Comparing Hong Kong and Istanbul, Culture

Hong Kong was not always a city that was considered big. Before the British colonized Hong Kong, it was a sparsely populated area. After the British came to Hong Kong in 1841, the population went from roughly 7500 to roughly 125000 in 1870. The population increase can be attributed with the Taiping Rebellion, a civil war in mainland China that happened between 1850-1864, natural disasters such as typhoons and floods and the trade in the harbours that made people in mainland China think that they had a better chance of finding a job there. After the 1860s the population contiinued to grow until World War 2. After world War 2 industrilization began in Hong Kong and the population started to boom. A similar thing happened to Ä°stanbul too. During the 1960s and the 1970s a lot of new factories, shops and markets were opened in Ä°stanbul and a huge immigration movement from the Anatolian part of Turkey to Ä°stanbul started. The reason for this was that a lot of people living in the Anatolian part of Turkey thought that they could find better jobs and get richer in Ä°stanbul than to work in their small cities or villages which had way less potential than a big metropolitan city like Ä°stanbul.

Similarity of rich and poor people: Sites and condominiums: In Istanbul both the rich and the poor live in ‘’sites’’ or in English compound homes. Of course they do not live in sites with similar conditions. The rich people live in sites that are either located in central places like Levent, Maslak and Mecidiyeköy or places where they can live in big houses with gardens like Beykoz, Zekeriyaköy and Sarıyer, while the poorer part lives in apartments in places like Pendik, Ayazağa, Çeliktepe and Maltepe. There are no such things like sites in Hong Kong.

‘’Gecekondu’’, Cage and Coffin Homes

The poor people in Hong Kong and İstanbul do not live in villas, skyscrapers or apartments. They live in buildings called gecekondus or coffin homes. In the word gecekondu, ‘gece’ means night and ‘kondu’ placed or built which means these houses can be and are being built overnight. The gecekondu trend started after World War 2 after the families with low budgets started to move to big cities or in this case Istanbul and started building illegal houses. There are three phases that gecekondus passed to come to the way it is today.

First Stage: The first stage of this process starts with the immigration from villages to big cities in the late 1950s. Ä°n this stage the gecekondus are only used for sheltering reasons. Ä°n this stage the majority of the people that lived in the gecekondus were the owners and only a minority were paying rent to live in these gecekondus. Most of these gecekondus were built in public properties.

The Second Stage: This stage took place in the 1970s. Unlike in the first stage, in the second stage were these gecekondus built in the suburb of the big cities. These gecekondus in the suburbs were starting to be sold and this made gecekondus more profit focused. The owner rate started to drop and the rate of the people that paid rent to live in the houses went up.

The third Stage: Ä°n the third stage, the value of the gecekondus went up because as with time the cities got bigger and eventually these suburbs became a more central part of these cities. The owners that wanted to capititalize from this situations started ripping down the one story gecekondus and started to build apartments to make more money. In the third stage the gecekondus are mostly made for business purposes.

These gecekondus have many disadvantages. The gecekondu dwellers or the ‘’outsiders’’ are well behind the society both physically and socially. The study made by Atatürk University shows that 42% of the women living in the gecekondus did not know how to read or write. The people that live in gecekondus in İstanbul have pretty much no social security. The percentage of child workers are extremely high(about %17 percent of them work for fees low as 5 Liras a day instead of going to school). The people that lived in gecekondus before they were torn down and made in to apartments had lots of problems because they did not know how to live in an apartment. They got a lot of complaints and they just could not adapt to the city and apartment culture. The process of gecekondus are ruining the natural and historical parts of İstanbul. The gecekondu process also hurts the people physchologically. The child crime rate in gecekondus are higher than normal. Also the people that live in the gecekondus have health problems, illegal electric, unsanitary water and sewer problems.

Many people have argued if gecekondus were a solution or a problem to the low income families. Up to 1997, gecekondus were considered a problem. The governments tried to urbanize these areas. After 1997 they were considered a solution and a lot of the gecekondus were legalized. The biggest reason to legalize these gecekondus were to get votes from those people.

Coffin homes are buildings that the really poor people in Hong Kong live in.

These buildings are called either coffin homes because it resembles coffins These coffin homes are about 2 square meters each and they cost about 150 Dollars a month. Another place the poor in Hong Kong live in is cage homes. These cage homes resemble a barn and are a little bigger and safer than coffin homes. The people that live in these homes say that ‘’ "No one wants to live here, but we need to survive," said Mak, who works as a janitor at the nearby Times Square. "It's a step up from being on the streets." ( )

The reasons that these coffin homes became more common were because of the exploding house prices and the difference between the rich and the poor. Hong Kong is one of the most expensive cities in the real estate field. The houses that the middle class live in are about 40% more expensive than other respective mega cities like Paris, London and New York. The difference between the poor and the rich in Hong Kong are the greatest in the world and because of this the poor can not adjust to the ballooning prices of living. This is stated by a local’’ "Hong Kong has gotten more and more wealthy, but these people have been left behind," she said. "A dweller once said to me, 'I'm not even dead yet but I'm already living in my coffin -- four walls and nails'." ( )

Ä° think that because of these reasons, the poor people have to live in situations like the coffin and cage homes. The people living in these coffin homes think it is the governments fault. A person that lives in coffin homes Mak said "It's not that the H.K. government can't help people like me who are part of the low-income society and need help," he said. "It's that they don't want to help people like us and solve problems like this." ( )

The people that live in the coffin homes live in worse conditions than the ones that live in gecekondus. The coffin home conditions are way worse than the gecekondu conditions. The size is smaller and the infrastructure is worse but the real reason is the actions of the governments. The Turkish government takes good care of the gecekondu dwellers because they do not want to lose their votes. In Hong Kong, the government does not care enough for these people living in poverty.

