RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY AND KINSHIP TIES AMONG URBAN CHINESE FAMILIES IN HK 117
At first sight, these responses appear to be inconsistent with their responses to the earlier questions. Over half had reported that "close relatives" and "kin" were people most frequently invited home or that they went out with, and they seldom invited home or went out with "neighbours". It seems, therefore, that moving did give them the opportunity to distance themselves from some relatives, but that they obviously maintained contact with others. This would explain why it is possible, as a family moves, for ties with "close relatives" and "kin" to decline and yet they could remain central in the family's social contacts.
Contacts with neighbours increased, but neighbours were seldom invited home or gone out with. To explain this, one needs only to understand that neighbouring is a continuous process of diffused, unstructured, and irregular interaction that spans over many areas of social life. It takes place less because of purposeful arrangements than because of situational contingencies. One does not have to make a special effort to talk to a neighbour, for avoiding him may well be more difficult.
Angela Kan's study of neighbours in Hong Kong's public housing estates confirms this observation. She shows that neighbours very frequently greet one another in a friendly way, chat casually together, or observe interactions among their children, but far less frequently visit one another's home and least frequently of all go out for entertainment together.
I think the consequence of residential mobility is that family life is "privatized", to use a word defined by Goldthorpe et al. as "a process that is manifested in a pattern of social life that is centred on, and indeed largely restricted to, the home and conjugal family." Privatization is manifested in respondents' leisure activities (Table 4). Weekday leisure was almost always home-centred, with approximately half the respondents and their spouses watching television and listening to music. But even for weekends, one-third of the respondents and their spouses chose to stay at home. Few reported that they spent much time visiting, and only 7 percent of the household heads and 4 percent of their spouses reported that they were members of any voluntary associations.
Also, when asked where they went for daily necessities, medical services, tea, the large majority of respondents named places within the estate (Table 5). After all, Oi Man is among the most modernized housing estates in Hong Kong. Flats are relatively bigger from 357 sq.ft. to 591 sq.ft. as compared with 86 sq.ft. to 393 sq. ft. for all pre-1973 estates. Each flat is equipped with piped gas and communal television.