The clock’s fast running out on 2019, and as we count down to the dawn of the ’20s, we thought it would be a fitting time to look back at the stories that grabbed our readers’ attention over the past year.
It’s been a year dominated by the city’s long-running protests, but if your clicks are any indication, this year was also all about wild boars, MTR fights, and cheating celebrities — but nothing stole your hearts quite like one plucky little octopus that would not go gentle into that good night.
But before we get into the actual top 10, first, a few honorable mentions: There was that time the internet (and media outlets around the world) went crazy because some dude got his ass kicked in a Hong Kong cinema for spoiling Avengers: Endgame — except, of course, it never happened. (As Coconuts HK found out when we looked into it, he actually lost a fight with low blood sugar.) And of course, who could forget that butcher shop that earned viral fame — and a fair bit of money, apparently — by selling panties instead of pork amid widespread shortages brought on by African Swine Fever.
And then (though, this is more of a dishonorable mention) there was pretty much everything pro-Beijing politician and professional shit-stirrer Junius Ho has done since July, including glad-handing men believed to be involved with the mob attack at Yuen Long, subsequently having his parents’ graves desecrated, saying a female lawmaker with British husband “eats foreign sausage” during a LegCo session, actually getting stabbed while canvassing for local elections, and then ultimately losing said elections, prompting people to literally dance in the streets.
But as crazy a year as it was for Junius Ho, it’s been pretty crazy all over. So, without further ado, here are the top 10 most-read Coconuts HK stories of 2019.
10. Fight breaks out inside MTR train carriage over kid stepping on woman’s foot
Long before the brutal pro-Beijing mob attacks at Yuen Long MTR in July, and the chaotic scenes of cops wantonly pepper-spraying kneeling passengers inside a train at Prince Edward MTR in August, it was a different sort of MTR clash that captured the imaginations of Hongkongers. Indeed, neither of those events, both legitimately momentous in the evolution of the city’s long-running protest movement, were enough to unseat this February story that squeaked in at number 10 on our most-read list.
We’re referring, of course, to that time a bunch of people got into an ugly brawl because a child stepped on a woman’s foot during rush hour.
The resulting fracas — between two Hongkongers and three mainlanders — was not only the latest in a long, proud tradition of MTR fights, but yet another apparent example of the long-standing friction between Hongkongers and mainlanders boiling over. While it was unclear the extent to which Hong Kong-mainland animus motivated those who took part, it certainly colored the online conversation around the incident, with some chiming in to condemn the “typical mainland behavior,” and others wondering why the Hongkongers couldn’t have just cut the kid some slack.
9. 13 Filipinos headed for Hong Kong intercepted in Manila airport in apparent scam
A story about a baker’s dozen of Filipinos in matching t-shirts stopped en route to Hong Kong was our ninth most-read story this year. The group was intercepted after authorities found they were carrying fake boarding passes, and an investigation found that they had reportedly been told by suspected illegal recruiters to turn up to Ninoy Aquino International Airport in matching t-shirts bearing the name of a herbal product — then to remove them after they cleared immigration.
Officials ultimately came to believe the group had been promised fake jobs in Hong Kong by scammers specializing in “selling fake tickets at cheap prices to entice their victims,” one official said. The case was reminiscent of another this year involving Philippine nationals who were given “free trips” to Hong Kong, only to be handed a sheaf of forged documents on arrival and told to use them to open fake bank accounts.
8. Ex-Chief Exec CY Leung encourages domestic workers to snitch on protesting employers
C.Y. Leung may no longer officially have anything to do with the running of Hong Kong, but that hasn’t stopped the deeply unpopular ex-chief exec (he was the least popular in history until a young upstart named Carrie Lam unseated him) from sticking his nose in whenever he gets a chance.
In August, Leung launched a website offering Wild West-style bounties for the identities of certain frontline protesters deemed particularly loathsome by the pro-Beijing crowd. Two months later, fliers started being handed out in residential estates telling domestic workers to report their employers and neighbors to Leung’s website if they were seen with “illegal items” like face masks and goggles. Leung himself promoted the fliers in a Facebook post, telling his supporters to pass on the info to their own domestic workers and have them spread the word. (His post conveniently failed to note that any snitching workers would likely lose their jobs and be deported should their bosses be jailed.)
