City Beat | China’s two Disneylands: competitors or complementary attractions?
Hong Kong should no longer take advantage of delays in building major attractions on the mainland
Over the years, every new report of progress at Shanghai Disneyland has touched a nerve with Hongkongers. So when it was announced recently that its grand opening would be in June this year, to many in the city, especially those in the local tourism industry, the instant reaction was: so the day is finally coming.
More interestingly, the timing of Shanghai Disney’s opening will be very special – the horse month of the Year of the Monkey. In traditional Chinese culture, when one loses hope amid endless waiting, a very colloquial saying is: “Do I have to wait until the horse month of the monkey year?”
READ MORE: Shanghai Disneyland to finally open in June, three times bigger than Hong Kong version - and may be cheaper to boot
According to Chinese zodiac calculations, such a time comes every 12 years, which is not very long. However, it has become the traditional way of expressing one’s frustration over a lengthy wait.
Many mainlanders, especially Shanghainese, have all of a sudden realised that the horse month of the monkey year doesn’t necessarily mean hopelessness because sometimes dreams do come true. Indeed, 2016 is the Year of the Monkey, and mid-June is the horse month in the Chinese calendar.
Robert Iger, chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company, said the Shanghai theme park “reflects Disney’s legendary storytelling along with China’s rich culture”, adding that “we’re looking forward to showing it to the world and sharing it with the people of China for generations to come”.
It has taken this US$5.5 billion mega project more than 15 years from negotiation to completion, longer than the 12-year-cycle for a horse month in a monkey year, but it has proved to be a fruitful wait. No wonder many joked that Shanghai Disney had injected new meaning into the concept of “waiting” in Chinese – that patience can be rewarding.
For years, “waiting” for the completion of Shanghai Disney, the first on the mainland but the second in China, always had a direct connection with Hong Kong, which saw its own Disney theme park open back in 2005, two years after the city was hit by the deadly Sars epidemic.