Spicy food and dental implants: low prices lure Hong Kongers to China

Shuen Chun-wa, 81, and her husband rushed to a green bus along with 20 other Hong Kong residents, dragging empty suitcases. They had purple tour stickers on their jackets and were heading shopping in Shenzhen, a bustling Chinese city north of the border with Hong Kong.

It was Ms. Shuen's second trip to Shenzhen to find bargains in a year. The last time she got dental implants. “You can count how much I have to pay,” she said. She paid $9,000 in Shenzhen for a procedure that would have cost $25,000 in Hong Kong. 'I don't have the money. So I went to Shenzen.”

Since China opened its borders in January 2023 after several years of pandemic isolation, Hong Kong residents have made Shenzhen a weekend destination for shopping, dining and, yes, even the dentist.

Fed up with high costs, poor service and limited choice at home, Hong Kongers are heading to Shenzhen to shop for groceries, eat out and discover new bubble tea shops. Hong Kong remains one of the most unaffordable cities in the world, and its battered economy and plummeting stock market have made everyone more money-conscious. In China, a stagnant economy has led to a steady decline in prices, which have fallen the most since the 2009 global financial crisis and are bordering on a phenomenon known as deflation.

The retail migration is a reversal of the days when mainland Chinese flocked to Hong Kong to buy everything from luxury bags to baby food. For Hong Kongers, the slowdown in China offers a rare price drop. All it takes is a short bus or metro ride across the border to the mainland.

On social media and chat groups, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers are talking about new food offerings in Shenzhen, such as pastries filled with seaweed and pork floss. They share tips on where to find bubble tea, including a place where the tea is brewed by a robot. Tour operators that once focused on package holidays to Japan and Thailand are now also organizing buses to shopping centers in Shenzhen to visit stores such as Sam's Club.

Some weekends there are so many Hong Kongers in Shenzhen's malls that locals joke that the visitors are 'occupying' them.

Their presence in Shenzhen, a city of 17 million inhabitants, is visible everywhere. Some stores are adapting their advertisements by using Cantonese, Hong Kong's local Chinese language, to attract tourists to their stores. Restaurants offer discounts to customers with phone numbers that include Hong Kong area code 852. In a large shopping center near a border crossing, opticians and dental clinics promise a cheaper service than Hong Kong, requiring only a short journey. “Cross the border to check your teeth without any distance,” enticed a giant neon pink ad.

On a busy day, the GoodFeel Dentist clinic could see more than 100 customers from Hong Kong, said Lan Xinghua, a sales director at GoodFeel Dentist. He said the company's turnover doubled when the border with Hong Kong opened last year. To generate even more sales, the clinic set up a stall near the border crossing at Luohu Port. Employees are expected to speak both Cantonese and Mandarin, the official language of China.

“Hong Kong customers spend more money and generally don't bargain too much,” Mr Lan said. Sometimes entire families come to have their teeth cleaned and repaired.

The two cities are separated by a border that distinguishes mainland China from Hong Kong, a Chinese territory that long operated with a degree of autonomy but has increasingly come under Beijing's rule.

Many Hong Kongers who traveled to the mainland for shopping had not been there since 2019. Then pro-democracy protests swept Hong Kong and the government responded with a crackdown, eradicating the political tolerance that had distinguished Hong Kong from mainland China.

Now people in Hong Kong, using online forums that are censored or inaccessible on the mainland, are discussing whether it is safe and politically acceptable for people who disagree with the Chinese government to visit Shenzhen, even just to shop and to dine.

For many, the answer is 'yes'.

“Life and political opinion can be separated,” said Chak Yeung, 31, a Hong Kong resident who works in the technology industry. He has been involved in student organizations participating in protests in the past, but he doesn't see any conflict between his political views and what he does for fun on the weekends.

Hong Kong has a separate currency from that of China, and its merchants still rely heavily on cash for payments. The main form of payment in China is digital: the two main payment apps, WeChat and Alipay, have only recently become available to Hong Kongers and not everyone is familiar with them. To help visiting shoppers, posters in Shenzhen's stores and subway stations explain how Hong Kong residents can use WeChat and Alipay. Tourists can also pay in Hong Kong dollars and not convert their money into Chinese renminbi.

But paying is not always smooth. On her most recent trip, Ms. Shuen used cash to buy dandelions that her son uses in his Chinese medicine practice in Hong Kong, as well as some dried shrimp. But she said paying in cash was difficult.

Exploring Shenzhen can also be difficult. Two women from Hong Kong had to ask a Shenzhen resident, Kristen Lu, 28, how to use local navigation apps on their phones. They didn't realize that Google Maps doesn't work in mainland China because the company is blocked.

Mr. Yeung, the technical assistant, has visited Shenzhen twice in the past year. He enjoys eating hot pot and playing archery and basketball in a sports and entertainment complex. He said the workers he encounters in Shenzhen are more pleasant.

The service in Hong Kong is grimmer and more hasty, he said.

For Iris Yiu, 29, a student pursuing a master's degree in Hong Kong, going to Shenzhen is all about food. She said she is a fan of spicy food, a staple in parts of southern China, and in November she and two friends went to Shenzhen and ordered “crazy” from a famous Sichuan food chain called Taier Sauerkraut Fish. They weren't ready yet. Next they stopped at Bobo Chicken, a restaurant that serves vegetables and meat in small bites on sticks that cost 14 cents each.

Ms Yiu said local customers stared at them as they grabbed as many sticks as they could. Someone at a nearby table said, “This is the style of Hong Kong people, as if they don't need money!”

Snow Wong, 28, heard about Shenzhen when her friends and colleagues returned from weekend trips. After so many rave reviews, Ms. Wong decided to try it herself.

She visited arcades and karaoke bars and discovered that the city had more interesting escape room games, her favorite pastime, than Hong Kong. She used Hong Kong dollars to pay for a visit to a spa near the Luohu border crossing.

Above all, Ms. Snow said, Shenzhen offered something that Hong Kong famously lacks: a slower pace.

“The pace of Shenzhen and Hong Kong is so different,” Ms Wong said. “Shenzhen is the place where I go to relax.”