The recent turmoil in HK reminded me of an incident I encountered nearly thirty years ago.  One day at the City of Monterey Park during mid 80's when I was working in Los Angeles, I entered into a Chinese store to buy something.  The counter clerk, obviously from HK, asked me politely "What can I do for you?"(I guess) in Cantonese with a smiling face.  Although I learnt some Cantonese when I was a little boy staying at HK with my family, throughout so many years I had totally forgotten the dialect all.  So I used English to express what I wanted, and I expressed myself of being unable to speak Cantonese.  In no time his face was bearing sulky look and said to me in English which you might hardly believe: "I can't be of any serivce to you unless you can find me a better English-speaking person or anyone who knows Cantonese, because I don't understand your lousy English."  I just couldn't believe my ears; what a blatant prejudice it was!  If he were a Caucasian American, an African American or an other Asian American, he might have been accused of racism.  

My brother, who lived in Canada, told me not long he went to Hong Kong with a friend from HK.  At HK airport terminal they wanted some information from the airline they were travelling with.  When they approached the airline counter, my brother saw two counter girls conversing with each other in Cantonese.  Then he was preparing to ask them some questions in Cantonese, too(he knows the dialect).  No sooner had he started to talk, than his friend stopped him and directly talked to the girls in English.  Afterwards my brother asked his friend why he did that way, and the latter replied that speaking English in HK would earn you more respect and better treatment.  

The stories reflected the social mindset of "高等華人" in Hong Kong, especially among those "intelligentsia".  So the decline of such a pathetic mental superiority as Mainland becomes richer and richer and HK is doomed to be marginalized might have been one of the root causes that ignited the riot this time.  Poor HKers, as well as Taiwaneses, you just don't know what  real greatness is and the irreversible destiny of yours.