Fantastic piece of propaganda on page three of today’s SCMP. A half page sponsored feature addresses the benefits that the Express Rail Link (XRL) is supposed to bring us by connecting Hong Kong Kong with Guangzhou and other cities in the mainland by 2015. An excerpt:

‘It’s 6:30 a.m. on the morning of October 15, 2015. Hong Kong businessman Alex Cheung folds up his newspaper, settles back into his seat in the air-conditioned comfort of the train carriage, flips open his laptop and starts his working day. The high speed train eases out of West Kowloon precisely on time. As he downloads his emails, football fan Mr. Cheung reflects on the fact that he will arrive in Guangzhou in just 48 minutes – just three minutes more than it takes his beloved Arsenal to play one half of a match.

As he steps off the train, Mr. Cheung waves across to a group of accountant friends from his company’s Guangzhou office on the opposite platform, preparing to board a train for one of their twice-weekly Hong Kong meetings. The time is still only 7.18 am. Back in Central, a city is slowly waking – and yet here at the New Guangzhou Station, one of the largest passenger station(s.. typo!) in Asia, the heart of an extraordinary nationwide network connecting all major mainland cities of China is beating fast.

Now why would the MTR Corporation have to resort to this? Ah yes, probably because of the recent storm of negative publicity for the project, specifically regarding the outrageous bill that comes with it and the fact that the New Guangzhou Passenger station is located 30-45 minutes from the city center. Well, at least that explains why our Arsenal fan has to depart Hong Kong at 6:30 am. Oh, and did we mention that a 50-year-old Choi Yuen Village in Sheung Shui would have to be demolished to make way for this railway?

Apart from the pathetic attempt to connect with all football lovers in this town, we wonder why the MTR corporation finds it necessary to diss one of the most vibrant cities in the world by stating that we’re ’slowly waking’ at fucking 7.18 am when a suburb of Guangzhou is bustling with activity (read: forced to commute for another 45 minutes). There’s more though: LKF mastermind Allan Zeman is quoted saying he is considering a new LKF in Guangzhou because of the Express Rail Link.

Sure Allan, we’d love to travel to West Kowloon, take a train for 48 minutes and commute to the city center for another 45 minutes so that we can find ourselves among intoxicated expats, tourists and now also mainlanders singing along with ‘Living On a Prayer.’ FAIL.