Wang Yuanyuan

    cheekywang@hotmail.com

    EVERY time Liu Hongyan is asked about giving birth in Hong Kong and being mainland parents of a Hong Kong child, she always says the same thing: “If I could turn back time, I would never do that again.”

    Liu gave birth to a girl called Beibei in Hong Kong in 2006.

    “My husband and I thought it was the best thing for my daughter’s future, but we only thought about Hong Kong citizenship and its benefits, such as good education resources and social order,” Liu said. “What we did not expect to worry about was how she would live happily there.”

    Liu says Beibei spends a lot of time going to or from school and has little time to play with others. “She always asks me why she can’t play games with other classmates and friends — it feels like she has no childhood,” Liu said. “Because of the distance problems, Beibei could only get into some schools in the New Territories near Shenzhen, which were not as good as in other parts of Hong Kong. If she was in Shenzhen, we could get her into Nanshan Foreign Language School with much better teachers and classmates.”

    But it’s not easy for Beibei to come back. “Getting the citizenship was a big problem, and I don’t want her to give up her Hong Kong citizenship, but we can’t afford international schools,” Liu said. “The whole family worked really hard for that.”

    Liu said mainland parents should think it through before giving birth in Hong Kong. Many mainland children can study abroad when they grow up, so it really does not matter whether they have Hong Kong citizenship, she said.