This is big news in Hong Kong right now. Together with the story of the influx of Mainland Chinese women giving birth in public hospitals, it has stirred up the anti-Mainland sentiments again. I wonder how the HK govt is going to handle this one.
Having lived in Canada for 20+ years, my view is different from my fellow citizens in Hong Kong, especially those who have never lived in Europe and North America and have never experienced racism and discrimination first hand. The guy who openly scolded the Mainland Chinese mother on the MTR was WRONG. If he had a problem with people eating, why didn't he report it to the MTR management? Who did he think he was by shouting at people like this? Was he an employee of the MTR?
I have seen a lot of white people doing exactly the same thing to Chinese or other Asian people on public transit in Canada, sometimes to seniors who hardly spoke any English. I do not believe that that guy who scolded the Mainland Chinese woman really cared about cleanliness on the MTR. I do not believe either that he would have talked to the woman the same way if she was a Cantonese-speaking local.
To the whites, all Chinese, wherever you are from, Japanese, Korean, etc. are all the same, and equally alien. I always tell my friends back in HK the same thing. The reason why they do not like the Mainland Chinese is that they fail to look at the big picture. If they have lived abroad for a substantial period of time (not just studying in a sheltered environment like in a university for a couple of years), their thinking will change.