Glorious Golden Week

The Standard on the delights of cramming (‘welcoming’) more tourists into an already jam-packed city…

As Hong Kong welcomed over 600,000 visitors in the first three days of the National Day Golden Week, the city faced severe traffic congestion across Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, with long queues forming at popular tourist spots. 

…The influx of tourists during the Golden Week holiday significantly strained the city’s transport network, particularly in traditional tourist hubs like Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui. 

The concentration of visitors, many traveling via tour buses or ride-hailing services, led to frequent pick-up and drop-off activities that clogged roads.

While the heavy traffic reflects robust economic activity driven by tourist spending on dining, hotels, and luxury goods, the [HK Automobile Association] cautioned against equating gridlock with prosperity.

Did the traffic jams ‘reflect’ tourist expenditure? And if there was extra spending, how much of it simply went to landlords?

HKFP on the crowds of Mainland tourists descending on Sharp Island last week…

Greenpeace alleged that some boats had ignored the regulation by the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department and anchored directly within the coral zone on Wednesday.

A large number of visitors also dug up coastal organisms such as starfish, sea urchins, and clams, while others littered and started fires illegally for cooking, the group said.

According to Greenpeace’s Chinese-language statement, “the excessive crowds undoubtedly put immense pressure on the environment.”

It went on to say, “Too many tourists were also gathered there to snorkel, with some even walking on the coral surface, which could break or kill the coral…

…The “overcrowding” at Sharp Island this week proved that the approach of strengthening enforcement at specific tourist hotspots was a “piecemeal solution” that does not solve the issue of overtourism, [a Greenpeace spokesman] said.

Maybe because overtourism is – in effect – government policy? The obvious reason for this is that bureaucrats, under orders to boost the economy, measure their success in terms of higher visitor numbers. No matter that making Hong Kong a nastier place to live might be counterproductive in any way.

Another explanation comes to mind as you struggle to get through hordes of Mainlanders taking selfies in the latest Xiaohongshu-promoted rundown/picturesque districts. You ask ‘why is the government doing this to us?’ and wonder whether it’s a deliberate plan to overwhelm the city with Mandarin-speakers as punishment for its perceived lack of loyalty to the motherland. An absurd idea, of course – but that’s what it feels like.

The government leaps into action…

The Environment and Ecology Bureau said it would review its crowd management measures at country parks to enhance ecological conservation.

This came after it received reports of visitors capturing marine life, trampling on coral and cooking on the beach at Sharp Island in Sai Kung during the National Day Golden Week holiday.

Sharp Island is part of Hong Kong’s Unesco Global Geopark.

The bureau has called on visitors to protect nature and wildlife and bring their rubbish home.

Also: increased patrols, including distribution of leaflets.

Sharp Island is hard to get to. But unless they’re going to surround other over-visited spots with barbed wire, there isn’t much they can do. Everyone knows that Mainland tourists have a particular approach to travel: everyone must go to the same place to take the same photo. They will flock to places like Sharp Island because most of them never see a beach where they come from. Similarly, Hong Kong’s earliest urban districts (Victorian-era granite walls, weird trees, graffiti) have a unique, even exotic, vibe compared with the shabby Stalinesque brutalism of their own cities’ older neighbourhoods. 

Maybe in time they will acquire a taste for less herd-like leisure travel. But meanwhile, if you make it easy for them to cross the border, this overcrowding will continue. And if you make it harder – well, that would be unpatriotic, wouldn’t it?

It’s not just Mainlanders who find Hong Kong’s ‘grottitecture’ attractive compared with their own urban sterility. An Asia Times column, by a Singaporean, argues that Singapore could borrow some of Hong Kong’s ‘edginess’…

…rather than erasing its imperfections, Hong Kong has embraced them as defining features that make life there exhilarating. And as both metropolises invariably compete for financial flows and global talent, this “edginess” has grown into a decisive advantage, one which Singapore has much to learn from.

Hong Kong’s bankers enjoy an enviable range of leisure options after work, from gorging on Michelin-star quality dim sum to downing cocktails in the boozy quarter of Lan Kwai Fong, all within a ten-minute walk of the Central finance district.

Singapore’s offerings, which subsume a limited variety of hawker center meals and sanitized nightlife concentrated in the Clarke Quay precinct, pale in comparison.

Such disparities extend beyond cuisine and clubs; the curated, top-down nature of Singapore’s mega-events can limit their public appeal, with five of the 15 art galleries at Gillman Barracks closing down just three years after opening.

Conversely, Hong Kong’s Clockenflap concerts and Tai Hang Fire Dragon Festivals flourish through hands-on community participation, making them feel distinctly authentic.

…Singapore could fund independent organizers of apolitical entertainment initiatives … create a more diverse, textured identity … foster Southeast Asian cultural districts and promote their food, music and art…

It’s all relative.

HKFP op-ed on the travel industry’s strange ideas – such as the notion that people arrange flight plans according to how appealing various intermediate airports are…

As one speaker put it, “If passengers can enjoy a comfortable and pleasant shopping experience at Hong Kong airport, there would be little incentive to seek transit through … other destinations.”

Someone needs to grab these people firmly by the ear and explain that air passengers are not looking for a “comfortable and pleasant shopping experience.” In fact, attempts to turn air travel into a shopping experience are more resented than appreciated.

…It is a basic axiom of international air travel that all airports are very much the same. The differences between them pale into insignificance compared with matters like the date and time of the flight, the intended destination, the impact of a mid-journey change, if any, and above all, of course, the price of the ticket. The flight, we hope, will be comfortable and pleasant. The airport merely has to be efficient.

Yet international surveys keep insisting that the best airport is Changi, not the one we have to spend least time at. Really – they’re just Greyhound Bus stations.