My teenage daughter hates her ethnicity

a) Your girl probably has something that her “friends” don’t have but are dying to have.
b.) Your girl needs to know those girls are not her friends. If it is too hard for her to walk away, then maybe she can drive them away by keeping her responses to them to one word while looking uninterested/indifferent in what they say?!

I can tell your girl is really frustrated that she needs some inner peace. I wish her well.

I think you’re being a bit dismissive of how she feels about Hong Kong.

if you left when she was 13 and she is now 17 you would have left during covid & at that time the Hong Kong government pretty strict and frankly terrifying control measures in place. Remember at a critical time in her childhood she was online schooling for months at a time, unable to meet with more than one friend at a time, closed beaches, closed social settings etc etc etc. It was awful (we lived there) no matter how quickly you have forgotten, maybe she hasn’t & her trips back having now lived in England show her just how crazy all that was and still spills over in peoples attitudes and behaviours.

go easy on her - she likes her life in England and is probably reluctant to be back in the place that holds bad memories for her.

I follow him too @Meooow ! Apart from his accent, his Cantonese is pretty good.

This post was suggested to me by Facebook and I have to be the most qualified person to reply so I came here to make a comment.

I was born and bred in Hong Kong as a local Cantonese. Lived there for 29 years, studied in local schools including Uni in HK until I moved to the UK just 3 years ago. Since 2018, I started hanging out with expats because my now husband was an expat from the UK living in HK.

I hate the general, day-to-day HK culture. Yes HK people are direct but the directness is not the issue. It only became an issue when people often have all these mean thoughts.

I still am very blunt and direct too but I now choose to not say anything if I have nothing nice to say. This is learnt because it is not in my culture. I also try to criticise less and appreciate more. Lots of HK people simply don't. They hate everything because they live in a very high stress environment.

I visited HK every 6 months ish in the past 3 years. Last time I went back I was 30 weeks pregnant and was wearing bodycon dresses the whole time. I took the MTR 6 times and no one offered me a seat for 30min journeys. People could see the bump but they don't care. In fact, I often read on the HK forum LIHKG and Threads that HK people question why they should give up their seat or help pregnant women when they paid the same bus fare / MTR fare and they weren't the one making the woman pregnant in the first place. They also said "if you are poor and cannot afford to take the taxi to work every day, you should not be having a child" When I told my HK friends that I was not given a seat even once, their replies were "You have been away for too long to remember that you have to stand right in front of the priority seat and ask the person to get up for you!"

Sorry for the rant above but your daughter's HK "friends" are only showing her the unfiltered version of themselves and sadly our HK culture is still rather uncivilised because most of our parents or grandparents weren't raised with class or grace but awfulness because criticism was the tool of choice to improve their children's life and society. Mums would ask "why are you not as good as our neighbours' son in the exam?!" instead of "You have made good effort. Now let's see what you can do to improve next time."

As for the little noise people make for small annoyances, local people do it all the time but it is soooo local that if you are not in the local circle you won't see it. There's even a video from an expat on this: www.instagram.com/reel/DJjPeKLtFQI/?igsh=MjR1cHphd3dhdjl1

All of these things your daughter mentioned are truly local to HK. But if you are in the expats circle in HK, you will never see it because most locals don't mingle with expats. The ones that do are more likely to be professionals and educated so they would have learnt to behave differently.

I would suggest that your daughter find some new friends. Also she needs to know that she can avoid this kind of people easily during her trip. Visiting HK as a tourist is so much fun and she does not need to endure unpleasant people as a tourist.

Some suggestions for her trip -
Hiking: Dragon's back, Sunset Peak, High West of Victoria Peak.
Stream hiking is also very fun if weather permits. Try Double deer. (6 hours)

Beach: sadly not Repulse Bay anymore because now there are hundreds of Mainland Chinese tourists who came on a coach for the day standing around there (making it very very crowded) and sometimes taking pictures of people in bikinis because they seemed to have never seen the beach before

Shopping malls: K11 is really cool!

Came across this in Facebook; thought that I should make a response.

I (21) grew up in HK and I strongly hate my ethnicity too, to a point where I disown it and changed my last name. I have made absolutely zero friends there growing up. I have met all my friends overseas.

I grew up being different from most kids and that my situation is often met with misunderstanding. I never fitted in, and I probably never will. Rather than being offered help; people, both adults and my peers ostracized me even more. Everyone pressures me to be more like them (in some way, e.g. socially/academically), which I refused as I knew that it wouldn't be a path I felt comfortable in. The education system also screwed me over as well.

HK people, from what I have experienced growing up, are "toxic" in general and have "weird" social standards that nowhere else in the world has, and they say these things out very straightforwardly without considering how others feel, such as using very negative Cantonese terms to describe those who they are different in some form (e.g. not fitting in socially, being interllectually incompetent or even things like not having enough Instagram followers). It's just... strange, and something I will never care to understand. They also make lots of assumptions and pre-determine things about you and don't embrace that people are different.

I spend most of my year overseas nowadays and whenever I return to HK I see the stark difference between places.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like, OP. It's not just your daughter, I fully relate and understand that things are difficult.

