In 2019, Leung joined a Hong Kong movement to boycott Chinese-owned restaurants like many protesters opposing President Xi Jinping’s encroachment of the former British colony. Now she and her peers regularly go out of their way to the neighboring mainland city of Shenzhen for cheap food and massages.
“Hong Kong used to have freedom,” said Leung, who asked to use only her last name because she joined what authorities deem as illegal protests. “Now it’s lost all that. So why wouldn’t I go to mainland China, where at least things are cheaper?”
