After many hundreds of years of feudalism, war lords, and civil war, Mao undoubtedly proved his leadership and united China. (For further reading I recommend China by Fairbank & Goldman.) I was born at the beginning of modern China when all things were not pretty. I was too young to be aware of the political activities. But what affected me the most was the lack of food, further complicated by my misfortune of ill health. It is interesting to read on my birth certificate that the Communist Government had a 2 kilos of sugar ration to each newborn.
Blessed with a weak immune system, I was sick a lot. I am not clear of what I was sick with in the respiratory department. It could have been asthma, pertussis, TB and or allergies. One thing I am certain of was my appendicitis. It happened when I was old enough to manipulate my parents with it. It had to be at least when I was 4. There was the availability of western medicine like surgery at the time, but my parents did not jump at their first chance to test it out with their beloved son. It was not only because they did not trust it, but also due to the fact that everything was in short supply including blood for transfusion. I ended up being cut open after many needle holes in my butt and the many midnight trips to the emergency room piggy-back riding on my 2nd sister. Afterwards the reward for me was awesome. For I was eating, eating what all my siblings could only dream of; steamed whole catfish (small), pure cod liver oil mixed with rice and saltine crackers from the West.
me at age 4
I even had a bronze figurine of a boy riding a water buffalo from Sung dynasty as a toy. Kids at that time and space were playing with dirt and stones. There wasn't such a decadence as toys. Researchers would say that would affect a child's adult behavior. I think they are right once more, and I am glad. Now as an adult, I am a member of the Sierra Club on one hand but drive a Ford diesel truck, a diesel tractor and a twin diesel Osprey boat on the other. Some say I am all screwed up. But I say a man with a conscience is better than one without. An honest person is not perfect but always knows and feels his own lies.
My parents were dynamites, especially my mother, in the matter of survival in real life. (Far more real than those on television survival programs). They were feeding 9 kids during a time when history books claim that there were many casualties from famine. Old photos inform that none of my siblings were starving, and I was well fed. My parents risked their life to work and made good money, and perhaps spent it all on black- market food to feed and to care for the children. My memory of me chasing a baby black pig in our house was an example of my parents' scheme to provide. I blamed myself for the demise of the pig because I was too desperate for a pet and wouldn't let it rest. I am sure I ate part of my dead pet! You see, or maybe you don't, it was protein. One other animal we were raising for food in the house was guinea-pig. Sister Lai had to go far to bring back fresh grass to feed them. Parents also brought back dry rats from the black-market. I remember they were actually pretty good. At first, I didn't understand the reason my parents were cooking all the goodies late at night. Often when we could finally put food in our mouths, we were too tired to really enjoy it. They did that because they did not want our upstairs neighbor to smell the cooking. We could be reported to the government and that would bring us trouble.
Of the many ways that my parents tried to help out their kids, it was fruitful that my oldest sister was discovered as a child prodigy for Chinese Opera. However she claims, up to today, it was her repeating what my mother told her to say that get her a spot in the Canton Opera of China. My other sisters who didn't get placed sang just as well. Big sister told the examiner that her desire in life was to work for the Communist Party thru opera. For that she was sent to the opera boot-camp for years.
My parents were living in fear because of what they had to do. My father ran hiding in his old birthplace and was later jailed and might have been water-tortured. They didn't see a whole lot of other options but to go where there was an opportunity to be free. They then began the process of applying for immigration to Hong Kong, a colony of the British Empire. That was a beginning of a whole other chapter of our family history.
family right before separation
THE ESCAPE
The Cantonese government probably considered my folks as undesirable people who were too hard to be reformed. They were the kind to be sent abroad to work and send money back to relieve their family of their financial shortage. That was how it ended up for the following two decades. Father was the first to receive a permit to leave for Hong Kong when I was about four. He arrived in Hong Kong with but one HK dollar in his pocket. He had to find a job at once before he himself would starve. He sold cigarets and did any odd jobs until he got his feet planted. With the help from a friend I called Uncle She, they started buying and selling jade as illegal street venders. They basically put a cloth on the ground to display jade pieces on. In the sight of a cop's arrival they wrapped the jade in the cloth and ran. They would be fined and their merchandise could be confiscated if they were caught. I don't know the detail of where and how he lived. I can assume that it was less than desirable when in some cases 40 to 50 men were living in a single small room. I remember when he brought Uncle She home to visit mother and us kids, they were in fine clothes. My father tried hard to look as if he had been succeeding in making a living and brought with him hard to find nutritive food. They might have taken some of father's own treasure to HK to sell.
