香港給美食裝上車輪，卻找不到顧客

HONG KONG — For the 23rd year running, Hong Kong is, in the opinion of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the freest economy in the world. With low taxes, an efficient government and private businesses running the city buses and its spotless subways, this place is a libertarian dream come true.

香港——香港經(jīng)濟連續(xù)23年被保守機構(gòu)傳統(tǒng)基金會(Heritage Foundation)評為全球最自由的經(jīng)濟。在這里，稅賦低、政府高效、私營企業(yè)運營著城市公交和一塵不染的地鐵，簡直就是自由意志主義夢想走進了現(xiàn)實。

So the story goes.

據(jù)說是這樣的。

Many people who live in Hong Kong beg to differ. This has long been a city of tycoons, with a few families holding sway over the supermarkets, drugstores and real estate market, limiting competition and keeping prices high. And in the past few weeks, four words have further shaken the story line that this former British colony is a free-market nirvana.

但在香港生活的很多人不敢茍同。這里向來是一個由巨頭把持的城市，少數(shù)幾個家族控制著超市、藥店和房地產(chǎn)市場，限制競爭并維持高價。并且在過去幾周里，七個字進一步動搖了這個前英國殖民地是自由市場天堂的故事。

Food Truck Pilot Scheme.

美食車先導計劃。

Hong Kong, a culinary paradise that is arguably the dim sum capital of the world, was, until this month, sorely lacking in something that other financial capitals, like New York and London, have in spades: food trucks.

作為一個美食天堂，香港可以說是世界點心之都，但直到本月之前，香港一直非常缺一種在紐約和倫敦等其他金融中心隨處可見的東西：美食車。

Something had to be done to close the yawning food truck gap.

必須做點什么來彌補這道美食車的鴻溝。

Enter the Hong Kong government, keen to draw in more tourists.

于是，渴望吸引更多游客的香港政府登場了。

After more than a year of preparation, and even cook-offs to pick the lucky few, the food trucks are finally here. Eight for a city of 7.2 million. There are plans for eight more.

在準備了一年多，甚至還為選出少數(shù)幸運兒而舉辦多場烹飪比賽后，美食車終于與民眾見面。在一個人口720萬的城市推出八輛美食車。還有八輛在計劃中。

The trucks are sights to behold. Gleaming and new, they are brightly and imaginatively painted, with names like Ma Ma’s Dumplings and Mein by Maureen. One is emblazoned with a panda that bears a striking resemblance to Po of “Kung Fu Panda” fame.

這些美食車的樣子美不勝收。嶄新的車身閃閃發(fā)光，噴涂的顏色明亮且別出心裁，寫著“有得餃”和“Mein by Maureen”之類的名字。其中一輛車醒目地印著一只熊貓，很像《功夫熊貓》(Kung Fu Panda)故事中的阿寶(Po)。

And the food — in the opinion of this hearty eater — is fabulous. The Shanghai barbecue pork bun from the Book Brothers truck melts in your mouth. The “five colored dumplings” at Ma Ma’s are delicious — an authentic taste of northern China.

在嗜好美食的本人看來，美食車提供的食物也堪稱精美。來自“大師兄美食車”的上海紅燒肉叉包入口即化。有得餃美食車的五色餃子美味可口，是正宗的中國北方口味。

Just one ingredient seems to be missing: customers.

似乎只缺少一個要素：顧客。

Food trucks in most cities are mobile. They can move from place to place. They are, after all, trucks. In New York, one might hit the lunch crowd in Midtown, then head uptown to Columbia University to catch hungry students in late afternoon.

大部分城市的美食車都是流動的，可以從一個地方轉(zhuǎn)移到另一個地方。畢竟它們是卡車。在紐約，你可能在中城擠進吃午飯的人群，然后在接近傍晚時，到市郊的哥倫比亞大學(Columbia University)看到饑腸轆轆的學生。

In Hong Kong, the government agency that devised the Food Truck Pilot Scheme had a new, bold and innovative idea: stationary food trucks that don’t park on the street. A spokesman for the city’s Tourism Commission explained why in an email:

在香港，設計美食車先導計劃的政府機構(gòu)想出了一個大膽、有創(chuàng)意的新點子：美食車不停放在街道上，而是固定場地。香港旅游事務署的發(fā)言人在一封電子郵件中解釋了原因：

“Since the urban area of Hong Kong is already saturated with traffic, it would not be desirable from the traffic management and road safety angles to allow food trucks to park and operate on public roads. Moreover, as many locations in Hong Kong have already got a number of food establishments, it would thus be desirable to introduce food trucks away from those areas.”

