Hong Kong is to invite more mainland Chinese influencers from Shenzhen to live stream from the famous Temple Street night market to promote city street vendors and culture in a bid to attract more tourists from across the border and boost the economy.
A cooperation agreement, signed on Saturday between the Yau Ma Tei Temple Street Association of Hawkers and Shop Operators and the Dongmen Chamber of Commerce in Shenzhen, is expected to link Temple Street and the bustling Dongmen Pedestrian Street across the border.
Influencers from both sides will travel on a regular basis to the other commercial hub to publicise its attractions.
“This cooperation between the commercial pedestrian streets of the two places is the first of its kind in the country,” Gilbert Yu Woon-wai, chairman of Yau Tsim Mong East area committee, said at the signing ceremony.
“The cooperation will regularly invite internet celebrities from Dongmen to Hong Kong to promote Temple Street in Yau Tsim Mong district, allowing more people to see Hong Kong’s cultural characteristics and attract more tourists to travel to the city and spend,” he added.
Yu said he expected the number of tourists who visit Temple Street to double over the space of a year.
Temple Street is known for its night market and is popular with tourists and residents.
Street vendors sell a variety of cheap merchandise and food items and, across the border, Dongmen Pedestrian Street’s shops and mini-stalls are also well-visited and a gathering place for influencers.
Mainland street dancers Ma Rican, 27, and Yan Zhangbian, 24, made their first visit to Hong Kong on Saturday as the inaugural influencers invited under the new deal.
The pair, along with other two dancers from their group, staged a live streaming session from Temple Street which entertained passers-by and thousands of internet users with their energetic street dance moves.
The performance attracted about 100 pedestrians who stopped to watch, many of whom applauded the performance.
The dance group also interacted with hawkers selling Chinese pastries, barbecued squid, Turkish coffee and Pakistani cuisine between their dances, promoting the food and drink to people watching the live stream.
Ma, a dance teacher in Shenzhen who started live streaming two years ago, said he was delighted to visit Hong Kong and promote exchanges.
“I want to let Hong Kong people see our dances, and also promote good things I see and experience here to the mainland,” said Ma, who has about 155,000 followers on popular short video platform Douyin.
Yan, also a dance teacher, said after the live stream that he appreciated the enthusiasm of Hongkongers, which had encouraged him to visit the city again.
“The atmosphere was so good and encouraging and it was also a fresh experience for me,” he said.
The pair and their group perform six days a week on Dongmen Pedestrian Street.
City vendor Yeung Kan-fai, who sells Chinese lo mai chi pastries on Temple Street, said the agreement would help promote the street and its culture and boost tourism amid a slowdown in business.
He added tourists accounted for about half of his trade, and he expected mainland influencers would bring more visitors from across the border.
“Business is difficult these days,” he said. “Hopefully, these internet celebrities will help bring more business through their live streaming performances.”
The latest statistics from the Hong Kong Tourism Board showed that the city welcomed a total of about 3.4 million visitors in May, up 20.2 per cent on the same period last year.
About 2.6 million of them were from the mainland.
The city had a total of about 5.9 million visitors, including about 4.7 million from the mainland, in May 2019, months before the coronavirus pandemic arrived.
