Breaking: HK Government Official Stuns World With Harebrained Scheme!

This never happens: A former senior town planner with the Hong Kong government has suggested getting rid of a Hong Kong icon! So novel; where do they get these ideas from?

This time it’s the venerable tram that’s caught the beady eye of a developer civil servant, Sit Kwok-keung. He feels the tram is too slow for the hectic Central traffic and wants to get rid of it altogether, saying he, for one, can surely walk faster than that useless relic can roll.

My first reaction upon reading this was: Who stands to benefit from a Central without a tramline? Which developer has stuck a bottle of VSOP and a few million in Sit’s pocket while outlining in flowery terms how wonderful it would be for Central and all the people of Hong Kong to have a curvy, very narrow line of luxury high-rises running from the tram depot to Admiralty?

When this happens, and it surely will if there’s enough money for someone in it somewhere, the whole tramline is of course doomed. Woo-hoo! Another irritating reminder that Hong Kong didn’t spring ready-made into being in 1997 bites the dust.

叮叮 (deng deng – tram. Also 電車 [din che – electric vehicle])
香港政府 (Heung Gong jeng fu – Hong Kong government)
中環 (Jung Wan – Central)
金鐘 (Gam Jung – Gold Bell/Admiralty)

Sit, boy! I mean, Sit-boy, I’ll tell you what’s faster than taking the tram, and it’s walking around Hong Kong island until Shau Kei Wan (筲箕灣 － Saau Gei Wan is the real pronunciation, Colander Bay) and then getting the tram back to Central! (Fast forward to 12:30 if you only want to see the tram)