Are you working abroad? Do you now live in some wonderful city that is fascinating and different, but also pretty difficult to navigate through, socially speaking? Well, one solution is to do what Michael Egerton, now an expat resident of Hong Kong did: start an Internet radio station.
Egerton hails from the Netherlands. He lives on Hong Kong’s biggest island: Lantau. Hence no surprise that he dubbed his station Radio Lantau. The South China Morning Post has a great profile of the operation. It caters to around 12,000 listeners, many of whom miss the kind of tunes they heard back home. Comments from Egerton’s fans attest to this:
“His show is pretty much the only Hong Kong programme I listen to. Old school hip hop on Hong Kong radio is really not happening.”
“A lot of music he plays, I would say he plays for western listeners … stuff that reminds me of back home, back in the day.”
Having spent some weeks in Hong Kong not that long ago, I can corroborate these quotes. Hong Kong AM/FM listeners are really into talk radio. No surprise there. The place is so intensely political because of its fraught relationship with the People’s Republic of China, hence the yearning for 24/7 commentary. The other radio genre they love is (obviously) “Cantopop” (or HK pop as it’s also called), which is lots of fun but very idiosyncratic.
So if you are looking for the latest western stuff, music-wise, you are going to have to resort to your own devices, figuratively and literally in Radio Lantau’s case.
