A COOPERATION agreement, signed on Saturday between Hong Kong’s Yau Ma Tei Temple Street Association of Hawkers and Shop Operators and the Dongmen Chamber of Commerce in Shenzhen, is expected to link Temple Street and the bustling Dongmen Pedestrian Street across the border. Influencers from both sides will travel on a regular basis to the other commercial hub to publicize its attractions. They are expected to livestream at both the famous Temple Street night market and the Dongmen commercial area to promote city street vendors and culture in a bid to attract more tourists from across the border and boost the economy. “This cooperation between the commercial pedestrian streets of the two places is the first of its kind in the country,” Gilbert Yu Woon-wai, chairman of Yau Tsim Mong East area committee, said at the signing ceremony. “The cooperation will regularly invite internet celebrities from Dongmen to Hong Kong to promote Temple Street, allowing more people to see Hong Kong’s cultural characteristics and attract more tourists to travel to the city and spend,” he added. Yu said he expected the number of tourists who visit Temple Street to double over the space of a year. Temple Street is known for its night market and is popular with tourists and residents. Street vendors sell a variety of cheap merchandise and food items and, across the border, Dongmen Pedestrian Street’s shops and mini-stalls are also well-visited and a gathering place for influencers. Mainland street dancers Ma Rican, 27, and Yan Zhangbian, 24, made their first visit to Hong Kong on Saturday as the inaugural influencers invited under the new deal. The pair, along with other two dancers from their group, staged a livestreaming session from Temple Street which entertained passers-by and thousands of internet users with their energetic street dance moves. Ma, a dance teacher in Shenzhen who started livestreaming two years ago, said he was delighted to visit Hong Kong and promote exchanges. “I want to let Hong Kong people see our dances, and also promote good things I see and experience here to the mainland,” said Ma, who has about 155,000 followers on popular short video platform Douyin. Ma and Yan, together with their group, perform six days a week on Dongmen Pedestrian Street. The latest statistics from the Hong Kong Tourism Board showed that the city welcomed a total of about 3.4 million visitors in May, up 20.2% on the same period last year. About 2.6 million of them were from the mainland.(SD-Agencies) | 