hong Kong instead, and look for work here. That, to me, marks him out as part of a very small segment of society. I'm not saying he's better than those who wouldn't choose to move - one of my oldest friends is living a couple of miles from where he grew up, in his own house with an intelligent and beautiful wife and a beautiful baby girl - I, on the other hand, am single, childless, and now renting out my flat in London and living in a smallish studio in Hong Hong. In many ways, I'd say he's doing better with his life than I am. Also, he's employed and I'm not, but that's a minor matter...

The fact is that the Westerners here, in general, are self-selected as those who, faced with the prospect of working in Starbucks, choose to move to Hong Kong instead. I could have rejected the offer of moving out here and - probably - got another job in the Greater London area but I didn't really see it as a choice. I saw it as something I'd always regret if I said no to - and I still do, even after it didn't work out - and frankly I still think (hope?) I have enough of my life in front of me that investing a year in living somewhere as interesting as Hong Kong is a worthwhile investment.

Everybody has a reason - everybody here has, at some point in their life, either been offered a position here, or independently reached a situation where they decided that the next part of their life would happen in Hong Kong. For a lot of people - particularly financial people - that opportunity was as simple as someone in their company saying "Hey, do you want to go work in our Hong Kong office?". For some people, it was a little more complex - "Hey, do you want to come work at our bra company?". For some people it will have been random - "The best job I can get here is at Starbucks, I know some Chinese, let's see how life is in Hong Kong". And of course there's always the "My husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/parents are moving to Hong Kong, am I going with?". The point is that the people who are actually here are the ones who said yes, and that tends to make them more interesting, in my eyes and my experience, than the ones who said no.

There are three standard questions used to break the ice when meeting someone in Hong Kong - "Where are you from, what do you do, and how did you end up in Hong Kong?". The answers may be short and simple, they may be long and complicated and involve three generations of their family - but everybody has a story.