“鑒于香港市區(qū)的交通已經(jīng)飽和，從交通管理和道路安全的角度考慮，允許美食車在公共道路上停放和經(jīng)營不可取。此外，因為香港很多地方已經(jīng)有大量餐飲場所，因此引導美食車遠離那些地區(qū)是明智的。”

It’s all explained in a raft of guidelines. There are seven annexes in all, including licensing requirements (Annex D), special government loan programs (Annex B) and fixed venues (Annex F).

大量指導方針解釋了美食車計劃的方方面面?？偣灿衅叻莞郊I取牌照需達到的要求(附件D)、政府提供的特殊貸款計劃(附件B)和固定的經(jīng)營場地(附件F)。

Then there is Annex C — “Mandatory Requirements for a Food Truck” — that lists in painstaking detail what each truck must have. Some examples: The kitchen floor space must be at least 65 square feet. Each truck must have a potable water tank with a capacity of about 32 gallons, and a wastewater tank at least one and a half times that size. The sink must be at least a foot and a half in length. And so on.

附件C《美食車的強制要求》細致入微地列出了出每輛車必須滿足的條件。比如：配制間的最低總面積不得低于六平方米，各車必須配備一個容量約為120升的食水箱和一個容量至少是食水箱1.5倍的污水貯存箱、洗滌盆的長度不少于450毫米等。

To meet all of those regulations, Hong Kong food trucks must be custom vehicles, bearing little resemblance to the decades-old trucks that congregate near the National Mall in Washington, the capital of a country that has only the 17th freest economy in the world.

為了符合上訴所有規(guī)定，香港的美食車必須是定制車輛。它們和聚集在美國首都華盛頓國家廣場附近的那些有幾十年歷史的卡車幾乎沒有相似之處。而美國經(jīng)濟的自由程度僅位列全球第十七位。

All these rules and regulations have Liu Chun-ho, the owner of Ma Ma’s Dumpling, very worried. To meet the stringent requirements, he paid about one million Hong Kong dollars ($129,000) for his new Isuzu truck.

所有這些準則和規(guī)定讓有得餃的老板廖震豪(Liu Chun-ho)非常擔心。為了滿足嚴格的要求，他花了大約100萬港幣(約合88萬元人民幣)買了一輛新的五十鈴卡車。

On a sunny afternoon recently, his truck was attracting a trickle of customers in a square near the Wong Tai Sin Temple, one of eight places where food trucks can operate, with the venue maximum set at two food trucks (see maps in Annex G). The trucks must pay a monthly service fee to park. At Wong Tai Sin, it is 17,000 Hong Kong dollars a month or 15 percent of the gross revenue, whichever is higher (Annex E).

最近一個陽光明媚的午后，在黃大仙祠附近的一個廣場上，他的卡車吸引著稀稀落落的顧客。這里是允許美食車經(jīng)營的八個地方之一，最多可停放兩輛美食車(見附件G中的地圖)。美食車須按月交納服務費才能停車營業(yè)。在黃大仙祠，服務費是每月1.7萬港幣或總收入的15%，以較高者為準(附件E)。

Mr. Liu illustrates his challenge in units of dumplings. He needs to sell 200 bowls a day, at 40 Hong Kong dollars each, just to cover his fixed costs, he said. He is barely making that now, and fears business will plummet once summer comes with the monsoon rains and pounding semitropical sun that will keep customers away from the treeless, concrete square.

廖震豪以餃子為單位衡量自己面臨的挑戰(zhàn)。他說，他一天需要以40港幣一碗的價格賣出200碗餃子，才剛夠收回固定成本。做到這一點已經(jīng)非常吃力了，還要擔心一旦進入夏天，季風雨和毒辣的亞熱帶陽光會讓顧客遠離沒有樹木的混凝土廣場，生意會暴跌。

“The government needs to loosen up,” said Mr. Liu, 43. He has been to Thailand and Japan, and in those places, “you can set up shop anywhere, on the roads, on the streets,” he said.

