Returning the Favor

At lunch with my colleagues a few days ago, I learned that it is a very common practice in Hong Kong for adults to give a certain percentage of their salary to their parents each month. Basically the idea is that the parents have taken care of the child for 18-22 years, and therefore after they are done with schooling and are earning a salary, it is then their responsibility to take care of their parents (financially) when possible. It's like paying them back for helping to raise them. The figure my colleagues gave me was that usually the money given to the parents is around 20% of their salary (paid on a monthly basis).

So for example, an employee who earns HK$20,000 per month (US$2,500 - this is an average HK salary in my industry) would probably give around HK$2,000 (US$250) each month to their parents. Not a bad deal for the parents, eh? Hong Kong doesn't have social security like in the USA, but they have something similar that pays people a bit less (relatively speaking) than what people in the USA get each month after retirement.

The interesting thing is that my co-worker said that if she forgets to give her parents money one month, her mom is not afraid of calling her and asking where the money is! So I guess some parents need this money. Then when I asked my co-worker (who has 2 teenage children) if she expected her children to give her a monthly allowance when they get older, she said "no". The reason for this is that basically this system is kind of an old, traditional thing and that people growing up in today's day and age would not do this sort of thing. I'll have to ask around to some of my other local HK friends and see what their views are on this.

I guess this is all part of the fact that family bonds here are much closer than in the western cultures (the group comes before the individual in asian societies). I think it's kind of nice that the children take care of the parents when they can. I know that in many peoples' families in the west, children also take on financial and other responsibilities for their parents, but usually this only happens when the parents are much older and cannot care for themselves anymore.