There was a saying around 1997 that you do not have to learn Putonghua as long as you do not cross the Lo Wu Bridge and enter Chinese mainland territory.
Nowadays, you may hear it in the crowded Causeway Bay shopping area, be it street hawkers or Hong Kongers giving directions to mainland tourists.
Prior to Hong Kong's return to China, Cantonese and English dominated this international city. Over the past 15 years, however, the usage of Putonghua has increased as communication and cooperation between Hong Kong and the mainland increased.
Last year, Putonghua exceeded English to become the city's second most popular language, according to the 2011 Population Census released by the city's statistic department in February.
Good command of Putonghua has been in greater demand in Hong Kong's workplace in recent years. Data from JobsDB, one of the biggest recruiting websites in Hong Kong, showed that over the past six months, about 11 percent of the overall employers clearly requried job candidates to have a command of Putonghua.
Professions in fields of banking and finance have the highest demand for Putonghua speakers, reflected in 18.6 percent of all classified ads on the site, followed by 17.1 percent of all public and civil sector ads, 16.9 percent in real estate, 15.2 percent in professional services and 14.1 percent in beauty care and health.
Tiffany Wong, manager of human recourse at headhunting service Robert Walters, told Xinhua News Agency that most of their clients are foreign companies with branches in Hong Kong to serve the Chinese mainland, and about 60 to 70 percent of them inclined to hire staff that can speak Putonghua.
"Before the return of Hong Kong, the command of English was almost a must in the city's career market, but now Putonghua has also become a common requirement."
Apart from higher demand in the workplace, education is another driving force for the prevalence of Putonghua in Hong Kong.
Putonghua has been part of the core curriculum of Hong Kong's primary schools since 1998. Students can receive nine years of Putonghua classes from grade one in primary schools to grade three in junior high.
Currently all universities and colleges in Hong Kong offer Putonghua curriculums.
Chan Shui-duen, professor of the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said that few students could speak Putonghua 15 years ago, while the level of Putonghua skill among Hong Kong students has largely increased in recent years.
Chan found many primary school students can speak Putonghua as fluently as Cantonese while attending some reading contests over the past two years.
According to the 2011 Population Census, Hong Kong had a population of 7.07 million, about 46.5 percent of which claimed to be able to speak Putonghua, representing a jump of 13.2 percentage points compared to that of 2001.
Besides, 1.4 percent of the population spoke Putonghua as their first language in 2011, also higher than 0.9 percent in 2001.
Peng Qinghua, director of the Liaison Office of the Chinese Central People's Government in Hong Kong, said he had visited the city before 1997, at a time when salespersons and taxi drivers hardly could speak Putonghua, causing much inconvenience to tourists from the mainland.
He said most salesmen and taxi drivers nowadays can speak Putonghua, in addition, many young people in the mainland can speak or understand Cantonese, reflecting a closer communication between the two sides since the return of Hong Kong.
All these could attribute to the series of cooperation agreements signed by Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland in the last one and half decades, especially the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement and Individual Visit Scheme introduced in 2003.
The State Language Commission has set up test centers with all the 11 universities and colleges in Hong Kong since 1996 for organizing the National Putonghua Proficiency Test. According to the commission, 141 tests were taken in 1996, while the number hit more than 70,000 as of the end of 2010.
Xinhua