7. Lip-lock-alypse Now: Even gov’t, companies piling onto Andy Hui-Jacqueline Wong scandal
Unfortunately for Andy Hui and Jacqueline Wong, not even the biggest political crisis in decades has been enough to nudge their cheating scandal off our top 10 most-read list.
A quick recap: Hui is a semi-famous Cantopop star, and Wong is a beauty pageant runner-up and TV show actress. They were caught on camera in April smooching in the back of a car — and cheating on their respective significant others (Hui is married to Cantopop queen Sammi Cheng, while Wong was dating fellow actor Kenneth Ma). Hui went into full-on damage control mode, giving a tearful, snot-strewn public apology, while Wong also apologized to all parties involved before vanishing from the public eye.
The scandal was of such magnitude that Hongkongers waited for each development with bated breath: Ma defended Wong (though they broke up later), Cheng said she’d forgiven Hui, and Hui himself was forced to cancel some concerts.
Fortunately for Hui — he of the tearful mea culpa — this year’s protests held a silver lining. Hongkongers’ disappointment at Carrie Lam’s own “sincere apology” for her handling of the protests (in which she displayed about as much emotion as the podium she was standing behind) was so bitter that many finally decided, y’know what, maybe they were ready to forgive Andy Hui after all.
6. Protesters return to scene of Admiralty chaos for commiseration, clean-up
Our next story in this year’s line-up came after the watershed protest that single-handedly transformed the anti-extradition bill rallies from a moment into a movement.
But 2019’s sixth-most clicked-upon story wasn’t our on-the-scene account of June 12, the first protest to see police fire volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets at tens of thousands of mostly peaceful demonstrators. Instead, it was our story from June 13, in which we returned to Admiralty to find dozens of Hongkongers — ever courteous — clearing up the mess left behind from the previous day’s chaos.
The scenes of demonstrators cleaning up reminded many of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, which international media dubbed “the politest protest” after protesters left notes apologizing for traffic delays, organized makeshift recycling stations, and, again, cleaned up garbage.
While this year’s June 12 protest succeeded in preventing lawmakers from entering the Legislative Council to hold a reading of the widely loathed extradition bill, its aftermath was marked by a sense of futility and dejection, particularly because Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced the government would be pressing ahead with the legislation nonetheless. Days later, however, Hongkongers proved they wouldn’t be giving up so easily, returning to the streets in greater numbers than ever before. Now, six months later, hundreds of thousands of protesters, many of them first galvanized by the events of June 12, are still coming out into the streets to press the government to yield to their five key demands.
5. Mainland Follies: Police investigate viral video of men forcing bridesmaids onto bed in hazing ritual (VIDEO)
Naohun is a Chinese wedding ritual in which the groom and his groomsmen have to complete a series of tasks before he can “fetch the bride.” The custom has long been seen as harmless, good-natured hazing, but in recent years, China watchers have noted that the pre-wedding hijinks have become more vulgar, humiliating, and violent.
Recent examples include one groom being stripped of his pants, tied to a lamppost, and doused with Coca-Cola and soy sauce, while another was forced to wear red panties and stockings before being tied to a lamppost (we see a theme emerging here) and pelted with eggs and paint by friends and family. Last year, another groom was made to strip to his boxers before being beaten by friends and relatives, who then added salt to his wounds — literally — to symbolize that marriage is tough.
This year, clocking in at number five on our list, was yet another hazing ritual that attracted widespread attention after a group of men were filmed harassing four bridesmaids, yanking on their legs, piling onto them, and forcing them onto a bed. Netizens expressed outrage, describing the men as “sick” and “vulgar,” while one person commented: “When I get married, I’m carrying a knife; we’ll see who dares touch my bridesmaids.”
