Land, People, Language and Customs

Hong Kong is situated on the southeastern coast of China. The total land area is 1,104 square kilometres covering Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsula, the New Territories and 262 outlying islands that are mostly uninhabited.

About 92 per cent of the population (about 7.1 million residents) is of Chinese descent. There are significant expatriate populations from Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, the United States, Canada, Britain, Japan, India, Australia and Malaysia (in descending order).

Buddhism and Taoism have a considerable number of followers in Hong Kong while there are over 675,000 Christians, 220,000 Muslims, 40,000 Hindus, 10,000 Sikhs and 3,000 Jews.

The official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English. The majority of Hong Kong people speak the Cantonese dialect but Putonghua (also referred to as Mandarin) is gaining in popularity as closer ties develop with Mainland China.

English is the lingua franca of the expatriate community as well as within business, commerce, finance and professional circles.

In order to work smoothly, especially when organising locations and logistics, overseas production companies filming in Hong Kong are strongly advised to include production crew who can speak both English and Cantonese, as well as Putonghua if filming in Mainland China is envisaged.