Yesterday in Hong Kong, it was the Mid-Autumn Festival Holiday.  Traditionally, people spend time with their families for lunch or dinner, eat mooncakes and celebrate the full moon with lanterns and candles.  It’s a nice holiday, but with it, comes public hazards.  It is now illegal to burn or melt wax/candles on government properties - this includes parks, leisure areas or sidewalks and such.  It is also prohibited to do that on some private properties - for obvious reasons.  Fire risks.  

This morning, my children and I ventured into the public park downstairs, only to find the park in complete disarray and filthy.  The culprits were very likely late night party goers or celebrators (I heard them at 1 AM in the morning when I got up to go to the bathroom) - and in these cases, I’d associate them with the relatively young (as compared to myself) and folks lacking social responsibility.

They had glow sticks strewn EVERYWHERE.  Whatever they were consuming last night, food and alcoholic beverages, were littered on the children’s play equipment and the floor.  They even went as far as to burn/melt wax - wedging it between the rails that held up the equipment and of course, on the rubber floor.    See enclosed photos as exhibit A through D.

Even though there is a cleaning lady that comes around every morning, I was so pissed at the lack of social responsibility that I couldn’t help but take photos in preparation for a ranting post.  You can be sure that if I had known they were doing something illegal in the park last night, I would have called the hotline to report the behaviour.  It seems that social responsibility is something less common to teach your children in Asia than it is in the West.  The simplest “love thy neighbour” technique of holding the door open for the person behind you, or for someone in need - seems far flung for local Asians.  I don’t want to teach my kids that.  I will still hold the door the open behind me and make an effort to hold doors for people who need it (prams and wheelchairs) - because all too many times, I fend for myself. 

It is important to me to raise well-rounded children.  Sure, Maths and Languages are great skills, but so is social responsibility and surrounding awareness to make the world a better and happier place to live in.  First and foremost, teach by example.  This is two-fold.  I teach by setting examples myself and explain what I am doing and why.  The second is I teach by pointing out other people’s poor examples.  IE:  People who spit (completely disgusting), litter-bugs (dirty habit), people who squeeze in front of you when you’re holding the door open with hand and trying to maneuver the pram through a crack (rude and disrespectful).  It’s particularly easy to find examples (both good and bad) around Hong Kong due to the density of people.  It’s really an eye-opening experience for myself and it’s made me realize how important teaching social responsibility is at an early age (before it’s too late). 

Just like all good habits, this type of thinking needs early training.  Par it with teaching children good manners, the alphabet, whatever, all you need is to repeat, repeat, repeat.  On top of the repeating, you need rationalizing to build the understanding (because these days, parents aren’t necessarily always right and do not always hold the ultimate say in the household - I would know, my siblings and I constantly challenged my parents’ authority because of our Western upbrining). 

In short, it’s pretty disgraceful that even though I live in a relatively upper-middle class neighbourhood, you find low trash people with little regard for public spaces.  What’s worse is that the mess they left behind, only ruins the park for people using it after them - the children.  I do, however, believe in Karma and in the theory of “What Goes Around, Comes Around” - maybe one day, they will rue the times they were being irresponsible.  Shame on them.