Hong Kong’s rumors and secrets exposed

Spooky Stations
The Rumor: There’s a hidden “ghost” MTR station.
Before the MTR’s West Island Line opened in
TRuE
2014, there was a station that had been partially
constructed but never used: Rumsey Station. It was intended
to join on to Sheung Wan station, forming the terminus of the
originally East Kowloon Line. It’s rumored that during the
construction of Rumsey Station, several workers were killed
and a white-cloaked female ghost was seen repeatedly
jumping onto the tracks. The platforms were completed but
never used, and until recently you could walk along them.
They’ve since been boarded up. A retired engineer has said
that the foundation was dug too deep—to a place where
“evil spirits” gathered.
Ding to Win
The Rumor: You can microwave your Octopus card to
add value to it.
This 2006 rumor had it that under very specific
FALSE
circumstances, an Octopus card could be
magically topped up with nothing more than the power of
microwaves. All you had to do was to put an Octopus card with
more than $300 stored value into your microwave and blast it
on high for five seconds. The chip would be overloaded,
causing a buffer overflow and setting the card to a value of
$999. The only thing that happened: People having sheepishly
to buy new Octopus cards.
Ting Hai Terror
The Rumor: Whenever actor Adam Cheng appears on TV
or in a movie, the stock market drops.
Can one man really affect the stock market so
TRuE?
consistently? Named the “Ting Hai Effect”
after Cheng’s most popular character, the villain of 1992 TVB
series “The Greed of Man,” the effect has been noted almost
every time Adam Cheng has appeared on the silver or the
small screen. In April 2015, even a rerun of “The Greed of Man”
caused the Hang Seng Index to drop by 558 points. It might
be a self-fulfilling prophecy—or Cheng might have power far,
far beyond his knowledge.
Basement 2
HK MAGAZINE FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2016 11