After living in Hong Kong for more than 19 years, I fully sympathise with the complaints of Tsim Sha Tsui hoteliers and retailers about the new roadworks in the area.
Hong Kong has always been one huge construction and roadworks site. But perhaps we can look at this as an opportunity for Hong Kong to promote itself as more than just a collection of densely packed, over-priced, rip-off shops in an area that still calls itself the 'Golden Mile', which is a classic Hong Kong oxymoron. We have other shopping areas, beaches, country parks, museums, markets and the like. We could do more with these features, but the fact that we do not is the fault of a short-sighted government.
Do people honestly come to Hong Kong to shop - and get ripped off - any more? I don't think so. Hong Kong shops are generally overpriced, and somehow manage to employ staff who lack the ability to communicate effectively with foreign visitors, while at the same time being rude. It is going to take more than a few adverts featuring Canto-pop singer Andy Lau Tak-wah to sort out Hong Kong's service problems.
If Hong Kong hasn't worked out that people visit a country to do more than just shop in expensive stores and stay in over-priced hotels, then I believe we are doomed.
I hope that our visitors will enjoy finding out that there is more to Hong Kong than the eyesores of Chungking and Mirador mansions, the touting of tailors and copy watches, the dripping of air-conditioners, exhaust fumes from buses on Nathan Road and the discourteous behaviour of many people they encounter.
CLIVE A. GREGORY