Do you Book a Private Tour with a Native English Speaker?

Me Jamie, English and 52 years living in Hong Kong and I know the know the place - I personally completed 2,324 Private Tours (6,000+ guests) from 2011 - 2020 and was considered one of the finest Private Tour Guides in Asia.

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Do you Book a Private Tour with a Native English Speaker?

What does “Booking with a Local” actually mean?

This is fairly detailed and quite honestly it is a fascinating insight into Hong Kong culture, Hong Kong has a reputation of being an International City yet it also discriminates against people who do not speak Cantonese.

I have always believed ethnicity relates to culture, not to genetics and this has always shaped my way of thinking when it comes to the word local in terms of a person living in a particular place.

Tour companies in Hong Kong love to use the word LOCAL or LOCALS in their advertising, Company Names and all their blurb when it comes to offering private tours and regular tours, it is such a tiresome cliche and in this case it also a hint that only a local born Chinese person is qualified to give you an exceptional tour of Hong Kong.

As far as I can see a local in this context is basically just a person who LIVES in the destination country | city | town

For example and I will use Hong Kong as an example, a local is simply a person who lives in Hong Kong

Sounds simple right..... or in this case WRONG!

A basic fact in Hong Kong is that many local Chinese people for whatever reason do not believe that any non Chinese person can be a local so they call themselves TRUE LOCALS - which to me is meaningless, in my way of thinking anyone regardless of nationality who has lived in Hong Kong for a reasonable length of time is quite simply a local.

Put in another context, my wife is not Chinese but was born in Hong Kong and has lived here continuously for 56 years, our 3 boys 2 of whom have always lived in Hong Kong were born here, does they mean they are not locals???

The Private Tour Business and by extension the Tour Business is as competitive as any business and to appeal to potential clients you have to have a list of what is known in the trade as UNIQUE SELLING POINTS or USP‛s

This is where it gets complicated because in Hong Kong the consensus (which to me is ludicrous) is that a private tour guide or any regular tour guide should be fluent in Cantonese as well as English, oh and it helps if you can speak Mandarin as well.

Yes, Hong Kong has 3 official languages which are Cantonese, English and Mandarin.

I also want to make the following relevant comment:

Historical context - Hong Kong was administered by the UK from 1841 - 1997 and by Mainland China from July 1st 1997 onwards.

Hong Kong has a rather unique history and personally and something I state on my website is that I have lived in Hong Kong for 25 years under British rule and 27 years under Chinese rule

.. and yes, without a doubt one of the USP‛s of Hong Kong was proficiency in English by the local Chinese population, English is taught as a second language and in fact there are a lot of local Chinese schools where English is actually the language of instruction.

In our household, I speak English only, my wife speaks 3 languages, her native language is Cantonese and of our 3 boys English is a native language and only one speaks Cantonese as a second language.

I have lived in Hong Kong for 52 years and NOT speaking Cantonese has never been an issue for me, I simply do NOT have the language gift and Cantonese is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn.

I digress (as usual)

For some local Hong Kong Chinese their mindset (which I totally understand but strongly disagree with) is that only a “local” Hong Kong Chinese person could possibly understand Hong Kong culture, to me this is complete nonsense, I have devoted 52 years of my life to learning Hong Kong culture and with the added benefit that most of my wife’s family is Hong Kong Chinese.

To me, this mindset | argument has no relevance to being a local in Hong Kong.

Any resident no matter what their nationality is able to learn about Hong Kong culture, what they learn is purely dependant on their commitment to immersing themselves into Hong Kong Culture and if they can speak a little Cantonese then fine but let me make it clear, I have tried many times over the decades to learn Cantonese, taught by my wife, tutors and teachers, I learnt a long time ago that I did not have the gift but I might also add that many local Chinese people simply laughed at my attempts which did nothing for my confidence.

I should also point out that our youngest son in Hong Kong teaches English to 5 - 11 year old Chinese kids and he does NOT speak Cantonese and frankly English is a lot easier to learn than Cantonese.

So to me what is critical when it comes to “qualifications” to be a Private Tour Guide in Hong Kong - these are my thoughts.

• male or female, it should not make a difference but many clients are more comfortable with females!

• a minimum 10 years residency in Hong Kong

• English as a native language if possible

• if they speak fluent Cantonese as well and are Hong Kong Chinese, then awesome!

• and aged from 30+ onwards, I simply believe that life experience is a vital asset to being a tour guide, the more you have the better, I became a Private Tour Guide when I was 50 years old!

My logic was simple - I did 2,324 tours in 9 years based on the fact that I was English and a native English speaker which meant that when people who booked a tour with me, they knew that there was going to be no communication problems and knowing how long I have lived here, never questioned my knowledge of Hong Kong culture plus I am from Yorkshire in England and I prefer to be a little blunt and speak in plain English.

