Hong Kong hawker, 90, delighted over return of decade-old roasted chestnut cart after run-in with law enforcement
- Chan Tak-ching retrieves cart after court on Wednesday approved prosecution application to return stall seized by Food and Environmental Hygiene Department
- She plans to resume trading in May after taking short break, but friend and former hawker says 90-year-old faces HK$1,000 repair bill for stall
Officers from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department told Chan that they had found a non-licensed person operating the roasted chestnut stall on March 7. The cart and a 29-year-old man, who was manning it at the time, were taken away by authorities.
The prosecution applied to return the confiscated item during a hearing on Wednesday, which was approved by Deputy Magistrate Jeffrey Sham Che-fai. Chan picked up the cart on Thursday morning with a friend.
With the cart back in her possession, Chan said she would resume trading by selling fruits in May after taking a break to visit relatives in mainland China.
Chan said she would usually pause her business as chestnuts went out of season after the Ching Ming Festival in April. As the days got warmer, she would switch to selling fruits.
Under Chan’s itinerant hawker licence, she is allowed to sell clothes, fruits, chestnuts and sweet potatoes.
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“But my losses are still massive. They poured all my kerosene away and all my chestnuts, sweet potatoes and quail eggs were gone, and there was a fine of a few thousand dollars as well,” Chan said.
As seen by the Post, corrugated iron sheets around the kerosene stove located underneath the cart’s wok were caved in or torn, rendering the device unusable.
Rust had also developed in the oven shelves of her cart, after law enforcement officials poured water there to put out any flames during the confiscation.
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Cheung told the Post repairs would cost about HK$1,000 (US$127), while Chan would have to pay another HK$1,000 to restock the discarded ingredients.
Recalling the row, Chan said her encounters with law enforcement authorities had mostly been courteous, but she had not expected officers to return to the site on March 7 after a warning at 7pm.
Chan said she was first told to leave as she was hawking at a black spot, and was warned she would be prosecuted if found again at the same location. The hawker said she agreed and subsequently pushed her cart away.
Chan claimed that after the officers departed the scene, she left her cart for 30 minutes in total, as she took a detour to buy dinner after a toilet break, making her absence longer than usual.
“But [the officers] came back at 7.30pm, demanding to see the licensee. I dashed back after receiving a phone call. It still took some time – it was around 8pm when I arrived,” she said.
A spokesman from the department said their enforcement policy had “elements of leniency”.
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“Generally speaking, if the hawking activity does not involve selling banned or restricted food, and did not take place at major thoroughfares or places with heavy pedestrian traffic, our staff would take the ‘warning first, then enforce’ approach,” the spokesman said.
“This means law enforcement actions would only take place after ineffective oral warnings.”
The department said it would not be able to comment on the repair costs of the cart by the Post’s deadline on Wednesday night.
