Move over West Kowloon. First Giles discovered that Wan Chai is Hong Kong's artistic and cultural hub. Today's SCMP provides evidence that Lan Kwai Fong is it's educational hub:

Language experts agree that the best way to learn a language is to pick it up socially. Even the academic director of the Wall Street Institute's School of English, Tony Lee, admits that local Hong Kong people have a ready-made language centre waiting for them in the heart of Central. "There are English areas like Lan Kwai Fong. It's not a big place but we can take advantage of it," he said. Dr Lee said Hong Kong people could embrace the time-honoured trend of picking up a new language through dating, saying westerners frequently improved their Cantonese this way. He quickly added: "I do not suggest you meet a partner just to learn a language, but you should not be put off from making friends or meeting a partner because you don't speak English."...

But [Terence Loo Tai-ling, head of marketing and communications for Lan Kwai Fong Entertainments] agreed Lan Kwai Fong was the perfect place to brush up on your English. "The ideal way to learn a language is to practise it. It's more sociable and anyway, you always feel you can speak another language more fluently after two or three drinks."

I propose Shaky to run this new joint venture between Hong Kong Tourism, the Deparmtent of Education and the Cultural Services Department. Let the good times roll.

Naturally Hemlock takes issue with the integrity of the survey.

The news is grim this morning. ‘Hong Kong to collapse and disappear into obscurity as inhabitants take English less seriously than hunter-gatherers in Southeast Asian jungles’. According to a survey of such scientific integrity that it provides figures to two decimal places, a pitiful 50.79 percent of Hongkongers sometimes read English books or newspapers, versus 55.84 percent of Shakespeare-loving Thais. Even more shocking, only 61.2 percent of us in the fragrant harbour consider English to be important in education, business and employment, against 91.7 percent in the land of smiles. Looking through the report, I become curious. Where in Thailand did the researchers go to conduct this highly objective and academic inquiry? None of the overweight, middle-aged farangs guzzling beer in Patpong girly bars ever read anything, apart from the numbers on the dancers’ bikinis – so they obviously didn’t go there. Perhaps they asked folk in the Bangkok slums. I’m sure 91.729403 percent of them would reply ‘if we spoke English as well as people in Hong Kong, we wouldn’t be poor’.

And then what exactly is the Wall Street Institute, the important-sounding organization behind the study? I would shudder to think that they are just a pretentiously named language school, using the results of a meaningless opinion poll to create a non-news story to drum up business. The sort of place that hires English teachers with white faces but no relevant qualifications. Surely not. Otherwise, why would the South China Morning Post give them two whole columns on page three today?