Clockenflap music festival reveals new names in artist line-up, Ocean Park gets first mainland tour group in years as Hong Kong marches on to normality
- City to see return of popular music and arts festival on March 3, with last instalment in 2018
- Ocean Park meanwhile welcomes first tour group of mainlanders in years following recent border reopening
Hong Kong moved a step closer to normality on Saturday with its largest outdoor music festival confirming a line-up of global artists and a theme park receiving its first mainland Chinese tour group in years.
Organisers of the three-day Clockenflap festival announced latest stage names for this year’s event, set for March 3 to 5 at the Central Harbourfront, marking a long-awaited comeback after its last appearance in 2018.
Newly confirmed performers are American hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, Swedish indie-pop superstars The Cardigans, British rockers Bombay Bicycle Club, the United-States’ singer-songwriter Sasha Alex Sloan, British hoppers Black Country, New Road, Japanese dance-pop sensation CHAI and Hong Kong Canto-rock group KOLOR.
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Clockenflap is among the first wave of major events Hong Kong will host to draw tourists following the cancellation of all Covid-19 travel restrictions in January. Earlier this week, the city also scrapped all pandemic curbs with mainland China.
The new line-up came on top of previous names already confirmed – British rock icons Arctic Monkeys, French synth-rockers Phoenix and Norwegian folk-pop duo Kings of Convenience.
Tickets are on sale and priced at HK$1,620 (US$206) for a three-day pass and HK$1,080 for single days.
On the heels of the festival will come the Hong Kong Sevens rugby tournament from March 31 to April 2 at the Hong Kong Stadium in Causeway Bay.
The Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon will also be held on Sunday with 37,000 runners, about half of pre-pandemic levels.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Ocean Park received its first mainland tour group in three years.
About 130 mainland visitors took cross-border coaches on Saturday morning from the new Liantang/Heung Yuen Wai checkpoint in Shenzhen to the theme park, but another 40 travellers could not make it for the day trip as they failed to obtain visas on time.
“They were quite passionate about enrolling for the tour,” Chen Bo-fei, manager of tour organiser China International Travel Service said, adding that the company initially only expected some 50 members.
“But children under 16 on the mainland cannot apply for visas themselves, they have to register at the counters so some working parents had no time to complete the application.”
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Upon their arrival, park staff distributed umbrellas as souvenirs to tour members, while some families took pictures with mascots.
Fish Feng, 40, joined the tour with daughter Sonja Su, 10, along with seven other families of her friends and colleagues. It was the group’s first time to the city since the border reopened, and they planned to stay at the park for most of the day before heading to Shenzhen by coach.
“It is convenient to travel across the border now. We can always go to Causeway Bay for shopping in future but our kids can only come over on weekends as they have school,” Feng said.
More than 40,000 visitors from mainland China to Hong Kong since border rules eased
Hong Kong on Monday fully reopened its border with the mainland, with all pandemic restrictions dropped and no quotas on the number of arrivals from either side.
Qiu Xuehuai, 40, and her two friends enrolled on the tour to explore new attractions in the park. The group planned to shop at Causeway Bay afterwards, with Qiu saying she expected to spend at least HK$5,000 for her day trip.
“We have been looking forward to this. We are very happy as the border has reopened,” Qiu said. “We haven’t been to the city for a long time, we want a better experience and to have good meals.”
Tour agent manager Chen said about a fifth of tour group members had plans to stay overnight for shopping and family visits.
He added that the company would organise more day trips to different tourist spots in Hong Kong, such as the Palace Museum, in the hope enrolment figures could return to 70 per cent of pre-pandemic levels by the summer.
Additional reporting by Denise Tsang
