We all gathered at Changi Airport Terminal 1 on 17th November, after which, we took a 4-hour morning flight and reached Hong Kong at 6 am. Then, we took a bus to the Tsuen Kwan Ou public housing, the first of our many places of visit, to experience first-hand the infrastructural and social aspects of public housing in Hong Kong.
At Tsuen Kwan Ou, we visited one of the local residents in the estate, who very graciously welcomed us to her house. There, we learnt a lot about the public housing in Hong Kong.
Tsuen Kwan Ou public housing
In Hong Kong, different public housing estates are given special names such as the one in the picture above. This is a unique characteristic that private houses, on the other hand, do not have.
As we were walking up to her rental apartment, we noticed that the public building was relatively older as compared to most of our houses in Singapore. It was built in 1996! From our interaction with the local resident, we learnt that her 400 square foot apartment is occupirred by her family of 4 and would cost her a hefty price of about HK$2,300,000 (S$400,000) if she were to purchase it. Moreover, there are certain restrictions imposed upon occupants of public housing as the owners required to return the apartment to its original state when they move out. This means that any changes to the house after it undergoes renovation by the owners are supposed to be undone owners are supposed to return the flat to the government at its original state even after renovation. If people wish to move into a larger flat, they would have to wait for 3-4 years before getting the approval by the government.
However, unlike public housing, the private housing is more costly of at HK$3mil which is S$500,000 which is of 800 square feet. There is no restriction on the number of people living in a house. Lesser people have more public housing than a private housing as the population is increasing. With lesser land area, there would be limited space to build larger homes due to the unlimited demand and limited supply. Furthermore, there is a limit set on the space area that a developer can build and this limit also results in the number of storeys that they can build. For the private housing that we have visited, it has 4 rooms as compared to the 2-room public housing flat. This private housing not only have more space but they are also easy for one to travel as it has a MTR (MRT) nearby. Furthermore, it has a better environment for people to exercise such as the hills nearby.
Moreover, through our visit to the public and private housing, we have realised that both the environment and amenities available is in a better condition in the public housing as compared to the private housing for example, the presence of playgrounds and open spaces for community activities. Hence, we would want to enquire if these aspects serve as an incentive for the more people to purchase public housing which we would like to ask the Housing authority on Friday (Day 5).
Following that, we proceeded to BreadTalk, we had the opportunity to interview Mr Jack Yu, a store manager of BreadTalk regarding how Breadtalk functions in Hong Kong. He gave us many opportunities to ask many questions. Through this interview, we have learnt that BreadTalk has been established for 8 years in Hong Kong. BreadTalk has been very competitive for the past few years due to competition faced locally, Japan and Taiwan.
BreadTalk, a Singapore-based company has expanded to Hong Kong and there are now 11 BreadTalk retail outlets operating in Hong Kong.
BreadTalk design their bread differently to cater to the people in Hong Kong. In order to maintain their competitive edge, in addition to the constant influx of new designs periodically from Singapore, Breadtalk HK also carries out R&D to come up with more flavors to cater to the demand of the locals to suit their tastes and preferences. However, these new designs from the HK R&D department has to be approved by Singapore (Headquaters) before they are able to carry out the production of these new goods. This helps to show the linkage of both the HQ and its subsidiary firms that are the Breadtalk branches in HK and their functions for the production of the good. Hence, this has shown the specialization of the production systems as the actual R&D is located only in Singapore. Hence, Breadtalk is able to save cost on R&D and as such reap economies of scale, leading to greater profits for the firm, which is reflected in the concepts pertaining to Economics’ demand and supply theory as well as in Human geography, the spatial organization of a Transnational Corporation. In
the face of competition from other bakeries in Hong Kong such as A1, Pannish
and Maxim, we learnt that Breadtalk engages mainly on non-price competition,
particularly on quality of products and customer service. Breadtalk places
great emphasis on the training and skills of its chefs and the quality of its
ingredients. Breadtalk will send their Masterchefs from Singapore to train the
chefs in Hong Kong whenever a new flavour is introduced. In order to enjoy
greater economies of scale (EOS), all R&D is concentrated in headquarter in
Singapore. With over 400 outlets internationally, the cost to support the
R&D centre in Singapore is spread across a large output hence reducing the
unit cost of production. As cost of
rental is very high in Hong Kong, Breadtalk has to strategize ways to reduce
cost of production further. Although we learnt that theoretically,
specialisation of labour enables each staff to be very good at their jobscope
and hence rises productivity and reduces unit cost of production, we also
realised that within a small outlet, there is little need to specialise. Hence,
Breadtalk do away with specialisation of labour for certain jobscope and
require staff to multi-task. Frontline staff are expected to do cashiering,
cleaning and displaying while chefs generally only need to concentrate on
baking. This reduces the need to hire 1 frontline staff just for cashiering and
another just cleaning and a 3rd person just for displaying. Hence, this helps
to lower cost of production. In fact, we noticed that chef does help in the
displaying of the bread when the frontline staff is occupied with customer.
We also learnt that Breadtalk has future plans to expand its market throughout Hong Kong, targeting an addition of 5 more branches. We inquired about how they choose their location, and we learnt that human traffic and rental were the main influential factors. To attract more patrons, they also employ several advertising methods such as magazines, YouTube, newspapers and MTR to appeal to more consumers. Of course these were not the only strategies – freshness and quality control were of utmost importance and we saw how flexible production in Human Geography came to life – they produced bread according to customers’ demand to ensure freshness of production. But this required the responsiveness of the outlet manager, floor staff and chefs to produce accordingly. The multiple tasks of the workers were also clearly reflected in the roles that they had to play, for example how the chefs had to learn new designs of bread periodically, as well as how the store manager had to oversee the functioning of the store in multiple aspects –reflecting in the increasing dominance of and demand for multi-skilled workers as we have learnt as a characteristic of flexible production under human geography.
Our last place of visit for the day was the History museum of Hong Kong. It was an eye-opener for us as we learnt about both and geographical and economic aspects of Hong Kong. For example, high Island was formed due to rising magma. After the magma solidified, it started to harden, forming rhyolitic rock. We also got to view samples of various volcanic and sedimentary rocks. However, these are secondhand information and we hope to learn more about the geological aspects of Hong Kong during our visit to High Island and Ma Shi Chau (Day 4)
Moving on, we learnt about the different cultural practices of Hong Kong. For instance, The Hoklos, a denomination of people living in Hong Kong. When a bride gets married, all the married relatives of the bride would do a dragon boat dance for her whereby they would row a dragon boat! The Seven Sisters Festival (Qiqiao) is also celebrated in Hong Kong. The Seven Sisters Festival is a variation of Valentine’s day.
We also learnt that Hong Kong also started out as a fishing industry, similar to Singapore whereby people has fished for a living, This humble fishing village eventually morphed into the metropolitan Hong Kong that we now know. Hong Kong, like Singapore, was also colonized by the British before.
To end off, this trip to the museum served as an important prelude to the following days of the trip as it gave us insight with regards not only the physical geography aspect of Hong Kong, but also its colonial past (for example, it was evident in the presence of colonial buildings along the streets) as well as and how her trade and economy flourished to the current day global city.
That’s all for day 1 of our trip! Stay tuned for more fun updates!
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