{"id":21576,"date":"2019-09-14T21:27:20","date_gmt":"2019-09-14T21:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.englishforums.com\/news\/?p=21576"},"modified":"2019-09-14T21:27:20","modified_gmt":"2019-09-14T21:27:20","slug":"hong-kong-festivities-school-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/hong-kong-festivities-school-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong festivities amidst school protests; job and rental issues addressed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Lanterns, torches, mobile phone, and all sorts of light-emitting devices filled the borders of Lion Rock and VictoriaPeak in Hong Kong, a combination of celebration and protest for Hong Kong residents.<\/strong><br \/>\nMarking the start of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverhongkong.com\/seasia\/see-do\/events-festivals\/chinese-festivals\/mid-autumn-festival.jsp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mid-Autumn Festiva<\/a>l in Hong Kong, families gather around, watch the moonlight together, eat mooncakes, and let children swing their colorful lanterns to fill the night with light.<br \/>\nBut as we all know about the current situation of Hong Kong were protests are everywhere, they still found a peaceful yet meaningful way to celebrate this yearly event. Equipped with anything that emits light such as mobile phones, laser lights, LED lights, light torches and, traditional fire lanterns, a huge number of Hong Kong protesters echoed the similar <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/hong-kong\/politics\/article\/3027138\/hong-kong-protesters-mark-mid-autumn-festival-human-chains\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">28-mile human chain<\/a> protest last August.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>United we stand<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>A surrounding call filled the night as the protesters joined arms and chanted \u201cStand with Hong Kong, fight for freedom\u201d.<\/strong><br \/>\nFreedom from control and granting Hong Kong autonomy, a far cry from what the government is gearing for right now. The Sino-British agreement of 1984, granting autonomy for Hong Kong has been in question due to the issue on the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement.<br \/>\nThe bill has been withdrawn for now but the government still draws flak from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.englishforums.com\/news\/student-mourns-chaos-in-hong-kong\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ire of protesters<\/a> now on several other issues concerning police brutality, democratic reforms, and other social issues.<br \/>\nAs if to console the crowd, Hong Kong\u2019s leader, Carrie Lam, posted on social media her intention of addressing a more important issue which is the job and rental issues in the country.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Housing is the priority of people&#8217;s livelihood. The Government&#8217;s measures to increase the supply of housing will only come in the next step.\u201d as stated by the leader on her social media post.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Hong Kong government&#8217;s response to the housing problem<\/h2>\n<blockquote><p>As the government&#8217;s bill to implement the vacant tax bill is yet to be published, the new 6 Housing policy measures are in place at the end of June, and the other 5 are:<br \/>\n(1) the price of\u00a0 flats will be delinked from market property prices;<br \/>\n(2) change\u00a0 9 private buildings to public housing;<br \/>\n(3) the municipal authority is selling the &#8220;First place&#8221; project;<br \/>\n(4) the housing authority will set up a transitional housing task force to speed up the progress of various projects;<br \/>\n(5) Improve the pre-sale of &#8220;completed flats&#8221; to prevent developers from selling buildings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is quite a good move on the part of the government to ease out the tension after the series of protests that hit Hong Kong recently. As a whole, Lam has carried the situation pretty well as a leader. She even expressed guilt and responsibility for the havoc caused by the protests in her city.<br \/>\nThings are going back to normal in Hong Kong and we just hope that it will always stay this way for this country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lanterns, torches, mobile phone, and all sorts of light-emitting devices filled the borders of Lion Rock and VictoriaPeak in Hong Kong, a combination of celebration and protest for Hong Kong residents. Marking the start of the Mid-Autumn Festival in Hong Kong, families gather around, watch the moonlight together, eat mooncakes, and let children swing their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":21593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21576"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}