1 - obsession with money
Intelligence is directly measured (and admired) by how much money you acquire/earn/negotiate/embezzle/scam through speculation and greed, and save through pettiness and cheating. People say (and think) they're "investing" when they're basically gambling. Breakfast is spent watching financial market news on tv. Late twentysomethings to early fortysomethings are preoccupied with buying property, life insurance and retirement plans - while still living at home with parents who conveniently cook and clean for them... until they get married.

2 - get rich quick attitude
People don't read, they scan self-help books for bullet points on how to improve themselves and get very rich by working very little, as fast as possible. They would rather play the stock market than work an honest job, yet they crave financial security. They have no patience to start from the bottom and work their way up - they want to be their own boss, get high on cash flow and tell others what to do.

3 - lack of curiosity
Why go out and explore a different part of Hong Kong when you can spend your weekend shopping, eating dimsum and watching TV shows about eating and gossip? Like the show where airheaded girls cook for dull boys who judge them, or the one where B-stars humiliate themselves doing stupid slapstick tricks with cartoon effects. Now that's funny and familiar. After all, why bother to leave oh-so-convenient Hong Kong at all, unless it's to take an organized package tour to have cheap, guaranteed "fun" (preferably in Thailand)?

4 - superficiality
If people do read novels, they're well-hyped bestsellers. When they see movies, they're either Hollywood blockbusters or local "must-sees". They see the movie so that they can say they saw it, and repeat what everyone else is saying about it, but have no original comment of their own. People thrive on stereotypes and judge others by their appearance, so that they can be know-it-alls, rather than expressing any genuine interest in the individual, or even questioning themselves.

5 - inferiority complex
People look down on mainlanders, yet their own putonghua is pathetic. They look down on Asians who speak bad cantonese, yet they know it's just a dialect, that anyone who wants to go far with Chinese learns mandarin. They suck up to gweilos, hardly differentiating between foreign tourists and expats, and then look down on locals just like themselves. They think Chinese is old-fashioned and anything White and Western is educated, rich and powerful. Oh, and Japan is just totally cool. So Kong girls go for gweilos, while tram boys veg out on video games.