Extract

In the Western world, average weekly working hours have been declining since the middle of last century.1 (Gratton and Taylor, 2004) The increase in free time comes with the issue of how to use it. The prosperous development of the leisure industry is one response. But this is not the case in Hong Kong. A study of working over-time in Hong Kong conducted by the Department of Psychology of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2005 indicates that mean weekly working time is fifty hours.2 In fact, there is a high percentage of peoplewho have to work for more than seventy hours a week. Despite the relatively long daily working hours, what to do one’s free time is still an important issue to people in Hong Kong, but it takes a different form from the western world. The purpose of this paper is to explore how free time and work are understood in an environment where there is less free time, and to explore the meaning of leisure for free time and work.

Leisure and spirituality

Free time is an important element for having leisure, but it is not leisure itself. But nowadays, leisure is mostly understood in terms of free time and free activity, and as a result, the nature of leisure is left aside. Free time means the available time, and an agent is free to do anything as well as do nothing. In this context, people can only have leisure...