Some badly needed good news today: the Hong Kong Central Waterfront Rotating Concept Observation Theme Hub has shut down. And not in a boring, official, legitimate manner – but without warning or explanation, in that shabby third-world sort of way that (we can only hope) inflicts severe reputational harm and convinces tourist hordes from around the world to go elsewhere, far away.
And sure enough, millions of overseas visitors (or three, at least) fall to the ground, sobbing and tearing their hair out in disappointment, and vow never to return to Hong Kong, Asia’s Hell-hole Destination. The city mourns in grief. The tourism authorities take emergency remedial action by rushing out the Dog’s Guide to Old-Town (huh?) Central.
My personal preference would have been for the unoriginal and unsightly Ferris wheel to have burst into flames (a la Hindenburg), then become detached from its axle and trundled east towards Tamar, causing a giant conflagration around the Government Palace, before tottering over onto its side into the harbour, creating a giant tsunami that swept over Tsimshatsui and wiped out hundreds of cosmetics stores and milk-powder vendors, leaving thousands of pink Hello Kitty suitcases dangling from trees in its wake. But, whatever.
Why not move the Ferris wheel to Stanley ? Then a certain contributor to this comments section could go round in pointless physical, as well as literary, circles.
My god! That dog guide thing is lame; a new low from the crackpots and desperados engaged by our clueless government on a futile quest to make Central, LKF, and SoHo attractive to visitors. I hope they get shit on their shoes.
And as for the ferris wheel, well it strikes me as a very apt analogy for Hong Kong in general. Pathetic.
It appears the Tourism Board has resorted to doing cross-promotions with local eccentrics. The owner of the dogs is a fixture around Sai Ying Pun, a marginally employed minor internet celebrity trying to be the canine equivalent of a mommy blogger. I’m not entirely sure which is the more desperate party in the arrangement, him or the Tourism Board.
What’s this. No tribute to the bumptious twat, the greatest social climber that has ever been, turned into saint of style by virtue of dropping dead?
David Tang was surely one of your own: titled, minor public school, awfully Tory, anti-Chinese, lover of the FCC.
@ Red Dragon. Twas ever thus. Moribund bureaucracy, glacial decision-making, zero imagination and a very strong aversion to listening to independent (outside the system) ideas.
25 years ago I took a folio of proposals to the HKTB – it was then a ‘Board’; after 26 internal meetings it was renamed what it is today, an ‘Authority’. It was mainly about tourism connectability. Extend Peak Tram by rail viaduct to Star Ferry, offer a ‘Round-the-Island Ferry’ service to help keep tourist busses off narrow Southern HK Island Roads. Stuff like that, all met with blank faces.
Same today. I looked toady at Carrie’s committee on public housing land thing. Yup, on the list was the Deputy Grand-Vizier of the Heung Yee Kuk.
No Paul Zimmerman. The one bloke in Hong Kong who has a vision – and excellent bilingual presentation skills and detail. As he says: ‘Hong Kong doesn’t have a land supply problem; it has a land use problem’. Zimmerframe would have a detailed proposal, with clearly identified sites, on Carrie’s desk in two weeks. But no, we have 18 months of blather and ‘public consultation’ ahead of us.
It’s dispiriting.
Your last graph is a lesson in brilliant, descriptive, vindictiveness.
Bravo!
Joining the dots. It is expected that the elite task force, assembled to slay the land supply dragon once and for all, are set to announce that the wheel’s new Operator is Cheung Kong Holdings. Cheung Kong are expected to announce their plan to turn the 42 gondolas into luxury high end boutique living spaces targeting young professionals in the financial industry. Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, whilst ignoring NT brownfield sites, rezoning industrial districts and closing Disneyland, said in a statement “The Taskforce has demonstrated that consensus can be achieved and I will not shirk to implement this one idea that the community demands” Cheung Kong declined to comment that the development will be called ‘Circle of Bollox.’
@pie-chucker – I assume “toady” in “I looked toady at Carrie’s committee on public housing land thing” was a typo, but it seems an apt description of the kind of people who get appointed to such bodies.
@ Old N
It was a typo. Read thru. Changed it, then changed it back to ‘toady’.
But genuine correction: HKTB/HKTA was a vice-versa change to my post. Still a useless name change some 15 years ago, no change to the department’s retention and recruitment of dullards.