Sky Rockets in Flight part 2 of 2

There were so many of them, we figured somebody was selling them somewhere. We all looked around for a table or booth, but we saw nothing.

We all looked again; still nothing.

We migrated to a different corner of the lot, where our friend pointed to the ground and we saw a dense concentration of clear plastic wrappers. We must be getting close; but where was the dude selling those illuminated helicopters? Suddenly, we saw him under a street lamp surrounded by half a dozen eager kids and their mothers. No booth, no cart. Just a guy with a shoulder bag full of cheap, some-assembly-required whirligigs.

Just as our friend started to elbow her way forward to buy her son a helicopter, I noticed a park security guard standing just behind the man's elbow. The guard was waiting to escort the vendor out of the park, but was being kind enough to allow him to finish one last transaction.

We followed him to the benches just outside of the park where he resumed selling. When his customers finally abated, he sat on a bench to catch his breath.

I sat down next to him.

He told me that he'd been out there for over an hour. He told me he buys the gyrocopters in China for a couple of (Hong Kong) dollars each and that he's been selling them for HK$10. He had already sold over 200 of them.

“Why did you get escorted out of the park?”

“I am not supposed to be selling without a license.”

“But you do it anyways?”

"Yes.”

He only sells toy helicopters in the park on big holidays. He has to move quickly to sell as many as he can before he gets shooed out. By the time he and I were chatting on the park bench, he had made over US$130 in just one hour.

And that boys and girls is how Hong Kong went from being a rock in the middle of the South China Sea to a world economic power in just two generations.