I think they must have read the title only.

Her friends sound vile.

Huh? Are we on the same thread or did you just read the title and come swinging? Your post seems to be made for a different/opposite thread.

I've asked before but does she not know anyone from the Asian side of family and her dad's family? I'd think having these relationships would help her solidify her Asian identity and culture if these two friends are swaying her mind so easily.

She's being bullied.
Are you confident the school could deal with it if reported? Will your daughter distance herself from them?
I'd suggest some counselling for her. They have knocked her down to the point she believes what they are telling her about herself. It's going to take some work to rebuild her confidence.

I wonder what these girls have been saying to her about her upcoming trip. Have they in some way made her feel she shouldn't go? They won't talk to her? People will be horrible to her there/on her return?
Something is going on there.

I have a few Cantonese friends, some born here and some in HK and while I agree they can at times be more direct than some white British people are used to I think your DDs friends are being pretty awful to her. As someone else said they are basically bullying her and claiming its due to their ethnicity which is bollocks
She needs to try and find other friends and going to HK to get away from them/see her family and reconnect to her roots is a really good idea

Your daughter needs to find some new friends instead of hanging out with the gruesome twosome mean girls.

This really.

Reading your messages, I think there are two entirely separate things going on: your DD raising questions about her cultural identity, and how she achieves settlement with her issues or thoughts about it all, but the larger problem is that she is caught up with a knot of unpleasant, toxic-sounding friends.

The overlap is the issue. The awful friends are whispering in her ear about cultural identity, and creating a magnifying lens of toxicity for your DD to look through and causing her significant unhappiness.

I would strongly encourage her to ditch or distance herself from these girls. Cultural and ethnicity issues aside, they are simply NOT her friends. Talk to her about healthy boundaries and focus on that before trying to resolve anything else.

Your DD friends are just plain mean/bratts. That happens in HK and all around the world.

Girl needs better friends.

Being direct and "telling it like it is", "just being honest" are things people say because they like being hurtful, know they are saying mean things and thing it gives them carte blanche to say whatever they want. While it might be part of Cantonese culture (IDK), it is a claim within many cultures for these rude people.
These two teenage girls are mean. Your daughter could direct the same brutal honesty at them but I doubt that is in her nature. She can prioritise her other friendships. The fact they are trying to get her to withdraw from those other friendships and isolate her is also typical abusive behaviour. I'm so glad she didn't listen and that she's told you what's happening.
She thinks you've said some things cos you are her mum... why not share this thread with her? There are lots of voices and differing opinions but we do have a consensus: these girls are not her friends.
You mentioned that there was another girl in that friendship group too- maybe ask her more about that friend... she doesn't seem like those two... your daughter doesn't seem like them either... maybe there are individuals within groups that are spiteful and there are others that are kind.
I worked in a sixth form and saw a few "brutally honest" girls at that age. They tended to operate in 2s or be alone... others did not tolerate the meanness or want to associate with it. I think if she takes a step back, she'll realise there are many people who are friendly with her and not her two friends. They are probably pretty unhappy in themselves.
I hope you have a lovely trip and get to experience lots of positive things out there.

People like you are always looking for a victim hood and excuses to blame the British. OP has said it’s her DDs friends are are NOT British that are being the negative and unkind ones! And you, PP are blaming the British!

They sound vile, mean and hostile. She needs to get away from these so called friends. Or you need to speak to their parents, or indeed them to tell them how nasty they are. I wouldn’t have my child anywhere near them. Could you possibly move back to HK where her dad and friends are.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this (and her friends do sound harsh and unsympathetic to say the least), reading your OP, I was massively impressed by your daughter’s own morals, empathy and humanity. That’s not always the case with teenage girls. I think you should be proud of her for that. It will help her to find good friends in the future- she clearly has a strong moral compass.

I don’t know if the problem is cultural - it’s not a representative sample!

Cantonese people are definitely a lot more direct and that is often a good thing IMO, but they're not mean (quite the opposite in general) and it seems like these girls are just not very nice and are hiding behind the "directness" excuse.

Did these girls also grow up in HK? I ask because often you find that when people emigrate, cultural traits can become more engrained, almost as though they are worried that they'll lose their cultural identity if they don't do these things.

Your daughter is hanging around with two nasty girls who 'tell it like it is' and then use the 'we are only being direct, like our culture is' as an excuse. Like some nasty people in all cultures who take delight in being blunt as they 'say it how they see', even when not asked for an opinion, or when it's objectively hurtful and not constructive (no one wants to be told their books won't look as good in a dress as someone else's and no one wants to be told no one in the class likes them). Whatever the culture there is always an underlying reason for comments like this - usually insecurity, jealousy, or plain old enjoying making others feel rubbish. You need to have conversations about critical thinking with her and stop her believing everything her friends say is true, and why they are saying things that aren't nice. Why is she believing them over her own family and experiences?

Her friends are "mean girls". You could have a discreet word with her form teacher and ask if she could be moved away from them in class - don't know if they have seating plans in 6th form but this worked well for my daughter and her bullies. Encourage your daughter to hang out with her other friends and distance herself from these girls.