On a February afternoon, mainland visitor Li Xiabo sits down to pork and rice at a bustling outdoor cafe in Ocean Park. At the next table is a Hong Kong customer. His food is the same. The portion size is the same. In fact, the only difference is the price the two customers paid for their meals.
While the Hong Kong customer paid HK$45 for his lunch, Mr Li paid the equivalent of HK$51.70. And whether he is aware of it or not, from the start to the finish of his visit to the theme park, Mr Li will pay a hefty surcharge of about 13 per cent for everything he buys inside the park compared to the price paid by the man at the next table.
The reason for the disparity is simple: Mr Li - like hundreds of thousands of mainlanders a year at Ocean Park - paid for his meal in the cash of his home currency, the yuan. Hailed as a convenience for the growing number of mainlanders pouring into Hong Kong, the dual-currency approach appears to have become a method of increasing profit margins by stealth.
Ocean Park and Disneyland - in common with a number of big shops and department stores in Hong Kong - were last week offering a one-to-one exchange rate for customers paying in yuan even though 100 yuan was worth more than HK$113 at official rates.
When told of the practice by the Sunday Morning Post, both the chairman of the Hong Kong Tourism Board and the legislator representing the tourism sector described it as unfair and damaging to Hong Kong's image and called for a better deal to be offered to mainland visitors.
However, the theme parks and the shops with the one-to-one exchange rate - at a time when tourism numbers are falling and the government is working hard to attract more mainlanders - defended the policy, indicating they had no immediate plans to accept yuan at levels closer to the official rate.
