Our Community

More shops open, food ban tightens

Dora Leung Wai-fun, a clerk who is in her 40s, said she once found a subway passenger snacking dried watermelon seeds and leaving the litter in the carriage. “Why so troublesome? Why so hurry? Eating on a train is way clumsier,” she said.

Another 45-year-old clerk Lee Yuk-bing said she had had to tell a youth to clean up the rubbish he put under his seat before he got off the train.
Many passengers, especially youngsters, leave rubbish behind after they eat or drink, she said.

Miki Hisasue, 36, who has lived in Hong Kong for 10 years and is from Japan where eating and drinking is allowed on long-distance trains, said Japanese would bring their own plastic bags to discard the litter.

Some foreigners, however, consider that underground operators in their countries may take a more active role like that in Hong Kong in improving the hygiene on trains.

Katherine Trigg, a 58-year-old British tourist, said trains in Hong Kong were cleaner than the subways in her home country, where there is a ban on eating but no patrol to stop passengers from doing so.

“I think we should have it (patrol) home,” she said. “It stops littering.”

[previous page]

More food shops open in the train stations.