Few months later came the great escape, when the Chinese government was beginning to let out large groups of people to Hong Kong. But it was more than the HK government was willing to take. The difference in policies created a painful chaos at the border.
I will try here to describe the exodus of my brother and my 4th sister, ages 6 and 7 respectively, for they were among these groups of refugees. I suppose the strip of land that separated HK's and China's border gates was quite wide. When the gate in China opened, people would start running as fast as they could because they knew, in the order of first come first serve, HK's gate would be closed once they let in the quota for the day. Holding onto each others hands, the two ran with all their might. Brother saw an older man fall, but could not afford to stop to help him because mother had told him that it was their only chance. Who would have guessed the two little ones safely entered the gate in HK to join their waiting father.
Though it was a moment of triumph, it only lasted briefly. Father did not have the ability to start a home for the newcomers. He had to put sister in the foster care of a relative and to put brother with a friend. In China, father used to be a manager in a big firm where he was loved by his boss. The boss's 7th wife who lived in HK was willing to take care of my brother. In exchange he would perform some sort of house work. My brother still pities himself for the sorrow he had to bear. By and large, Aunt 7th was a very kind woman. She made sure that my brother started school when not every youngster had the chance. The account of my 4th sister wasn't so clear. We know she ran away from where she was placed for reasons I can only guess. She was later found unharmed. Certainly it had to be more painful in her case. Today she refuses to have contact with the rest of the family.
Sister 3rd showed the most ability to adapt. She was the next to take the train to the border with a permit to walk across to join her parted family. It was Aunt 7th who also took her in. My sister liked her new surroundings so much that she was immediately living it up in style. High heeled shoes, go-go pants and jelled hair a few inches high, which made her taller, were among her favorite things to wear. Though she was only about 10 at the time, she was able to find work and made some cash.Back home in China, life for me was as usual, except that I started school. I remember I was learning the Russian alphabet and to write and chant in modern Chinese. Here is a chant I still clearly remember:
My grandpa, when he was 7, ate tree roots,
My Papa, when he was 7, ate watered down rice,
Now I am 7, and the government sends me to the Learning Hall.
I was old enough to wear a red scarf and to begin to study the Book of Mao. Mother took on a different kind of role with father being gone. It had to have been clear to her that she and I had to be the next to go. After she turned in our application for a permit, she took me to the Public Office to beg, it seemed to me, daily. Among her excuses was that I was so sick and undernourished that any delay of my permission to leave could lead to my demise. I did not know what to feel when all this was going on around me and my family, but to be passive was the best I can describe it.
Then one day, mother carried me to that office where I saw many men who stood waiting outside. She set me down, standing on a stone fence, and we waited with the rest. Then came the announcement. After more than two years of being apart, mother was allowed to be reunited with her husband. Our permit was not to HK but to the Portuguese Colony of Macau. People were free to travel between HK and Macau. The Public Office people were probably eager to get rid of mother and me who were on their tail everyday. It took a shorter time to get a permit to leave China for Macau because there were a lot less ways for refugees to make a living there.
My memory of the trip to Macau is vague except for the boat ride. After some sort of land transportation, Mom and I were rushing for the departing wooden junk with a loud diesel. Then there was a miserable cold and wet three hour ride to Macau. Huge waves splashed in sequence as the cold wind brought saltwater to where we sat. The worst was I had to hold in my pee for the whole trip. But in retrospect, that was a significant moment of my life. I was a virgin of all experiences in the world outside of my Chinese "ghetto". I probably didn't even know there were oceans before that time. Whether the earth was flat or round was truly beyond my need to acknowledge. Nor did I know whether it was sadder to leave my sisters with whom I played in China, or happier to go to meet up with Father and my other siblings who left what seemed to me not that long ago.
Mother had a wealthy relative in Macau. I called her Aunt 2nd. She must be the second wife of somebody who I have never met. It seems that all these wives of somebody had a family without a husband to be known. Perhaps they all had a sad story to tell but wouldn't. It is possible that these men were among the millions who were killed for having wealth and traditional social status. Aunt 2nd had 2 sons and a daughter. Together with two other young ladies of relation, they all lived in a fancy two story stone house with marble floors and a grand staircase. Surrounding the house were luscious tropical trees and a stocked pond. The entire estate was surrounded by a brick wall 6 or 7 ft high, and an impressive front gated entrance. We were invited to stay with them.
