At the critical juncture before the British handover of Hong Kong, nearly 800,000 Hongkongers fled. Where did they go and what became of them? Going beyond suppositions and urban myth, for the first time, the full story of the returnees is being told. In her book, Return Migration and Identity: A Global Phenomenon, A Hong Kong Case, Dr. Nan M. Sussman, estimates that nearly 500,000 have returned to Hong Kong since the British turned over their Asian outpost to the People’s Republic of China. Journalists labeled them ‘astronauts,’ but did they crash and burn on their return to Hong Kong?
While immigrants from around the world are going back to their homelands, Hong Kong returnees are unique with a special cultural flexibility rarely found in other groups. Based on far-ranging interviews with returnees of all ages from Australia and Canada, those who have returned and those whose lives they influence can finally understand how the returnees have changed and how they are changing Hong Kong’s dynamic workplace and 21st century society.
