One country, two systems, and 1 million tourists a month
2nd Feb 2006, 09:54 GMT
HONG KONG--The skyscrapers tilt, and inside the polished, russet-colored tramcar, gravity presses the passengers back against their wooden seats. For over a hundred years, the Peak Tram--Hong Kong's famous funicular railway--has carried passengers up the 400-meter-high Victoria Peak, the highest mountain on Hong Kong Island. Not much has changed in those hundred years. The passengers still cheer the sight of Victoria Bay when it passes. In fact, the line's biggest nod to modernity may have been switching from steam boilers to an electrically powered system that pulls the trains up the slope with a 3-meter-diameter electric winch. That was in 1926. But eight years have now passed since Hong Kong was returned to China and the "one country, two systems" policy was put into practice. And inevitably, the effects are finally reaching the Peak Tram, too. In 2004, in response to the increasing number of tourists from the Chinese mainland, the Peak Tram started offering its in-car tour announcements in Mandarin, in addition to Cantonese and English. The switch is in many ways a sign of the times, just like in the 1980s when Japanese tourists crowded the hot spots in Hong Kong and the tram guides brought in tape recorders with Japanese announcements.
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