Sustainable Living Hong Kong

Marie Antoinette was supposed to be so out of touch with the plight of ordinary people that, when told they didn’t have enough food, said: “Let them eat cake.”

Historians have disputed the attribution ever since, but the story remains a popular one because it illustrates so well the inability of the privileged to understand the hardship suffered by others. Transpose the situation to modern-day Hong Kong, and we’d have a university don advising harassed Hong Kongers to make their own cereal for breakfast rather than eat the packaged, sugar-laden variety.

Yeah right. Even for those well-off enough to afford domestic helpers who can make it for them, there’s hardly the time. There’s the long and stressful commute, all the way from the farthest reaches of the New Territories (or Shenzhen and beyond in the future if the government has anything to do with it) to Central or Quarry Bay for many; which makes it impossible to sit down to a proper breakfast. Then there are the long hours at work; people get home so late and tired that all they want is crash for as long as they can before they have to get up and step on the treadmill again. Even ten minutes of extra sleep seems preferable to ten minutes for a breakfast at home.

Healthy eating is a good idea, but the way Hong Kong is run simply makes it impossible – something Maxim’s is well-aware of, if not the university don. That’s why they make such a killing selling buns in their MTR shops. Commuters rush in, pick up the already bagged, equally fattening buns, brush their Octopuses over the readers and click-clock their way back to their offices in a uniform march.

Imagine how different things might be if there were legislation for maximum hours as well as a minimum wage? People would actually have time to eat a proper breakfast and, because of that, save tonnes of plastic bags and cereal boxes, and be healthier.  Or a development strategy that made it possible for people to afford homes closer to their workplaces, so they could walk to work at leisure.   No stress, no pollution.

But that’s not going to happen, because the Marie Antoinettes among Hong Kong’s governing class haven’t a clue. That’s why there are people who have never had to work for a paltry hourly wage presiding over the minimum wage bill, as well as people who have never had to take public transport introducing the idling engine bill but refusing to discuss the introduction of a congestion charge, because they themselves only ever get anywhere in chauffeur-driven cars.