The Hong Kong Tourism Board has been running for 10 years a scheme called Hong Kong Pals (I will be doing a separate blog post on this) and I mention it because in 2024 they are expanding the scheme, basically you volunteer to work in the Hong Kong Tourism Board visitor centres and greet tourists and give them information that they have asked for.

They have decided in their infinite wisdom that to be a Hong Kong Pal, you have to be local Hong Kong Chinese and fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin and English which basically rules out any foreigner who might want to volunteer (I would have thought that any foreigner where English is a first language would love to be able to chat about Hong Kong in Native English!)... and then they make it worse by setting the minimum age as 18 to be a Hong Kong Pal, no disrespect to 18 year old’s (and we have 3 boys in their 20’s - 30’s and 40’s) but at the of 18 kids barely know anything about life and life experiences, they should set the minimum age to 30+, buy hey that is a personal opinion, what is even more tragic is that they will be taught to talk about Hong Kong through the eyes of the Hong Kong Tourism Board which is a Government Organisation, I know a lot of the data they teach is out of date!

The worst part of this, the Hong Kong Tourism Board rules out basically any chance of a foreign national being a Hong Kong Pal no matter how long they have lived in Hong Kong, talk about sending out the wrong message.

I know quite a few Chinese people with Hong Kong connections who were born and bred in the UK and only speak English, do you think for one minute that this is an issue in them getting employment?

Oh… and what about tourists who visit Hong Kong from France, Germany, Spain, Italy + 20 other European Countries or all other countries around the world where English may well be a second language, the Hong Kong Government seems to have no interest in finding a tour guide solution for these visitors, guides who speak all the major European languages are sadly lacking which means that the tourist has 3 options - pick a guide where English is a native language or pick a guide where English is a second language with varying degrees of fluency or simply not pick a guide and try and muddle through, it is a tough one.

At this juncture I want to talk a little bit about English fluency in Hong Kong, remember I have lived here for 52 years.

Many news articles put the proficiency of Native English amongst Hong Kong Chinese people to be around 1.5 to 2% of the population ( I will give some links to these articles at the end)

Communication is so important on a tour and trust me, there are levels of English fluency in Hong Kong and again what you should be looking for primarily is a Native English Speaker if possible, if you are communicating with the company you can normally get a pretty good idea of English fluency. If you are booking a food tour then you need to book the tour with a Hong Kong Chinese guide fluent in native Cantonese and as close to native English as you can get if possible.

I have observed over the years many local tour guides in action and I have been on quite a few tours with a “local guide” for research purposes and I soon understood why clients wanted to book with a Native English Speaker and this language issue is an Asia wide problem with perhaps the exception of Singapore and perhaps Malaysia.

In practice, anybody can say they are fluent in English, in reality, the fluency may not be as good as you think and in my experience, the older the person the better the English will be, I love talking in English to Chinese Hong Konger’s and to put them at ease (particularly young people) I point out that even if they get the grammar and such wrong I will pretty much understand what they are trying to say!

My Private Tour guide friends (we have our own society) are a mixture of English, Hong Kong Chinese, Canadian born Chinese, American, French, German and South American.! Quite a diverse group!

The point I am making is for example using our group of guides - we are all Hong Kong locals and I can tell you now, German Nationals visiting Hong Kong as an example want to be guided by German speakers, I did a lot of tours with Germans (in English) and lost all of that business when a native German speaking tour guide came on the scene and in 2,324 tours I did ONE, yes ONE tour with French people, the French want a French person speaking native French as a guide, I have no issue at all with this.

I think this is an important point lost on a lot of “local” tour companies, they forget that overseas clients would prefer to converse with someone who is culturally similar and speaks the same language, they want to know what it is really like to live in Hong Kong and with me they get it all, the good, the bad, the ugly, something that perhaps a local Hong Kong Chinese person is not prepared to do, clients want the unvarnished version, it helps them to understand Hong Kong and appreciate it even more, I realised this on tour number 1 of 2,324 with some Australians who also just happened to be Muslims.

Going briefly back to my seemingly odd comment about doing food tours in Hong Kong

…. but first some insulting comments from a company called Eating Adventures in Hong Kong, I was the pioneer of Private Tours in Hong Kong in 2011 and myself and my friends really put Private Tours and Food Tours on the map in Hong Kong and yes, a bunch of us are foreigners and these people do not even come close to the amazing Hong Kong Chinese Food Tour Companies that I work with, they have class, these people do not.

