Here's a list you don't see often... 'the world's 20 unfriendliest countries for expats.'
Those of us who live in Singapore are used to succumbing to a wry smile when we see the Lion City top the 'Best of...' lists - so this makes for amusing reading.
Who'd have thought that democratic Scandinavian countries are nestled together with some of the harshest and unforgiving regimes on the planet?
For transparency, your reporter lived in Russia and found the locals so friendly that he married one.
This survey, by Expat Insider, conducted by InterNations (InterNations was bought by XING - the German LinkedIn - two years ago) is quite light on reasoning, so I would take it with a kilo of two of salt. The survey asked readers to rank cities on everything from their value to the friendliness of their people. Hong Kong found itself at the top of the world’s unfriendliest cities list, as the readers “didn’t find Hong Kong Residents to be particularly helpful”. Some of us may beg to differ!
In reverse order:
20 Hong Kong
19 Kazakhstan
18 Chile
17 Hungary
16 South Korea
15 France
14 Austria
13 Japan
12 Russia
11 Germany
10 Czech Republic
9 Finland
8 China
7 Qatar
6 Sweden
5 Norway
4 Switzerland
3 Denmark
2 Saudi Arabia
1 Kuwait
Let's stop and think for a moment. General courtesies on a day to day basis in your new home city. In a densely populated city, it wouldn't make sense to stop whatever you're doing and go through the motions of a polite social interaction with everyone you met either socially or professionally - there are simply too many people you come in to contact with, especially when you first move to a new city.
This may seem like rudeness, but - funnily enough - it's actually the exact opposite: it's being considerate.
A corollary of this is that population density affects expectations of privacy and respect. People living in big cities don't tend to share their most personal details with just anyone, again because there are just too many people, and because you are not necessarily likely to form a close personal bond with any given stranger you meet (unlike in a smaller, most-everyone-knows-each-other community).
Thus, mannerisms that might be polite or friendly in a small town - like asking about someone's children - could easily be invasive and unwelcome in big cities. This isn't because people in big cities are all paranoid misanthropes; it's because the social dynamics in a big city setting are different.
Source: Some excerpts from this article first appeared in Expat Insider
