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Hong Kong society
OpinionComment
Alice Wu
Alice Wu

Opinion | Creating a truly ‘Happy Hong Kong’ will take more than freebies and fairs

  • The food fair and discounted movie tickets on offer are nice but do nothing to address the real problems plaguing Hong Kong residents
  • The city’s scalping industry is thriving, electricity and transport costs are rising and Hongkongers continue to face hazardous work conditions

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Dozens of people queue to buy movie tickets outside a cinema in Mong Kok on April 27 as online booking services struggled to cope with the high internet traffic driven by the government’s ‘Happy Hong Kong’ campaign. Photo: Yik Yeung-man
Alice Wu
Look around at all the happy faces the government has brought back with a food fair and heavily discounted movie tickets. The government launched its “Happy Hong Kong” campaign this Labour Day weekend, with the offer of 200,000 movie tickets priced at HK$30 (US$4), a fraction of the usual cost.
A good bargain is hard to resist. The hundreds of people who queued up outside theatres last week were a testament to that. Happiness was apparently to be found at the end of these queues, not down some yellow brick road.
But the best things in life are free, you say? Our government has that covered, too, with free entry to the Happy Hong Kong Gourmet Marketplace, featuring offerings from 100 food stalls, at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai. Around 100,000 tickets were distributed through the 18 district offices.

Organisers even included a play area for children so parents can enjoy some me-time at the fair. Just click your heels together three times and be transported to a space where you can stuff your face without a care in the world. What else could you ask for?

Let’s start with a bit of a reality check for the government. Our scalping industry is alive and well, despite the government’s efforts to shut them down.
Just look at how scalpers have been booking our public sports facilities. Even after the government toughened anti-scalping measures, scalpers simply made the new rules into a new source of revenue as they charged people more.
Scalping is commonplace now for popular events and concerts. The most outrageous example had to be a ticket being sold at HK$438,102 on reseller platform Viagogo for a concert last year by Mirror, a popular local boy band.
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