Food and government

On Sunday my wife and I went to the Tsing Yi Bamboo Theatre.  There were more than a hundred food stalls with a wide variety of traditional and modern street food, thousands of people and a festive atmosphere.  We all had a good time.  

On Monday I ran past 2 food trucks that the government set up in Central.  I ran through Tamar Park where there were thousands of people.  Then the 2 food trucks in no man’s land.  Then the Central Piers where there are again thousands of people.  

There were few customers, if any, at the food trucks.  Compared to the festive atmosphere at Tsing Yi, this is miserable.  I am sure the food trucks would love to locate themselves either in Tamar Park where the people are, or the Central Piers where the people are.  But they have to be stationed here because this is where the government want them.  Why?

Why does the government have to do this?  There are plenty of things that are local, home-grown, distinctive to Hong Kong, which could be nurtured into something attractive to locals as well as tourists.  

Why does the government have to import something, spend huge amounts of money, impose suffocating restrictions on them, and demonstrate again and again its incompetency?