China News Service, Hong Kong, February 17 (Xinhua) -- In the five years since the construction of the Bay Area, Hong Kong people have pursued their dreams together.
China News Service reporter Dai Menglan.
When I met Li Nan, director of the Greater Bay Area Orchestra, she was rehearsing with the musicians. This Spring Festival, the Greater Bay Area Orchestra participated in the cultural flash mob activities of the five major ports of Shenzhen and Hong Kong organized by Bauhinia Magazine and Shenzhen Special Port Service, sending blessings to Spring Festival passengers. At present, the orchestra is preparing for two upcoming flash mob performances at Futian Port and Liantang Port.
As an orchestra named after the 'Greater Bay Area', the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area nourishes the growth of the orchestra. In an interview with reporters, Li Nan said that although the orchestra has not been established for a long time, it has attracted outstanding musicians from many cities in the Bay Area to join, driven by various measures for the integrated development of the Greater Bay Area; In addition to Hong Kong, the orchestra has also held ** concerts in Shenzhen, Zhuhai and other cities, which has become a platform to showcase the orchestral music of the Greater Bay Area.
In 2023, Hong Kong and the mainland will fully resume customs clearance, and the Shenzhen port will witness the people of the Greater Bay Area going "north" and "south" in both directions. According to the statistics of the Immigration Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region**, 53.34 million Hong Kong residents visited the Mainland last year. Yang Bo, who goes to a mainland city in the Greater Bay Area every week or two, is one of the Hong Kong people who "go north".
Yang Bo told reporters that he had been to Guangzhou, Zhongshan, and Foshan in the past year, but Shenzhen was the most visited. Now the transportation is convenient, and it is completely realistic to go to Shenzhen to have a hot pot and barbecue after work in Hong Kong, and then return to Hong Kong.
He recalls that last year, he went to Shenzhen to avoid the crowds of Hong Kong people, so he chose the more remote Pingshan Art Museum, only to find that there were also many Hong Kong tourists there. He sighed, "Now that Hong Kong citizens are visiting Shenzhen, it is becoming more and more obvious, and I personally feel that the level of integration and development between the two places is getting higher and higher." ”
In February 2019, the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (the "Outline") was announced. Over the past five years, more and more Hong Kong residents like Li Nan and Yang Bo have lived, studied, worked and started businesses in the Greater Bay Area, opening up more possibilities for life.
11 years ago, when Mak Zhiheng, a young man from Hong Kong, took the Guangzhou-Kowloon through train from Hung Hom to Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine to report for duty, he did not expect that the two-hour drive from Hong Kong to Guangzhou has now been shortened to the fastest only 48 minutes. And this is just a microcosm of the construction of the Greater Bay Area.
Mak said that after graduating from his bachelor's degree, he returned to Hong Kong Baptist University to complete his master's degree and stay in Hong Kong to work. In September 2021, he returned to Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine to study for a doctorate degree in TCM internal medicine under the supervision of a famous Chinese medicine doctor in Guangdong Province. Making such a life choice is not only a recognition of the level of traditional Chinese medicine industry, education and research in Guangdong Province, but also a hope to take advantage of the development of the big health industry in the Bay Area and break out of its own world in the wave of entrepreneurship.
In September 2022, Mak Zhiheng established Shenzhen Tongdexin Biotechnology Co., Ltd. in Guangming District, Shenzhen, which is mainly engaged in the research and development of traditional Chinese medicine health foods using new ancient formulas. Thanks to the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), the company's products produced in Hong Kong factories can be imported into the mainland with zero tariff, quickly opening up the situation in the Greater Bay Area market.
Mak said that Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou are now his homes. Last year, he was appointed as one of the first batch of "Greater Bay Area Workplace Mentors" in Shenzhen, and he hopes to share his experience with more young people in Hong Kong to help them pursue their dreams, build their dreams and realize their dreams in the Greater Bay Area.
Although the promulgation of the Outline has been disrupted by factors such as the 'turmoil over the legislative amendments' and the epidemic in the past five years, the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has not stopped. Huang Guo, deputy director of the Proposals Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, member of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, said in an interview with reporters that in the past five years, the service areas of the five service centers set up by the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions in the mainland cities of the Greater Bay Area have been greatly expanded.
He said that before the announcement of the outline, most of the services received by the service center were emergency requests for help from Hong Kong people during short-term "northbound" travel, and now the business scope of the service center has expanded to cover all aspects of life such as cross-border pension for Hong Kong people, reimbursement of medical insurance in the Mainland, and buying a house. He expects that in the next five years, the integrated development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in terms of social and people's livelihood will be deepened, and the flow of logistics, capital flow, information flow and other elements will be more convenient, so as to build it into a world-class bay area and a world-class city agglomeration as soon as possible. (ENDS).
*: China News Network).