Cheung Tak Wing is pretty much the last of his line, in his family’s newspaper hawking business. For 30 years, “Wing Goh” — meaning “Brother Wing” — has been manning the newsstand at the corner of Granville Road, in one of Hong Kong’s most popular tourist districts, Tsim Sha Tsui.“I was 8 or 9 years old when I started delivering newspapers each morning before classes,” Wing Goh told VICE World News, about his childhood in the 60s.
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Wing Goh turned 64 this year. For all his life, and his brother’s, sister’s and their spouses’, the Cheungs’ livelihood depended on the rise and fall of Hong Kong’s newspaper business. He has seen triad members show off a knife to make sure they got the first copies of a newspaper. He’s seen papers sold as fast as they could be reprinted, on June 4, 1989 — the day of the Tiananmen Massacre, when the Beijing government cracked down on protesters with tanks.But today, people in Hong Kong turn to news displayed on their phones. Under COVID-19 pandemic border lockdowns, the streets have become so quiet that Wing Goh doesn’t even bother opening his stand every day. Although there was that one day recently that was an anomaly, which reminded Wing Goh of the better days: when Hongkongers lined up at 2 a.m. to grab Apple Daily newspapers off of newsstands, hours after police raided its newsroom, and arrested its billionaire founder and vocal government critic, Jimmy Lai.“I used to deliver the South China Morning Post to the British army barracks in East Tsim Sha Tsui. The soldiers let us in — they wanted newspapers.”
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A potbellied uncle with thick, grey hair and droopy eyes behind spectacles, Wing Goh’s fingertips have turned black from touching printed ink on the horse racing papers layered in front of him. Even the top of his surgical mask displayed stains, as he kept pulling it up over his nose. This morning, it seemed that the papers offering horserace betting tips, and bottles of water, were the only things sold.
A family heirloom
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During the golden age of Hong Kong’s newspaper industry, there were up to 2,500 newspaper hawkers around the city. But as older hawkers passed away with no children willing to take up family businesses, the numbers dropped to 356 this year. Wing Goh joined his parents at the stand at 16. His father passed his license to his younger brother, who closed shop a few years ago. His older sister married the son of another license holder, and continued to operate her newsstand in a nearby area. Without his own license, Wing Goh partnered up with a family friend who has one, and operates a stand leaning against the side of a bank.
Banned books boom
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But in 2016, five Hong Kong publishers of banned books went missing, only to reappear in mainland custody, charged with distributing banned titles in the country. Most banned books publishers stopped printing, so Wing Goh lost his most profitable merchandise. “We will no longer have these, because of the national security law,” he said. In July, the Chinese government enacted in Hong Kong a law that bans acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces, with sentences ranging up to life in prison. “These books are not yet banned, but soon. I don’t want trouble,” he said, although his stand still displayed a magazine showing protesters standing in a cloud of tear gas on its cover, and another with “Liberate Hong Kong” in large print, a pro-democracy protest slogan.
‘Natural selection’
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Wing Goh is resigned to the fact that newspaper hawkers will soon disappear due to “natural selection.” With only a dozen newspapers sold a day, selling cigarettes, bottled water, and soft drinks (which is illegal) would bring in about HK$1,000 ($129) in daily profits.“Even I read news only from my phone. Maybe I would get a copy of the Oriental Daily when there’s a horse race,” he confessed, saying that he spends hours every day watching Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and YouTube.
“We have 5G or 6G now. By the time we have 7G or 8G, there will be no more newspaper hawkers in Hong Kong.”“Even if the government issues new licenses now, nobody would want them.”