The stewardesses of Cathay Pacific Airways in Hong Kong refused to hang Chinese famous brands, and some even reprimanded them for ＂pleasing mainland guests＂

On May 29th, Cathay Pacific Airways announced that the name brands hung on the chests of flight attendants in Hong Kong and Taiwan Province were changed from only displaying English names to both Chinese and English names. This move immediately aroused great repercussions among Cathay Pacific employees, fearing that showing people by Chinese names would cause personal safety threats and be easily harassed or harassed by malicious people. What’s more, it is suspected of "pleasing mainland visitors" to denounce this decision.

According to Hong Kong media reports, many groups of employees are discussing the New Deal, criticizing and suggesting that this move is unnecessary, which makes employees’ privacy unprotected. They think that the policy is only to please mainland customers and feel quite angry.

The incident lasted for three days, and finally came to an end with Cathay Pacific shelved the plan, but the discussion about "please mainland customers" and "privacy" continued.

Overseas network quoted overseas media as saying that Cathay Pacific employees’ doubts about "privacy" are not unreasonable, but it is debatable to "please mainland customers". Hong Kong is an international metropolis. Although English is used more frequently in this region than in mainland China and Taiwan Province, we should not forget that Chinese is still its mother tongue. Even though some people emphasize that "Cantonese" is the mother tongue of Hong Kong, the carrier of Cantonese is still Chinese. According to the language usage habits of Hong Kong society, it is more reasonable and grounded to show people in both Chinese and English. As a "Hong Kong as home" enterprise, there is nothing wrong with Cathay Pacific.

The media commented that even if there is an attempt to "please mainland visitors", it should use simplified Chinese characters instead of traditional Chinese characters commonly used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Inferred further, if the famous brands added with Chinese please mainland tourists, is it suspected that the famous brands only used in English please "foreign tourists"?

Cathay Pacific employees are worried that after displaying their Chinese names, they will be "searched by human flesh". According to the media, throughout Hong Kong’s large and small service industries, many employees show their real names on famous brands. Even if there is a conflict with guests, there are few cases of being "human flesh".

Chinese famous brands are widely used because it can improve the communication efficiency between service personnel and guests. As for whether to use their real names, guests don’t care at all-they pay more attention to the service quality of service personnel.

Original famous brand

Brand name after change (schematic diagram)

What’s more, the English names on many flight attendants’ famous brands are not their real names on their ID cards (many English names on Hong Kong resident ID cards are actually translated into Chinese). If necessary, Cathay Pacific should allow employees to use Chinese aliases to prevent bad customers from harassing employees by using their real names on famous brands.

According to the media, although the incident ended in the compromise of Cathay Pacific, it can reflect some attitudes and positions of some Hong Kong people at present. For example, some Cathay Pacific employees said in an interview that the reason why they don’t want to use Chinese names is "rustic" and lack of "noble westernization color", which affects the chances of making friends with "high-end westernized people" and reduces the chances of "getting rid of poverty". Some scholars have pointed out that this idea is the result of "colonial enslavement education".

Media analysis pointed out that Cathay Pacific’s original intention of using Chinese and English famous brands was to improve service quality. This local Hong Kong enterprise, with a loss of nearly HK$ 600 million (US$ 0.128 in 1 yuan), is experiencing the pain of transformation. With the change of people’s tourism mode and fierce market competition, Cathay Pacific has to focus on service quality in order to survive. However, Cathay Pacific employees have blocked many measures, which makes people have to sweat for Cathay Pacific. In addition, the saying of "please mainland visitors" is also worthy of reflection: what’s wrong with Hong Kong today?

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