A thirtysomething couple sit at a small outside table in the sunshine, drinking cappuccinos and eating poached eggs and avocado on sourdough toast. Later, they wrestle half a dozen Ikea cardboard boxes into the boot of their car.
It is the stuff of millennial weekends all over Britain, but Yowin Mo and her husband Eddie have filmed their quotidian trip to an M&S Café and Ikea store in Warrington, Cheshire, for their YouTube channel, the name of which roughly translates as “Fleeing to the UK” and has nearly 40,000 subscribers.
Hong Kongers often look to YouTubers like Mo, 38, to learn about the everyday realities of moving from Hong Kong to the UK — a journey that has become increasingly common since June 2020, when China passed a controversial national security law for Hong Kong.
In January 2021, the British government introduced a new immigration route for the city’s British National (Overseas) (BNO) status holders, giving them and their family members the opportunity to live, work and study in the UK. There were 140,500 applications for the BNO visa up to the end of June, according to the Home Office, which expects 258,000-322,400 Hong Kongers to move to the UK in the next five years.
“As soon as the UK announced a new visa would be available to BNO Hong Kongers, we came here without a second thought,” says Mo, who worked as a marketing manager in Hong Kong and came to Britain in August 2020. She is clear on what her motivations were.
“The CCP [Chinese Communist party] broke their promise to Hong Kongers,” she says. “They tightened control over the government, education and judiciary, especially after the crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2019. Hong Kong has been turned into a police state and ‘one country, two systems’ exists in name only.”
The couple, who have a nine-year-old daughter, Hayley, are typical of many of the new arrivals. According to a Home Office study, the largest represented group of Hong Kong BNO visa holders are aged 35-44, followed by those in the 45-54 age bracket. A total of 60 per cent of them have one or more children, with the majority of the children under 15. This means the quality and availability of schooling is a top concern when looking for somewhere to live.
Hongkongers in Britain, an organisation founded in July 2020 to help arrivals settle, found that the most popular parts of London were leafy south-west boroughs known for having good education options, such as Richmond, Sutton and Kingston upon Thames. At the start of the new academic year, there were special assemblies held in primary schools in Kingston to welcome Hong Kong families to the community.
Warrington’s good schools prompted Rose Cheung, 34, and her husband Wilson, 46, to buy a four-bedroom detached house in the new Willow Fields development for just under £485,000. “The main issue was for a better education for our children, who are eight and five,” Cheung says. “They love it here and enjoy their new life more than Hong Kong, though we miss our family, friends and the food.”
Safety and crime rates are other important considerations, says Julian Chan, head of public affairs at Hongkongers in Britain. “Arrivals look for social inclusion but will avoid existing Chinese communities,” he adds. “People are very sensitive they will get reported to Beijing by pro-Chinese Communist party Chinese people here if they talk about Hong Kong politics or attend pro-democracy protests and that family and friends back home could suffer intimidation from the authorities.”
Hongkongers in Britain found that once they have settled on a location, nearly all BNO visa holders will start off renting in the private sector. Some have difficulties securing a tenancy due to not having previous rental, employment or credit history in Britain.
Nevertheless, most plan to purchase a home. Last year, one in 20 buyers of homes built by Redrow, one of Britain’s largest housebuilders, were from Hong Kong, and the strength of the Hong Kong dollar (it is pegged to the US dollar) and the high property prices over there give them significant spending power.
Even after recent dips in home prices, the city has one of the most expensive housing markets in the world, with the average property costing HK$15,000-$20,000 (£1,730-£2,300) per sq ft, according to estate agency Knight Frank.
Mo and her family swapped a small, two-bedroom Hong Kong flat, which sold for about £600,000, for a newly built detached house with four bedrooms in Crewe, Cheshire, for which they paid roughly £260,000.
“My favourite aspect of life in the UK is the environment: it is so green and the air is fresher because there are trees everywhere,” she says. “We did have some stress waiting for our house completion but we haven’t had any regrets about coming.”
Yet for many arrivals, moving here means a significant lifestyle shift. Even though the majority are highly skilled — 69 per cent have a university degree or higher — many don’t have qualifications that are recognised in the UK, so can’t do the kind of well-paid, professional jobs they did back home.
In Hong Kong, Gavin Mok earned a good living as a sales trader in the stock market. He had been planning to leave the city permanently since the Umbrella Revolution in 2014 and moved to the UK — where he had previously done A-Levels and gone to university — in October 2020.
Mok, 44, his wife Lydia and their two daughters are renting on the outskirts of Exeter while they look for somewhere to buy. Mok now works as a driver, delivering chilled food to supermarkets and convenience stores. “I wake up at around 3am but it means I finish work early so can spend more time with my daughters,” says Mok, who has a YouTube channel charting his experiences, lawchi2uk.
He says his family has found it easy to settle in. “I loved this country when I was a student,” he says. “While energy bills are expensive, food here is cheaper and the education is good. Most importantly, I can enjoy freedom here.”
The crackdowns have also prompted British expats to return from Hong Kong, a move compounded by a frustration with severe Covid-19 lockdowns.
Phil Owens moved to Hong Kong in 1996 and worked in financial publishing. “My family and I lived in Sai Kung, a beautiful place with beaches and country parks.”
In 2019, they decided to leave. “In part it was for work reasons, but the whole vibe in Hong Kong had changed,” says Owens, 55, who now lives near Cambridge. “China was cracking down on dissent, there were angry demonstrations, censorship and the spiralling cost of living.”
Would he ever go back to Hong Kong? “I miss it terribly and my heart says yes, but my head says no.”
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