4. Philippine officials considering ban on worker deployment to Hong Kong due to unrest
Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, the first two months of the city’s protest movement now seem like simpler times. But that didn’t stop Philippine officials in August from sending a shudder of fear through the hearts of domestically challenged Hongkongers by announcing that they were considering a ban on deploying workers to the city over concerns about the mounting demonstrations.
Hong Kong is currently home to nearly 200,000 Filipino workers, and although the country’s Department of Foreign Affairs hasn’t yet followed through on its concerns, a ban on deployments to Hong Kong would greatly affect not only the livelihood of the workers themselves — for whom Hong Kong is a desirable posting — but also Hong Kong society at large. (In 2018 alone, domestic workers, the majority of whom are Filipino, contributed some HK$98.9 billion to the economy.)
3. First Degree Boar-glary: Wild pig tries to steal tent at Sai Kung campsite (VIDEO)
There was a time — back before the internet was awash in videos of police shooting unarmed teenagers and pepper-spraying people they don’t like the look of — when the internet was used to share videos of other pigs acting the fool. We’re referring, of course, to our loveable, incorrigible porcine neighbors, Hong Kong’s wild boars.
The past year saw incidents of wild boars running into our MTR stations, biting people at bus stops, getting hassled by film crews, and generally wreaking adorable havoc across the city. Indeed, the ongoing war on boars was such a source of controversy that politicians offered unorthodox suggestions for how best to beat back the boar menace, with some even advocating killing them en masse.
But the one piggy hogging (sorry) all the attention in 2019 was the one in Sai Kung who was caught on camera in May gatecrashing a campsite and attempting to make off with the entire contents of a green tent. Fortunately, it didn’t get far. After hoofing it about 30 meters with the tent in tow, the pig stopped, apparently to have a good root around inside — just long enough for a hastily assembled mob of campers to catch up and chase it off.
2. MTR strike threatened for tomorrow, general strike planned for Aug. 5 as protests evolve
Despite the city’s six-month protest movement dominating the headlines like nothing else, the top-read protest story this year still didn’t quite manage to crack the top spot. What’s more, it was just as much a commute story as a protest story.
The second-most read story on Coconuts HK detailed calls for a city-wide strike that went out after a white-shirted mob indiscriminately attacked commuters, journalists, and protesters at Yuen Long MTR station on July 21. Those calls ultimately resulted in thousands of commuters facing delays the next day as protesters made good on promises to hold up the MTR.
It was around this time that protesters first began to ramp up the pressure by so-called non-cooperative means, not just on the authorities, but also on the MTR itself, which protesters blamed for not doing enough to protect those attacked at Yuen Long. Since then, the city’s train operator has become one of the main targets of the protest movement, with people routinely disrupting train services and vandalizing facilities. After Chinese state media falsely accused the MTR of colluding with protesters, the company — which has significant interests on the mainland — abruptly announced it would be shutting stations without warning in the event of violence, which, of course, only led protesters to target it even more.
1. Mainland Follies: Woman mocked after livestreaming herself eating live octopus
Finally, clocking in at number one — it was by far the year’s most-read story, with more than twice as many views as the next closest contender — was this parable about the perils of doing things for likes.
An internet celebrity known “Seaside Girl Little Seven,” who made a name for herself livestreaming seafood feasts, decided it would be a great idea to film herself eating a live octopus. It went exactly as you’d imagine.
The 50-second video starts off fine, but then things go awry when it becomes clear the octopus is not willing to back down without a fight. Initially amused by the animal’s tenacity, Seaside Girl Little Seven’s giggles soon give way to panicked cries — “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!… Oh my God!” — as the creature proves stronger than she anticipated. The mortal struggle between man and beast drags on as Seaside Girl screams in pain while trying to pry off the octopus’s tentacles (those little suckers are strong!), which have firmly latched on to her face.
She finally does, so all’s well that ends well — though, presumably not for the octopus.
Annnnnnd that, dear readers, is 2019 in a nutshell. Surely there’s no way 2020 is going to top that, right?
Right?
