I first came to England on the 23^rd  August 2009. Before that, in Romania, I was working full-time and studying full-time. I studied chemistry, which I only did two years of, but I also worked in a hotel bar. 

Originally, I wanted to go to America, but that was too expensive, so I signed up to a recruitment agency to get a job in England. I found out about the agency through someone I already knew from the old bar, who had gone to London to work. This person said it was fine and dandy over here. Everybody can afford everything. Well, obviously not a Ferrari, but within reason. 

I asked him how to apply and he told me it cost roughly £1000. That’s a lot of money. It took me a year to save that. When I went home I felt like an outcast, not because people pushed me away but because I don’t spend my money on luxurious things. In Romania, if someone earned half what I earn here, they would go out every night, buy expensive stuff, treat themselves and only leave themselves a euro.

I had two interviews; one here in England and one back home. It turned out I was overprepared for it, I was so stressed but in the end it was only a conversation. I got through this first interview and then I had a phone interview with a hotel in Oxford: Oxford Spires Four Pillars Hotel. They must have liked me because they asked if I could come and start work on Friday. The interview was on Monday. It happened just like that. I said I could. The flight was £50. I only bought a one way. One-way only, I wasn’t going back.

When I arrived, I was a newbie. I changed all my Romanian money into Pounds and, you know, it’s not a fair exchange. But I’d never been abroad, so I got fooled. I ended up with only £70 for five weeks. But that was okay, I knew how to survive on bread and tea. At the start I worked every day because we got given free food at work.

The main reason people come to England is because of the diaspora. Yes, it is an English word. Everyday you learn something new. Diaspora is a group of people of the same nationality when you go abroad. When I first arrived, English old people, they couldn’t understand anything. The younger ones were ok more or less. The Older ones were like:

“I beg your pardon. Sorry?”

And I was like, why don’t you understand me? It’s your language.

Turns out I was just talking too fast. In Romania people talk fast.

I stayed at the hotel for a year. I had to stay there a year, as at the time according to the agreement between the EU and Britain there were restrictions on Romanians working here. After three months I was promoted to supervisor, but they forgot to increase my pay, so I ended up earning the same.

I started working here at Trinity in 2011. It will be 5 years this May. I love working at Trinity, it’s nice and relaxing. The best bit though has to be the food. What’s that saying? The path to a man’s heart is through his stomach? My official title is SCR assistant, which at other colleges is called ‘under butler,’ but that role is on paper only.

I like it here, I work Monday to Friday, 8 till 4, I can row, and I’ve been told I can play college football on the weekends if I want to. I used to play football before with some Romanian guys; we called ourselves FC Romania and played in lots of competitions with teams based on nationalities. The games were five-aside or seven-aside, and the Spanish usually won. I mean, we have skill too, but they are just better. We did it for charity too.

My main day-to-day roles? You mean, apart from taking your money in the mornings? After that I just have to tidy up the SCR, make the fireplace and make it as comfortable as possible for the fellows. For a few months I would listen to the radio in French, just to hear people talking in French, and to help me remember it from school. One day they were talking politics in French and the French tutor asked me why I was listening to French radio, so I said, why would I listen to English radio? I like French, it’s more musical than English. I’ve been doing it since kindergarten.

I first wanted to get involved with the Boat Club three years ago. The captain at the time told me I should go for it. So one day when I was in the gym, I realised that I could lift as much, if not more than, some of the rowers. I asked the Boat club guys what the test was to join. I didn’t know if they let anyone do it. They told me row as much as possible, so I went on a rowing machine for ten minutes and then I was dead. Now I love being able to row in M2.

Next year I am starting a French course at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. It’s two hours a week and you just do French. I think they start by teaching you the alphabet and things like that, but I want to start on a higher level. I guess I’ll go along and see what happens.

My funniest memory of Trinity hall is when all the football players took their trousers down for ‘trousers-down dessert’, whilst high table were still there.

Sometimes I feel bad when students leave. Last year I did a ‘degree day,’ it was Ben Lake’s year finishing and I started at Trinity when he started. When I saw him and some of the other students leaving I nearly cried. They were such nice people and very polite, regardless of their backgrounds. Likewise, the fellows here are very humble and will help me if I need it, which surprised me.

If I was studying here what subject would I do? I think I would do philosophy. One time a philosophy tutor left their tutorial papers in the SCR, so I read them whilst working on the till. It was about metaphysics, and I thought, I could study this. I like talking in the SCR about random stuff with him and the other philosophy tutor. I like the way they think. They’re so objective about everything. They simply want to learn as much as possible. They don’t label you, but try to understand you and why you do things. I think having a mentality like this is very useful in day-to-day life even if you don’t want to be a philosopher.

