Variation on luggage theme: Hong Kong bus driver refuses ride to musician carrying cello
Cellist on her way home late after rehearsals is told her instrument is too large to board vehicle
The issue of large musical instruments being carried on public transport in Hong Kong has been reopened after a musician with a cello was refused boarding on a Citybus on Tuesday night.
Rebecca Li Kwok-shan, a Paris-trained cellist who commutes daily on Route 70, was told she could not get on the bus that takes her to her home in Island South, which is not accessible by MTR.
“The driver saw me board the bus with my cello in a case and immediately moved forward to cover the Octopus machine with his hand just before I beeped the card,” Li recalled of the incident, which happened at around 10.30pm after she attended a rehearsal at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in Wan Chai.
“He said my instrument was too large to bring on board, but the bus wasn’t full and there were vacant seats,” the 26-year-old said, adding there was a person with a guitar among passengers on the lower deck.
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But she had no problem boarding the next bus.
It was the first such reported incident since the MTR Corp expelled passengers for carrying a cello and guzheng, a Chinese zither, last September. The action led to an outcry among musicians and prompted the company to relax its rule on the maximum dimension of luggage from 130cm to 145cm in a registration scheme.