43歲的廖震豪說，“政府需要放松。”他去過泰國和日本。在那些地方，“任何地方都可以開店，公路上，街道上，”他說。

The result is that small-business entrepreneurs, the mainstays of food trucks in other countries, find it forbidding to enter the market in Hong Kong. One truck is owned by an American company with a fleet of trucks in California, another by the heiress to a local noodle chain, which also won the rights to operate one of the next eight food trucks set to go into operation.

結(jié)果就是，在其他國家是美食車中堅力量的小本生意人發(fā)現(xiàn)，它們無法進入香港市場。其中一輛美食車的所有者是一家美國公司，該公司在加利福尼亞州擁有一支美食車隊。另一輛美食車的所有者是本地一家面食連鎖的繼承人，在即將投入運營的另外八輛美食車中，還有一輛是這個連鎖運營的。

Despite these problems, Hong Kong’s government has rolled out the program with great fanfare. There has been an endless stream of news releases, and the city has hired a public relations firm to drum up interest. Mr. Liu had just finished giving an interview to two reporters from the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper. There’s even a phone app, Hong Kong Food Truck, that shows which trucks are at which of the eight designated locations.

盡管存在這些問題，香港政府仍大張旗鼓地推出了該計劃。新聞稿源源不斷地流出，該市還雇了一家公關公司來刺激外界的興趣。廖震豪剛剛結(jié)束來自中國共產(chǎn)黨機關報《人民日報》的兩名記者的采訪。甚至還有一款名為“香港美食車”的手機應用，列出了哪些美食車在八個指定地點中的哪些地方。

Mr. Liu hopes, perhaps against hope, that he’ll be able to make more money at a venue his truck will occupy in the future — a patch of landfill jutting out into Victoria Harbor called Golden Bauhinia Square.

廖震豪抱著一線希望，但愿自己的美食車在未來的一個場地——經(jīng)過填海延伸進入維多利亞港的金紫荊廣場——賺的錢能多一些。

To get there, pedestrians must take a zigzag of narrow paths through a giant construction project. The square, whose main attraction is a golden statue of a bauhinia flower, an emblem of the city, is also frequented by buses filled with tourists from mainland China.

要去金紫荊廣場，行人必須走彎彎曲曲的小路，穿過一個大型建筑項目。該廣場的主要景點是一尊金色的紫金花雕塑，常有載著大陸游客的巴士來該廣場。

There, on a weekday afternoon, four employees of Book Brothers waited for customers to buy their delicious barbecue pork sandwiches, which come with a Hong Kong flag planted in the bun. Over a 15-minute stretch, they had one sale.

一個工作日的下午，在金紫荊廣場上，大師兄美食車的四名員工等著顧客買他們美味的烤肉叉包，包上還插著一面代表香港的旗幟。在15分鐘時間里，他們只賣出了一個。

One woman from mainland China balked at the price, 38 Hong Kong dollars ($4.90), for the small sandwich, saying she thought that was the price for three. That’s a problem, said Chen Qiuling, one of the workers, who said two-thirds of their customers were from China.

一名來自大陸的女子因小小一個叉包賣38港幣的價格而放棄了，稱她以為那是三個包的價錢。一個名為陳秋玲(音)的工作人員說，這是一個問題。這名工作人員稱，他們?nèi)种念櫩蛠碜源箨憽?/p>

The workers at Book Brothers hope that their next location, closer to the city’s central business district, will be busier. And if they can’t sell their pork buns, they could always try something else, right? After all, that’s what capitalism is all about.

大師兄美食車的工作人員希望，接下來他們在更接近香港中環(huán)商務區(qū)的點能更熱鬧一些。如果豬肉叉包賣不出去，隨時可以試試別的，對吧?畢竟，這正是資本主義的本質(zhì)所在。

Not so fast. Please refer to Answer No. 8 of the government’s “Frequently Asked Questions: Application of the Food Truck Pilot Scheme (Pilot Scheme).”

且慢。請看政府“申請美食車先導計劃(先導計劃)的常見問答”中的第八個答案。

“No alteration of the signature dish proposed by the applicant in the application form will be allowed after the submission of Application and throughout the Scheme,” it declares. “If the operator wishes to change dishes other than the signature dish, he should obtain prior written approval from the Venues and the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department.”

“申請人于申請表格內(nèi)所提出的招牌菜在遞交申請后及先導計劃期間不可做出更改，”答案中寫道。“營運者如欲改動招牌菜以外的其他菜式，須事先獲得場地和食物環(huán)境衛(wèi)生署的書面批準。”