If it were not for how scared and confused I was, I should have had a enjoyable time. The younger son had an uncontrollable temper. He was mad every time he saw me, and chased me out of the house and thru the yard. He hit me whenever he could reach me and I was told by Mother not to hit back. The older son named Allen often helped me to escape from his brother's irrational moves. I liked Allen's name because it was kind different. We were friends. The adults scrambled for ways to solve the problem until mother decided to rent a room elsewhere. Aunt 2nd felt very bad about it but they remain close. Here is a photo of them years later visiting us in HK.
While Mother and I were staying, everyone else in the house was very nice and welcoming to us. It was in that muddy pond I first swam. One of the two young ladies ( left-back on the photo) was a great swimmer. She could catch carps with her bare hands! She often encouraged me to jump in. Later on, she moved to HK and worked in Mother's factory. Mother and I shared the same bed for the first time and last. She had to have thought that it was not healthy for me to touch her private parts. Father came to visit all the time and was talking about ways to get us to HK as soon as possible. Mother gave him a couple of round stones she hid while getting out of China. Father took them to HK to sell. The stones must have sold for quite a bit, because when mother and I finally got to HK, they were able to start looking for a place to gather all their lost kids and to build a home.
LIFE IN HONG KONG
My arrival in HK was, in my mind, the first time I knew what happiness was. Upon landing in HK on a bright sunny day, we were picked up by my mother's godbrother I called God-uncle-Fu-2nd, in a Jaguar sedan. Well, he was a heavy set chauffeur for a rich man who let him use the car all the time. It was such a shocking experience that I didn’t even recall whether father or any of my siblings were there to greet us. It was not because it was a Jaguar, but because it was a car. I had never been in a car before. The glorious sun, the fine (I believed) western style clothes, and the exciting streets of HK made me feel that I was finally in a safe and hopeful place. When all this was done, I was already past 8 years of age.
At first, mother and I moved in with brother and sister 3rd in Aunt 7th's apartment. She had a huge apartment for HK standards. Aunt 7th was a very pretty woman with skin smooth and white as cod liver oil. Though I suspect that her 3 grown sons who were living at home, had their own opinion of us staying, they never said a word. Aunt 7th was so generous she would give us the world. Here is a photo of her.
Of the many things that Mother set out to accomplish, the first was to clean up Sister 3rd's act. It had to be the way my sister dressed, for Mother was sure that she was hanging out with the wrong crowd. For that my sister had to stop all social activities after work. Meanwhile, Mother and I searched on foot through the city to rent an affordable place. Beneath HK's facade as a beautiful city, it was a haven for criminal activities at the time, which was partly due to the dichotomy of the rich and poor. The other part was caused by the impact of the refugees who came from China empty-handed, legally and/or otherwise. People got mobbed and killed more often than run over by cars. Place after place, through dark dirty streets and smelly stairways, rooms were either too expensive or no kids were allowed. I remember suggesting to Mother that she go upstairs alone so they wouldn't know she had kids. But with a little more sweat and persistent use of our leg muscles, we finally found a prefect place. It was a room about 10'X10' in an apartment of several rooms. We would share a toilet and the kitchen with other families. Our family would be the largest, a total of six.
We were so happy that didn't know how miserable we were. Our parents bought a double metal framed bunk bed. They slept on the upper level and us four slept on the lower. They also bought a small table to dine on. The table top was supported by a small cabinet where dishes were stored. I climbed on the table top once and tilted the whole thing. A piece of the broken dish scarred my face which remains visible today. The most important piece of all was the sewing machine Mother invested in. It was with it that she and two of my sisters sewed us out of poverty.
The in ground toilet was a flushing one. By then I was so sophisticated that I had seen many other flushing toilets. In the kitchen I believe we were using a kerosene round stove our parents bought. We had to cook the rice first then followed by cooking the accompanying dish and sometimes dishes. It was not until later that my parents could afford to buy an electric rice cooker. I still felt hungry all the time. The streets of HK were filled with restaurants of all kinds. The smell of meat, cooked oil, baking goods could make me faint from hunger. The first time Mother could afford to give me a dime for breakfast, I was in front of the bun shop by 8:30 when the buns came out of the oven. It was so light, yummy and smelled so good, but the bad thing was, it was so light that it did not even come close to filling my stomach after I swallowed it whole.
