Their customers are now protesting the only way they can: by lining up to buy food from the shops. All along the line and throughout the city the same grievances are repeated.
“Hong Kong is suffering right now,” says Danny Hussein, a tailor in Mirador Mansion, a ramshackle building that was once the centre of Hong Kong’s tourism trade but now has as many vacant stalls as occupied ones.
A storm of global and local factors has hit this once-great international city, squeezing its residents at the top and at the bottom. Draconian COVID-19 restrictions and the government’s response to pro-democracy protests pushed more than 200,000 people out of the city between 2020 and 2022.
The labour force shrunk to less than 3.9 million, reducing the number of workers to the level of a decade ago.
“When people leave, it’s not easy to bring…