Sai Yeung Choi Street South:

This was a great street if not the greatest street in all of Mongkok/Hong Kong.  This street would be closed to cars from 4pm and stay that way until 12 o’clock at night every day.  Saturday and Sunday it would seem like it never opened to cars at all.  It was great because Hong Kong and Mongkok more importantly needed/needs streets like this that people can just walk down slowly and enjoy being out in the world.  Now sadly to say, it is open to cars full time and only closes to cars on Sundays.

It sucks in my humble opinion.

This is the way it is supposed to look and had looked every day of the week AND like everywhere in Hong Kong, it was completely safe.

The problem as the local district council saw it was that there had been a large numbers of buskers taking to the streets on Sai Yeung Choi Street and it was keeping people from going into the stores that line the sidewalks.  Business’ were complaining that it was too loud and crowded more than usual by people standing and watching performances rather than going in stores to shop.

This is where I get a bit of the ‘well in western countries….’ because street culture and performing arts in Hong Kong is a bit unseen for the most part.  While it has increased quite a bit over the past few years, there really isn’t  too much in terms of people going out and expressing themselves artistically in Hong Kong.  It’s just the culture of being a bit passive for some things.  Also, with the heavy culture of earning money here, you can see how many would look at street performing as a waste of time because of a low earning potential.

Sai Yeung Choi Street was beginning to unleash the hidden desire in so many people to just get on the street and perform and just as it started to get good——-BAAAAM!   The government slammed the door on it.  Some people have started to move north a bit though.

Shhhhh!  Don’t let ‘the man’ know that more performers are starting to do there thang’ on the footbridge that runs above Mongkok Road to the KCR station.  More on that later.

What do you think?  Tell us about your love or disdain of Mongkok.

KOMK