DATELINE HONG KONG - Sometimes I worry that this fast-paced city that was my introduction to Asia many years ago, is missing out on the economic boom its cousins in China are now experiencing.
Well, that worry quickly disappeared while I was walking the streets of old Hong Kong and her twin sister Kowloon across the bay the past couple of days.
I’ve never seen Hong Kong’s streets this crowded with tourists – and most of them are Chinese mainlanders.
The thing the Chinese love coming to Hong Kong for is to buy luxury goods. Designer shops here look like Walmarts on a giveaway day.
Beijing and Shanghai have plenty of designer stores – there’s Gucci and LV shops on just about every corner of those two giant mainland cities – but import taxes in China are high so Stella McCartney’s designs are much cheaper In Hong Kong and the selection is much better in this former British colony.
At times, the scenes in those designer shops can be chaotic. One Hong Kong resident told me some designer stores limit the amount one customer can purchase on a busy day – so mainlanders “hire” Hong Kong residents to go in the shops and buy up the Prada bags they yearn.
It all makes for some amusing theatre for those of us who can only afford to watch.
Oh, and by the way, most of the purchases are cash – the mainlanders like to buy with cash and I personally witnessed one man produce a brick of money from his “man purse” and peel off thousands of HK dollar notes and hand them to the salesperson.
I’m not worried about Hong Kong anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment