John Tsang calls Halloween crowd control genius

1st November 2026 – (Hong Kong) Former financial secretary John Tsang Chun-wah said Halloween weekend’s “genius-level” crowd-control design marched him from Central almost as far as Wan Chai on a one-way foot route before he could loop back for drinks on Wellington Street — a detour that ate more than half an hour.

Tsang posted on social media that he is now “grandpa-level” and long past the mad years of dressing up and joining the crush. He had simply forgotten Halloween was upon them when he arranged Friday night drinks and a chat with friends on Wellington Street in Central — only to walk into Lan Kwai Fong-area controls already in force on 30th October, a day before the main night.

Under the one-way walking scheme, he said, the path took him from Central, along the designated flow, nearly to Wan Chai before he could turn and finally reach his destination. The wry “genius-level” tag was aimed at how thoroughly the system redirected even a local who only wanted a quiet tipple a few blocks away.

Once he had wound his way back into Central, he did meet his friends for the meal and drinks. Leaving later with the stream emptying out of Lan Kwai Fong toward the MTR, he passed a resident in a Roman warrior costume and streets still thick with costumed “ghosts”, many of whom he took to be mainland visitors.

That mix, he suggested, showed Hong Kong still has something to offer inside the one-hour living circle — night-market style activity that can pull people into the city after dark, not only for theme parks or malls. For a former finance chief known for dry humour, the post read less as a complaint about lost minutes than as a shrug at how Halloween now remaps Central’s pavement.