There’s the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens on next month. Seats limited to 25,000 (out of 40,000), Vaccine passes mandatory, same-day negative test mandatory, masking mamdatoey, with marshalls in the crowd to remind people to keep their masks on. What jolly fun!
In Australias recent football season 100,000 filled the grounds regularly. No sign of a blip on the Covid cases radar. This seems to mean nothing to Hong Kong authorities.
Jason Wordie makes the point today in the Post:
Now that Hong Kong’s hermit-like isolation is finally ending, tourism – one of the four pillars of the local economy – seems desperate for revival. Proclaiming somewhere a “hub” means little when punctured inner tubes remain unrepaired, and the wheels themselves fell off some distance down the road.Still the platitudes roll on, regardless of actual circumstances. “Pearl of the Orient” – that worn-out local cliché – has been trotted out once again, most recently by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu at a relaunch function.But determinedly saying that something is so – and as many times as deemed necessary – is not the same as ensuring interchangeable strings of words align with public perceptions, or aggregated lived experiences.All right-thinking persons are now urged to tell “good” Hong Kong stories to the world. But does unimaginative recourse to time-expired “Pearl of the Orient” imagery really help turn things around for the better? [Read on …]
