Hong Kong Family Life
Family values are extremely important to the Chinese. In the old days before the current urban overcrowding, whole extended families would live together in one house. Even in large wealthy families where each member could afford several homes of their own, it is still preferred way to live. For most people, the excessive cost of housing adds to the imperative to live with parents until marriage and sometimes beyond. Young people or unmarried people in their twenties and thirties rarely think of moving out and living by themselves or sharing a place to live with friends. It would be considered unfilial and selfish.
Sunday is usually family day, when the whole extended family gets together. Chinese restaurants are usually packed at lunchtime with noisy family groupings.
In business, the Chinese usually prefer to involve their family rather than strangers if at all possible and, generally speaking, they have a tendency not to trust strangers. Many of Hong Kong's wealthiest business empires are still controlled by families, with power handed down from father to son. By tradition the oldest son has a more onerous duty to continue the family line and is under a lot of pressure to be successful and bring honor to his family.
Older people are treated with respect in traditional Chinese societies. Children will consider it their duty to look after their parents and it is not at all uncommon to find executives in their early twenties giving most of their monthly income to their mother, who usually manages the family funds. It is rare for elderly people to be sent to old people's homes instead of being looked after by their children.
Familiar Chinese language terms of address for strangers give them family names, too. For instance, a young man is referred to as “older brother”, but never “younger brother”, even when addressing someone slightly younger, as it is considered insulting and resembles one of the (many) local slang terms for the male sexual organ. A man over the age of forty is referred to as “uncle” or over sixty as “grandpa”. Female equivalents also exist.