Stocking retailer Au Yuk-ho has returned to hawking her wares from a barrow after sky-rocketing rents forced her out of the tiny shop she was renting in Causeway Bay.
Known by her customers as Sister Yuk, or Yuk Jie, the uncomplaining 72-year-old is now selling her socks and stockings in front of the 250 square foot store in Lee Garden Road she had rented for 12 years.
She quit the store, she says, when the landlord more than doubled the rent from HK$70,000 a month to HK$150,000.
So now she is back to where it all began 66 years ago, hawking her wares from a barrow. But the remarkable Sister Yuk, who has raised a family of five children on her stocking trade, bears no grudges and dismisses the idea that a merciless landlord kicked her out of her store.
'I won't go hiding at home, sobbing and complaining about cruel reality,' she said while arranging her colourful stockings on her barrow. 'I have cast away my dignity, but I won't give up.'
Rents on ground floors in Causeway Bay have soared 50 per cent since the beginning of 2010, according to a Hong Kong Quarterly Index compiled by Colliers International, and the property consultancy forecasts a further 12 per cent rise this year despite the slowdown in economic growth and tourism.
That increase will be in line with the city's overall increase this year, and Colliers' retail services director, Helen Mak Hoi-lun, said small storekeepers such as Yuk Jie were being forced out. A few months ago, she noted, a cafe was forced out of business after operating for 13 years from a humble 200 sq ft store in Hysan Avenue in Causeway Bay - victim of a 50 per cent rise in rent.