Global Courant 2023-05-10 06:54:31
One by one, the tour buses descended into the working-class Hong Kong district known as To Kwa Wan – literally translating as Potato Bay – unloading throngs of travelers from mainland China outside major restaurants where a quick lunch awaited them inside.
Outfitted in white, red, and orange ball caps to indicate which tour they belonged to, attendees crowded the sidewalks, smoked cigarettes under a “No Smoking” sign, and crashed into the glass storefront of a real estate agency where Nicky Lam, a real estate agent , rolled her eyes.
“They make a lot of noise,” Ms. Lam said, complaining that some tourists used her office bathroom and water cooler without asking.
“A tourist came in and asked for restaurant recommendations,” she added. “I stared at him and said, ‘This is a real estate agency.'”
The return of low-cost tour groups to the mainland in recent months, for the first time since the pandemic closed China’s borders in early 2020, has rekindled old tensions in a city transformed by Beijing’s political crackdown.
Before the pandemic, an influx of mainlanders and their wealth into Hong Kong drove up prices and rents, leading to frustrations among the city’s residents that sometimes turned into outright bigotry. In the nearly three years since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong to assert its political dominance, criticism of the mainland has often been tempered.
Now the public’s response to the budget tourists — who arrive with packages costing just $175 for a two-day visit — has been less than welcoming and sometimes downright rude.
Local residents also say the tourists — who tend to travel in groups of two dozen or more — are too noisy, grunting traffic and trashing public spaces by crouching outside and dining on packed lunches. A group offended local sensibilities by slurping cup noodles outside a public restroom in Repulse Bay, a beachside redoubt of multimillion-dollar homes.
Even some members of Hong Kong’s legislature, which is packed with pro-Beijing lawmakers, have lost their temper.
“Can we have some good quality tour groups?” Kitson Yang asked his colleagues at a recent legislative session as he held up printed photos of the tourists flooding parts of the city.
Before the pandemic and pro-democracy protests of 2019, visitors from the mainland drove tourism in Hong Kong, accounting for nearly 80 percent of all arrivals in 2018. After the city imposed some of the most stringent pandemic measures in the world, restaurants, hotels and shops in Hong Kong were starved for business. The arrival of the budget tours coincides with the government’s aim to revive tourism in the city of 7.5 million inhabitants. Largely due to a lack of flights, however, high-spending tourists have stayed away.
Budget tourists on the mainland don’t have that problem because they travel by bus or boat. But local business owners have complained about their spending habits, which usually boil down to a few small purchases at local pharmacies — akin to visiting New York and getting away with a tube of Neosporin from Walgreens.
“Budget tourists are mainly older people. They don’t spend much,” William Chong, the operator of a pharmacy in Kowloon, said recently after coming out of a six-minute burst at his store — the amount of time tour guides spend each group shopping at a store.
In the pharmacy, visitors collected ointments and instant coffee, but left valuable goods such as ginseng untouched.
On online anti-government forums, the tour groups provide fodder for ridicule, harking back to the days when some locals openly use the slur “grasshoppersto refer to mainlanders who traveled to Hong Kong to buy cheaper powdered baby food, medicines and cosmetics to resell in China.
The harassment works both ways. Mainland users of Douyin, the domestic Chinese version of TikTok, have been shooting hidden-camera-style videos in the predominantly Cantonese-speaking city mocking Hong Kongers’ poor command of Mandarin. Others have posted videos of cases where they felt belittled by restaurant workers 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 had been converted into a floating restaurant. She watched dozens of mainlanders tuck into a humble spread that included egg drop soup, stir-fried lettuce, and a braised chicken and potato dish consisting mostly of potatoes.
A 20-year veteran of the company, she said Hong Kongers were snobs.
“I have to take care of dozens of visitors at once,” Mrs. Wang said of complaints that the tourists are behaving rudely. “I can’t control them all.”
The city’s tourism minister Kevin Yeung has urged residents to be more accommodating, even as he called for tighter monitoring of visitors.
“Tourists will crowd the streets, but it is a signal of economic growth,” Yeung said in a recent television interview. “People in Hong Kong are known for being hospitable. It is time to show that spirit again.”
To cope with the increased crowds, the traffic police are now directing buses in neighborhoods like To Kwa Wan. Crowd control barriers on sidewalks direct tourists to restaurants.
“I wanted to travel here for the last three years, but I couldn’t because of the pandemic,” said Zhang Zhanbin, 43, from northern China’s Hebei province, who first visited Hong Kong on a four-day tour that cost about $400.
Mr. Zhang, a mustachioed rubber factory worker, said he couldn’t care less about the complaints because Hong Kong was back in Chinese hands, not a British colony.
“I’m not too worried about Hong Kong people discriminating against us.” he said. “Hong Kong has finally been returned.”
Hong Kong would 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 at preserving those freedoms ultimately failed. Signs of the city’s authoritarian turn can now be seen all over the urban landscape, from the billboards promoting National Security Education Day to the banners extolling the words of China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.
Those changes have made Hong Kong more attractive to mainland visitors, such as Guo Xiuli, a 56-year-old retired state worker from the southern city of Chaozhou, who recently spent a morning taking photos at Golden Bauhinia Square, a popular tourist spot in the near the heart of the city. of the financial district.
Ms. Guo, who was not a member of a budget tour group, said she had been treated with more respect compared to her first visit to Hong Kong in 2004, when she felt speaking Mandarin made her a target of bigotry.
“I used to feel rejection, indifference and impatience, especially when talking to waitresses or asking for directions on the street,” said Ms. Guo, who dressed in red velor heels and a face mask made of lace and rhinestones for her photos.
“I think it’s because the mainland economy has developed,” she continued. “Hong Kong is not that special in comparison.”
Zixu Wang contributed reporting.
