[ad_1]
The only tour bus that descends on Hong Kong’s blue-collar neighborhood known as To Kwa Wan – literally translated as Potato Bay – picks up a crowd of travelers from mainland China outside a large restaurant waiting for a quick lunch inside.
Wearing white, red and orange ball caps to indicate the tours that are there, visitors crowded the sidewalks, smoked cigarettes at the “No Smoking” sign and crashed into the glass shop at the real estate office where Nicky Lam, a property agent. , this rolled his eyes.
“He was very loud,” said Ms. Lam, complained that some tourists use the office bathroom and water cooler without asking.
“A tourist came in and asked for a restaurant recommendation,” he added. “I looked at him and said, ‘This is a real estate office.'”
The return of budget mainland tour groups in recent months since China’s border was closed by the pandemic in early 2020 has stoked old tensions in a city transformed by Beijing’s political violence.
Before the pandemic, the influx of mainlanders and their wealth into Hong Kong sent prices and rents soaring, fueling frustration among the city’s residents that sometimes spilled over into fanaticism. Nearly three years since Beijing enacted sweeping national security laws in Hong Kong to assert its political dominance, criticism of the mainland has often been muted.
Today, the general response to budget tourists – arriving at a package that costs only $ 175 for a two-day visit – is less welcoming, and sometimes rude.
Local residents also say that tourists – who tend to travel in groups of two dozen or more – are too crowded, snarling traffic and ruining public spaces by squatting and eating lunch indoors. One group offended local sensibilities by slurping cup noodles outside a public toilet in Repulse Bay, a beach with million-dollar homes.
Even some members of Hong Kong’s legislature, which is full of pro-Beijing lawmakers, have lost patience.
“Can we have some good quality tour groups?” Kitson Yang asked his colleagues during the recent legislative session while holding up a printed image of tourists destroying parts of the city.
Before the 2019 pandemic and pro-democracy protests, mainland visitors dominated Hong Kong’s tourism, accounting for nearly 80 percent of all arrivals in 2018. After the city implemented some of the world’s strictest pandemic measures, Hong Kong’s restaurants, hotels and shops are starving for business. The arrival of the budget tour coincides with the government’s recommendation to revive tourism in the city of 7.5 million people. Largely due to fewer flights, high-spending tourists have not been far away.
Cheap overland travelers do not face these problems as they travel by bus or boat. But local business owners have complained about his spending habits, which usually involve a few small purchases at the local pharmacy — the equivalent of visiting New York and picking up a tube of Neosporin from Walgreens.
“Budget tourists are mainly old people. They don’t spend much,” William Chong, a pharmacy operator in Kowloon, said recently after leaving his shop for six minutes – the amount of time the tour guides give each group to shop at one of the shops. .
At the dispensary, visitors swipe oil and instant coffee, but high-priced items like ginseng are off limits.
In online anti-government forums, tourist groups have provided fodder for ridicule, recalling the days when some locals openly used the slur “locust” to refer to mainlanders traveling to Hong Kong to buy cheaper powdered baby formula, drugs . and cosmetics for resale in China.
The taunting works both ways. Mainland users of Douyin, China’s domestic version of TikTok, have created hidden camera-style videos mocking Hong Kongers in Mandarin, in the predominantly Cantonese-speaking city. Others have posted videos of what happened to restaurant staff for using Mandarin.
Miu Wang, a tour guide, was recently on the second deck of a white and pink car ferry in Victoria Harbor that has been converted into a floating restaurant. He watched over dozens of mainlanders tucking into a humble spread that included egg roll soup, stir-fried lettuce and braised chicken and potato dishes that were mostly potatoes.
A 20-year business veteran, he says Hong Kong people are snobs.
“I have to take care of dozens of visitors at the same time,” Ms. Wang said about the complaint that the tourists showed boorish behavior. “I can’t control everyone.”
The city’s Tourism Minister, Kevin Yeung, urged residents to be more accommodating, even as he called for stricter supervision of visitors.
“Tourists will make the streets crowded, but it is a signal of economic growth,” Mr. Yeung said in a recent television interview. “Hong Kong people are known for being welcoming. It’s time to show this spirit again.
To deal with the crowds, the traffic police are now directing buses in neighborhoods like To Kwa Wan. Crowd control barriers on sidewalks funnel tourists to restaurants.
“I wanted to travel here for the past three years, but I couldn’t because of the pandemic,” said Zhang Zhanbin, 43, from northern China’s Hebei Province, who was visiting Hong Kong for the first time on a four-day tour. cost about $400.
Mr. Zhang, a mustachioed rubber factory worker, said he could not care about complaints because Hong Kong was back in Chinese hands, and not a British colony.
“I’m not worried about Hong Kong people discriminating against us.” said. “After all, Hong Kong is back.”
Hong Kong was supposed to maintain a high degree of autonomy for 50 years after returning to Chinese rule in 1997. The protests that swept the city in 2019 aimed to preserve those freedoms, and ultimately failed. Signs of the city’s authoritarianism now dot the urban landscape, from billboards promoting National Security Education Day to banners extolling the words of China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping.
The changes have made Hong Kong more attractive to mainland visitors like Guo Xiuli, a 56-year-old retired civil servant from the southern city of Chaozhou, who took an early morning photo at Golden Bauhinia Square, a popular tourist spot near the heart. from the financial district.
Guo, who was not a member of the budget tour group, said he was treated with more respect compared to his first visit to Hong Kong in 2004, when he felt that speaking Mandarin made him a target of fanaticism.
“I used to feel rejected, indifferent and impatient, especially when talking to waiters or asking for directions on the streets,” said Ms. Guo, who posed for the photo in red velor heels and a face mask made of lace and rhinestones. .
“I think it’s because the mainland economy has advanced,” he continued. “Hong Kong is not special in comparison.”
Zixu Wang contribute reports.
[ad_2]
Source link