A musician performing at a flyover leading to the Kwun Tong MTR station got a thunderous applause from passersby — not so much for his singing and guitar playing as for his verbal clash with MTR staff who wanted him to leave the place.
Hinry Lau admitted to media inquiries that he was the person in a video that has gone viral on social media, showing him arguing with two MTR employees that they had no right to bar him from performing in public, Apple Daily reported.
He said his actions were not at all planned. He had just done a show somewhere in Kwun Tong that night, and decided to perform at the flyover.
He said he was only about five minutes into his first song when an MTR employee came and asked him to leave.
The employee was later joined by another MTR staffer, as the crowd of onlookers swelled.
Lau told the MTR employees that he was a surveyor by profession and the place where he was performing was not owned by the MTR Corp.
He even cited the deed number and asked the MTF staff to verify it themselves.
Lau obviously won over the passersby, who gave him rounds of applause almost every time he spoke.
“You can complain of noise pollution or obstructing passageway, but you could not accuse me of occupying MTR areas,” Lau told the two MTR employees.
Lau later left after police officers came to the scene.
An MTR spokesperson said the MTR staff acted on a complaint by a passenger, who said someone was playing a guitar at Exit A of the Kwun Tong station.
As it is an area managed by the MTR, staff were sent out to ask the person to stop playing, the spokesperson said.
Legislator Wu Chi-wai, who is an avid cyclist, said the MTR could consider assigning a portion of the train compartments for passengers carrying bulky musical instruments or bicycles, rather than banning them from taking trains.
The MTR announced last week that it would take at least a month to review its luggage restrictions.
Francis Li Shing-kee, MTR head of operations, said in a radio program on Monday that the review could be completed in four to eight weeks.
He stressed that no particular luggage category would be targeted unfairly, but he admitted that there has been no recorded case of musical instruments causing danger to passengers in MTR’s history.
Meanwhile, a group of musicians planned to stage a protest on Oct. 3 by taking their musical instruments to the East Rail Line to demand that they be allowed to travel with the instruments on the MTR.
The protest will be staged after MTR staff stopped a Baptist University student from boarding the MTR with his cello.
Watch the YouTube video:
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