Chinese Mainland Students Are Flocking Back to Hong Kong Universities

In late August, Wu Haidi, an applied sociology major at the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), stayed up all night just to try to secure a relatively cheap place to live in the notoriously expensive city.

Wu said a group of like-minded students from the Chinese mainland were already lining up outside an apartment building near CityU at 10:30 p.m. By 9 a.m. the next day, four more groups had joined. Luckily, after a sleepless night Wu managed to get one of the two apartments that the building manager listed for rent that day. Others weren’t as fortunate. “One student had been in line for three days, but still couldn’t grab one this time,” Wu said.