As Hong Kong’s Chinese New Year celebrations descended into chaotic rioting, my Facebook wall exploded with vehement denunciations of the city’s government. It transpires that police officers had fired warning shots into the air, a virtually unprecedented act in one of the world’s least violent cities. Bizarrely, the latest set of protests that provoked a police crackdown were waged not over political issues, but were instead carried out in the name of defending unlicensed street hawkers from a government crackdown. 

Whatever the merits of such policies (surely the government could have picked a better time than the most important holiday of the year?), it is difficult to see why this could have aroused a crowd of this sort of protestors. These were violent and deliberately confrontational campaigners, ostensibly linked to the ‘localist’ movement. And that was precisely the point: the specific trigger of last night’s events was nothing more than a convenient casus belli for a large, alienated and increasingly vocal segment of the city’s population. 

Most self-identified localists are of course entirely law-abiding citizens. It would be delusional for the government to try to paint all protestors as bottle-throwing anarchists, although Chief Executive C. Y. Leung certainly cannot be accused of possessing either moderation or common sense in abundance. I do understand why so many young people in the city state, people I grew up alongside, have found themselves attracted to a movement which professes to uphold ‘Hong Kong’ values and Cantonese culture. But I am nonetheless appalled by what parts of this movement stand for and what they aim to achieve. I shudder at the thought that the city of my birth would turn its back on the currents of trade, of intellectual ferment, and of courageous, ambitious immigrants who transformed a barren outcrop on the fringes of China into one of the world’s greatest cities.

Been on the Star Ferry? That was founded by a Parsi from Bombay in the nineteenth century. Stayed at the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon? That was founded by Mizrahi Jewish people from Iraq, a family which remains prominent in Hong Kong’s public life. But the city is not unique in this regard. The world’s great entrepôts did not spring out of nowhere – it took ingenuity, perseverance, and tolerance of outsiders from undistinguished backgrounds speaking eccentric languages and worshipping foreign deities for Hong Kong to acquire its glittering skyline.

Today’s localists reject anything that is not ‘indigenous’ to their city – for them, you cannot be a member of the community without speaking Cantonese. They adopt the mantle of liberalism and progressivism, yet many turn a blind eye to the systematic and shameful marginalisation of refugees, asylum seekers and domestic helpers who live in the city’s dark shadows. If their views had triumphed a century ago, neither of Hong Kong’s two famed seats of higher learning could have existed. The egg tarts much beloved by our Chancellor (and your correspondent) would never have existed in their current form: they’re largely an adaptation of a Portuguese staple. 

We often look wistfully upon the vanished, cosmopolitan world of port cities the world over. The imperialists who shattered that world, bringing misery, bloodshed, poverty and ignorance in their wake genuinely believed in their goals. They were in many cases principled, honourable men and women fighting for a cause they deemed to be just. And so history repeats itself, thousands of miles to the east this time, in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

In the name of fighting tyranny, imperialism and exploitation, the radicalised youth direct their anger towards the same forces that have brought peace and prosperity to their nation. The signposts and bottles flung at Hong Kong’s police force last night will easily be turned against defenceless immigrants from China, Pakistan, Myanmar, Nigeria, the DRC and even further afield. For months, years already, waves of abuse and contempt have already been unleashed online. I despise Hong Kong’s government for its pusillanimity towards Beijing, for its incompetence and for its sheer insensitivity to public opinion.

But let’s not kid ourselves: there is an increasingly dark underbelly amid the democratic opposition as well, and one that does not bode well for anyone who stands for the internationalism and basic tolerance. In this confused landscape, I cannot understand how so many can blind themselves to the intolerance and hatred that permeates part of the localist movement.

And of course, there are a great many Hong Kong people who are tireless advocates for minority rights but nonetheless identify with the ‘localist’ movement. They fear that mainland immigrants will dilute the city’s culture and take over local institutions, but treat those of their friends and relatives from China with respect and courtesy. I have little faith that Beijing’s propaganda outlets will recognise this basic distinction, but there remain, in an increasingly divided city, decent men and women from across the political spectrum who reject both extremes.

Yet equality and tolerance are not items on a menu from which we can pick. You cannot advocate sympathy and tolerance from some people, yet reject the basic equality of others. It is high time that we discard the irrational supposition that your basic loyalties are determined by the lottery of birth. Across the world, there is a pressing need to engage in a sensible, rational debate on immigration and refugee policies. But that can never be a pretext for vilifying an entire people en masse without regard to the unique circumstances of each and every individual. Oxonians are never slow to condemn racism or intolerance in their own university or country; the challenge now is whether we are willing to hold other countries to these universal principles, or consign the ‘Hong Kong’s of this world to the trap of low expectations and the untold misery this brings.