Yes, Eating Adventures being about as blunt as you can get, I bet their so called local guides do not speak anywhere close to Native English and I bet I know more about Hong Kong than the combined knowledge of all of their young guides and this is an insult to my friends who are not Hong Kong Chinese who choose to offer food tours | private tours | tours and do so rather well.
Clearly they have zero understanding of human nature.

…. and they seem to be having some problems as of April 2024

As mentioned Hong Kong has 3 official languages, Cantonese, Mandarin and English but for whatever reason providing English menu’s in local Chinese Restaurants just never really took hold.

Also and as mentioned quite a few times I have lived in Hong Kong for 52 years and I have eaten at somewhere north of 1,250 local Chinese Restaurants, my wife is not Chinese but was born in Hong Kong and has lived here for longer than I have, she went to Chinese Schools and her native language is Cantonese.

My point being is that I know Hong Kong food and yet I always refused to do any sort of food tour and on my Private Tours if guests wanted a Chinese meal I would take them to my favourite restaurant, a restaurant in NO shape or form like the one favoured by food tour companies here.

For some reason in Hong Kong, the Food Tour Industry has morphed over the past 14 years and it was decided unilaterally by the tour companies that in order to know Hong Kong Chinese Food you would only go to old established traditional Chinese Family Restaurants carefully chosen by the owner of the Tour Company and NOT an English menu in sight and not a word of English spoken by the Restaurant staff and a typical group or private food tour would involve tastings at 6 locations, I used to think that they did this to give themselves a competitive advantage and yes, I still think that!

In other words you need a local Hong Kong Chinese guide to do a food tour with you.

The Hong Kong food scene to me is rather unique, you can find fantastic food in really odd locations and in many cases it is great value for money but food culture and the ability to do a proper food tour is seemingly only done by local Chinese people who give it that authentic touch.

I absolutely agree with this approach 100%, (really) I have never had an issue in Chinese Restaurants here because my wife and her family are all native Cantonese speakers, I am not and with a lack of English Menu’s and very few English speaking staff members I am completely out of my depth which means I was never able to offer a food tour experience at my usual high quality level.

Some of my great and trusted tour guide friends speak Cantonese as a second language and get by doing private and group food tours but for me my suggestion of a local Hong Kong Chinese guide is probably the best option, my Chinese friends offer amazing food tours and some of them are social media celebrities and influencers.

Look, anyone can learn about Hong Kong food, the history, cultural significance, the dishes, the ingredients and preparation, I know my way around a Hong Kong wet market which is quite an experience and such but that is meaningless in a Chinese Restaurant with no English, when it comes to NON food tours I absolutely believe that a Native English Speaker is your best option given that fluency in English is absolutely not what you think here, I have been on tours in Hong Kong (for research) and honestly it can be a horrible experience having a guide who does not really speak English fluently, my hats off to them of course for having the fortitude to give it a go, my Cantonese is so bad it is embarrassing.. but at the end of the day, you have to do right by the guest | client and this is why I always passed | pass on doing food tours.

Ps. And try explaining to anyone working in a local Chinese restaurant that your guests have food allergies if you do not speak Cantonese, it is just is not worth the risk, in the restaurant I go to I am pretty secure in the knowledge that I have this issue covered.

I apologise if I am repeating myself, it is one of numerous odd little quirks I have!

I should point out that the my friends that own Private Tour Companies all speak eloquent English as do many of their guides

I always like to say that you should try and book a private tour with the owner of the company, with me, you got me, I had no guides on my payroll nor would I ever use freelance guides. Trust me, book the owner, it is normally quite clear on their website who that is.

There are very few guides available who are native French, German, Spanish and Portuguese speakers but I am happy to make recommendations.

I have one final point to make, please do read the companies Tripadvisor reviews, a lot of companies in Hong Kong do not take Tripadvisor seriously and do not seem to care if they get loads of poor reviews, this is a mistake - the detailed reviews (not the one liners) tell you everything you need to know about the quality of the tours and there is absolutely a link between cheap prices and poor quality.

So there you go, this is my personal take on a very important subject!

Learn more | The Hong Kong Standard View on English Language Standards in Hong Kong

Learn more | The Hong Kong Free Press View on English Language Standards in Hong Kong

Learn more | The Famous Dim Sum Daily News View on English Language Standards in Hong Kong

Learn more | The China Daily Hong Kong News View on English Language Standards in Hong Kong

… and yes, my last word on the matter - what a very bland description of something so important and “hidden gems” is one of the worst tourism cliches in the world!

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**Lugard Road Lookout at Victoria Peak**
If I had any followers on Instagram who liked views rather than my car images then this would be a classic, Mum, Dad and 4 kids aged from 12 - 22 from England, perfect weather, the planets aligned as they do on most days at the Peak.
This rather sums up Jamie’s spot at the Peak.

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