Final call looms for city’s payphones in the age of mobile
The once much-loved and used yellow machines are now mostly an attraction for tourists
They used to be ubiquitous, perched but firmly secured outside convenience stores, teahouses and game centres, but the iconic yellow payphones of yester-year are disappearing from sight.
A two-hour search in some old districts of Kowloon last week was what it took a Post reporter to find an old-style payphone outside a herb tea shop run by the storied Kung Wo Tong.
Founded in 1904, the brand is famous for its tortoise jelly, which helps clear skin problems. It offers a range of other herbal teas.
General manager and the third generation of the family to run the shops, Simon Chu Shek-ming, said most of the payphones were installed in the late 1990s, but there were only four left now.
“People seldom use them now ... only a few tourists,” Chu said. One phone only brings in less than HK$10 per month, he said.
It used to be a few hundred dollars 20 years ago.
Chu explained that the only reason he still keeps the payphones is because PCCW, the payphone’s operator, has stopped charging rental fees.
Therefore, instead of providing actual services to customers, Chu treats the yellow machines more like decorations to the shop, and is quietly waiting for PCCW to take them back one day.
Chu said only the company’s old shops still keep payphones, with new stores no longer providing the service.
“All of them will be gone one day,” he asserted.
In fact, it is not only the payphones that are struggling to survive in modern Hong Kong: the company’s teahouses are too.
Chu said the 111-year-old Kung Wo Tong has closed several stores in the last few years as property rents have surged along with the booming retail market in the city.
Store numbers are down from 10 at their peak to five at present.
A few stores remain only because they operate in properties owned by the family, Chu said.
Adding to the headwinds, the old-style herb tea industry has been shrinking as fewer young people are willing to enter it and experienced staff retire.
Chu, 50 this year, is the only one among his more than 10 siblings and cousins who is closely involved in the operations of the family business. He hasn’t found anyone in the family to take over the business.
“We might end up hiring professional management,” Chu said.
