The problem with Hongkong people is they are not educated in Chinese culture and being former colony they have the mentality of comprador ready to dissed out their own heritage and worshiped you know who at the altar.
Cantonese Malaysian behave differently They went to proper Chinese school with emphasized on respect to Chinese culture and at home their parent will insists that they follow Chinese custom.Even the mainlander are impressed
Hendrik. I do with agree with much of what you said, but the education is not quite true. I was educated in Hong Kong, abiet up to junior level, whereas my elder brother and sister had a bit more educational level
We all had what we called bog-standard education with much emphasis on Chinese culture and history. We celebrate Chinese New year, Dragon boat, mid autumn and the rest. We learned history from the first emporor down to the last emporor. The only thing we didn't learn from school was how Great Britain was able to obtain Hong Kong. (But then again, we already knew that from our parents and relatives and friends).
Now admittedly this was a long time ago. Way before the hand over. So my theory is that the education system somehow got hi-jacked at around the hand over period with radical teachers, and anti-China politicians. It was only about three years ago when the education authority had to withdraw the text from a school publication because it contain a question asking about ethnicity, and the answer was Chinese. The way the anti-China politician led by the Mao woman complained about that and forced it's withdrawal, you would have thought the heaven's fallen in!