This picture shows a coffin home in the Wan Chai neighborhood. From this picture we can understand why these things are called coffin homes. The reason for that is because it resembles a coffin.

Why are these cities considered megacities?

Both Ä°stanbul and Hong Kong are considered megacities because of the four characteristics they show. These are economic, political,infrastructural and cultural characteristics. Economically, Hong Kong is one of the biggest economic centres in the world. For example, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is the sixth in the world, its port is the 7th biggest(size) and 2nd biggest by capacity. It exported the 15th most goods in the world last year. Ä°stanbul is a city that means a lot to Turkey. Ä°stanbul makes up abou one thirds of the imports, one fifth of the exports and one third of all the industry. Both these cities are home to the biggest corporations in their countries and in the world. Politically, they are really important to their countries because of the votes that come from these cities.Infrastructrally, these two cities have the most modern architechture and the most established sewer, electric and water systems. Culturally, Ä°stanbul represents a lot of the Ottoman and Hong Kong represents two cultures in one.(Only very wey cities can represent two cultures like Hong Kong).

Who can be defined as rich in these cities?

Ä°n Hong Kong an average person earns about 48,000 Dolars a year and in Istanbul an average person earns about 18,500 Dolars a year. Ä°n my opinion a person or a family can be considered rich when they earn more than 2.5 times more than the average. This means we can say that a rich person or a rich family in Hong Kong earns more than 120,000 Dollars and more than 47,500 Dollars in Ä°stanbul.

What are the jobs of the rich people in these cities?

Ä°n both of these cities there are a lot of jobs that offer high wages like lawyers, corporate workers, engineers and architects. There are also some jobs that are only available in Hong Kong and are not available in Ä°stanbul. A lot examples can be given about these particular types of jobs. My first example for this kind of job is a pearl diver. In Hong Kong these trained divers spend all day 30 meters under water collecting pearls. A pearl diver that works six months can earn about 250,000 Dollars. Another high waged job in Hong Kong is submarine chefs. These chefs are the chefs of the millitary submarines and they can earn up to 220,000 Dollars. The other people that work in submarines also earn a lot of money. A submarine captain earns about 140,000 Dollars and a submarine skipper, the ultimate commander of the submarine earns about 260,000 Dollars a year. There are also jobs that are only available in Istanbul and not available in Hong Kong. One example for that are gecekondu builders. These people build gecekondus for cheap prices overnight and by building a lot of them they can earn a lot of money.

Lifestyles of the rich in these two cities:

Shopping: Ä°n Hong Kong shopping has become more than a activity, it has become a lifestyle. Ä°n Ä°stanbul is also shopping very important but it still has not reached the popularity of shopping in Hong Kong because of the culture. Many believed in Turkey that people should only shop for their basic needs and nothing fancy. They also did not have the money to buy luxury or fancy stuff but with the growing economy of Ä°stanbul shopping is getting more popular. The people in Hong Kong and Ä°stanbul shop both in malls and outdoor boutiques. The popular shopping malls among the more richer people in Hong Kong are Festival Walk, Harbour City, The Landmark, Times Square and Pacific Place. The popular malls among the more richer people in Turkey are Ä°stinye Park, Kanyon, Akmerkez and Forum Ä°stanbul. Ä°n these malls people can buy designer clothes, watches and bags.

Architechture: The architechture in Hong Kong ar similar and different in many ways. In Hong Kong there a very few historical buildings because they been all torn down to make way to the new multi story buildings while in Ä°stanbul people can see more of the historical buildings. While they are different in the historical buildings part, they are relatively more similar in the skyscrapers and modern buildings part. Hong Kong and Istanbul both have many modern buildings , in Levent, Maslak and AtaÅŸehir in Ä°stanbul and in Kowloon Peninsula, Central Hong Kong and Wenchai. Skyscrapers are a very big part of Hong Kong. Since there are no spaces left in Hong Kong, the architechts had to find a way create more space and now there are more and more few story buildings being torn down and new skyscrapers are being built. There are 271 skyscrapers over 150 meters in Hong Kong, the most in the world while there are only 35 skyscrapers over 150 meters in Ä°stanbul. This can be attributed to a lot of things but the biggest reason for this is that the first skyscraper in Hong Kong was built in 1935 while the first skyscraper in Ä°stanbul was built in 1993. Most of the very rich people live in these skyscrapers.

This building is the Sabancı Tower, the first skyscraper in İstanbul that was built in 1993.

Restaurants: A big part of the rich peoples lifestyles in these two cities are the restaurants they eat in. The most popular restaurants in Hong Kong are 8½ Otto e Mezzo, Amber, Bo İnnovation and Dynasty. These restaurants are the most expensive and glamorous places in Hong Kong. For example , the restaurant Bo İnnovation was described as a ‘’ … deservedly renowned and upscale "private kitchen.."( ). The most popular restaurants in İstanbul are House Café, Kitchennette, Midpoint, Nusret and Kaşıbeyaz. These restaurants are the restaurants that the rich people frequently eat in.

The picture above shows us 8½ Otto e Mezzo. This place has a beautiful interior as shown above.

Hong Kong and Ä°stanbul have many similarities and differences. I have understood from the comparisons I have made that the rich in Hong Kong are richer and the poor in Hong Kong are poorer. The coffin home dwellers are poorer than gecekondu dwellers and the rich people in Hong Kong live better with more modern conditions.