Well you should be careful what you wish for. Hong Kong is seeing a lot more tourists visiting from the mainland. The bad news: many of them are coming in ways which involve very little local spending.
Many tours reportedly come just for the day. Their interaction with the Hong Kong economy is limited to maybe one meal. “Forced shopping” is apparently no longer a thing; these visitors can’t afford it.
There is also a new category of visitors: mainland backpackers. They are looking for an ultracheap visit, and many of them can be found economising on accommodation expenses by spending the night in a 24-hour McDonalds.
Clearly this sort of thing involves all the inconvenience for locals that tourism can bring, while making a disappointing contribution to wealth and business. Perhaps this explains the Hong Kong government’s newfound enthusiasm for marinas catering for big yachts.
After all a billionaire in a private plane is attended only by a pilot and a flight attendant. A yacht will bring to our shores not only the super-rich owner but his crew: skipper and mate, engineer and mate, chef and assistant, a couple of “house-keepers” to make the beds and a couple of deckhands to pull ropes and polish brass. Enjoy your run ashore, people.
Sooner or later I expect to see the government take this approach to its logical extreme and provide facilities for the most expensive and upmarket of sports: horse polo. Players have to be rich – a small herd of horses is required – and there are four people on each team. A simple knock-our competition for four teams would assemble 16 millionaires.
In response to complaints about the cheap end of the tourism boom, Chief Executive John Lee said that Hong Kong must “welcome all kinds of tourists”. I find myself in the unaccustomed position of agreeing entirely with Mr Lee.
There are two reasons for this. One is that it is the right thing to do. Poor people have just as much right to merriment and diversion as rich people. Helping the poor is praised by most of the big religions. Being kind to strangers is a virtue.
The second more pragmatic reason is that today’s young backpackers will be tomorrow’s well-heeled visitors. Some of them may even eventually own yachts. Early impressions of holiday destinations have a lasting impact on later choices.
In this connection it is useful, as Scotland’s national poet put it, “to see ourselves as others see us.” This is, interestingly, from a poem called “To a louse, on seeing one on a lady’s bonnet at church.” but I digress.
One rather worrying account of a low-budget visit appeared recently in the Standard, translated by Marco Lam from a social media post. It relates the visit of two ladies (not really relevant link but I couldn’t resist it), who decided to economise by staying a costless night in the Central McDonalds.
On their way they recorded nervous moments in “dimly-lit backstreets” in which there were “foreigners peering out.” They changed their route and took to main roads.
The McDonalds was “full of holidaymakers”. They met one helpful local, and one suspicious man who (thank goodness) was a mainlander. They then set off at three in the morning for the ferry pier. Apparently they wanted to watch the sun rise on Cheung Chau. At this point the story gets a bit puzzling:
“Walking through Lan Kwai Fong’s bar district, they endured what they called ‘the most intense part’ of their night – a gauntlet of drunken foreigners whose ‘invasive, provocative stares’ left them terrified despite their conservative clothing. Only upon reaching the ferry pier and seeing other travellers did they finally feel safe, the woman wrote.”
The puzzle is this: the all-night McDonalds is in Sheung Wan. To get to the Outer Island ferries you must walk northeast. To get to Lan Kwai Fong you must walk southeast, quite a long way. Did the ladies take a huge detour? Mix up their timings? Mix up their geography?
Common sense suggests that walking through any city’s bar district at three in the morning is not for the timid. I doubt if Hong Kong is in any way unusual in this respect and in many places wandering women would have more than “invasive provocative stares”, whatever that means, to worry about.
The horror story provoked some constructive comments from local netizens, including suggestions of other free sleeping places, or affordable offerings where you would actually get a bed and a bath. Perhaps some sort of Lonely Planet-like directory of Hong Kong for the financially challenged visitor could be produced.
I would like to take issue with the two mainland ladies’ evident problem with “foreigners”. Look, there is nothing to fear here. The times have long passed when most of the young foreign men in Hong Kong were drawn from the brutal and licentious soldiery. We also no longer have young Brits arriving with nothing but a fresh degree and a UK passport, with a view to looking for work and enjoying 24-hour drinking, not then permitted in England.
Most of the foreigners in Hong Kong now are mature and respectable lawyers, bankers or (yawn) accountants. English teachers cannot afford Lan Kwai Fong prices. We may peer but we do not pester. Relax.
tim's experiment 