When I meet Jeremy Young, district councillor for Hong Kong island’s mountainous Peak constituency, he raises one of the core issues of his campaign during local elections late last month: wild boars.
While the city’s anti-government candidates campaigned on existential issues facing the financial centre, such as Beijing’s encroachment on local civic freedoms, the clean-cut Mr Young focused instead on porcine encroachment into middle and upper-class neighbourhoods. “I can tell you exactly what time this family of piglets will come from Bowen Road, down to MacDonnell Road, to Kennedy Road, then go into the park — and they do this daily round,” the councillor from the pro-establishment Liberal party said last week.
I happen to know this particular pig family, too; I saw them trotting past my apartment block one night, overturning rubbish bins and gleefully nosing through the contents.