Chauvinism has been in Chinese societies for thousands of years. It still is a dominant trait throughout modern China. Those who have adopted children from Chinese orphanages would know that there are only female orphans available. Many Chinese parents are willing to commit horrible social crimes in order to have a male child. I wonder when in the lineage of my culture that this portion of the Chinese people lost its conscience. Without talking further about this extreme, it is common that a Chinese male is offered better opportunities by his parents. As in the case of my parents, they are examples for that trait without a doubt. As unfair as it was, their two sons were sent to school. Sister 3rd and 4th started sewing to earn our living, for which I am forever grateful.
Soon after we were in HK, my parents realized I was too old to go to Kindergarten and knew too little academically to start 1st grade, so I was put in a school for one year to catch up. After that I had my first graduation. Mother went to the commencement and I remember feeling proud of that roll-up certificate. Then I was admitted to a school in HK Island run by the Salvation Army. I had to be the oldest and therefore felt that I was the most inferior in the class.
Sweatshops, as they are called today in the US, were simply a way of life and were respectfully called factories. With so many people wanting to work for a few grains of rice, who needed a human rights activist? My mother began to subcontract un-sewn pants to take home to be finished by her and my sisters. She also secretly traced down all the patterns for her future scheme. With the help of my father's income and loans from friends, we soon found ourselves moving to a much bigger room. Mother had to have smuggled out more round stones each time we went back to China for visits, because things were happening too fast.
The room was on the 9th floor apartment of a huge building owned by the boss of God-Uncle-Fu-2nd in Kowloon. He must have gotten us a good deal on the rent. Another relative of Mother was a carpenter. He was a generation ahead of Mother, so we called him Grand-uncle. Even though one of his eyeballs popped out bigger than a goldfish's, he was the finest and quickest carpenter I ever have known. He never had power tools and would make many cabinet-makers today look like chainsaw artists. He put a loft in the room for all of us to sleep in at night. Mother used it as a space to cut fabric from patterns in the daytime. On busy days we went to bed very late. It felt like she worked into the night all the time. He also built storage shelves everywhere, and his designs were ingenious. Mother bought a few more sewing machines and started hiring girl-laborers. This was how she started her own factory right in the place we called home.
Father's office up above
Me,front right, doing my school work
People in the building also owned dogs. The three stairways were literally covered with dogshit at all times. So were the streets of HK. Despite that, those stairways were where kids played, for it was far safer than playing in the streets where gangster and drug lords ruled. Among the many stairway social activities I remember the most, was starring at girls walking up and down in mini-skirts, and chasing my brother all the way down the stairs with a metal chair in hand to beat him. Once, for days there was a strong stinking odor fuming every afternoon. What I found out was, a boy and his grand mother had moved in on our floor. When the boy was sick, his grand mother was preparing a potion of stir-fried chicken-shit and something else to cure him. The poor boy had no one to play with after that.
I did not get to play all the time because of the many little jobs I needed to do to help out in the family factory--cutting loose thread, folding and counting pants, and so on. One thing I hated the most was to help out by selling on the street the pants they made. It was illegal to sell merchandise on the street without a license, which cost lots of money and had lots of restrictions. Many people instead took the chance of being fined if caught. Many illegal wholesale markets started as soon as it got light enough to see. At 5 or 6 in the morning, the whole family had to get up and move boxes of pants to the street, hoping to find customers. It would only last for an hour or two before the Royal Police were officially on duty. The first few days of Mother's business venture were quite scary. Potential customers did not trust newcomers, and at the most they would only look at the goods from a distance. They talked among each other until one morning a person bought a bundle. Mother was thrilled. Her reputation was then on the way up. She was preparing to expand her factory on the same day. As I had mentioned, my school was located in HK Island. For the next 5 years I created many ways to go to school five and six days every other week. Knowing that the rest of my family had the matter of money in control, going to school in those many ways were among my happiest times, though I didn't like school too much for reasons I will later explain.
The basics of getting to school involved three stages, from home to a ferry. There were many ferries to choose from. After taking the ferry I had to get from the ferry to school. The quickest combination could take a little over an hour. The longest way could take 2 and a half hours. My parents had the quickest way figured out for me, but I only used it when I was rushing. I started out walking 10 minutes to the closest ferry which took 20 minutes to cross the harbor. Then I took a 30 minute bus ride to school. I could change the time it took by walking slower, or by taking the tram, or by walking the rest of the way. I did a lot of walking because I was saving the bus fare for other uses. Sometimes I would take an hour bus ride to another ferry just to change the scenery. That was the 2 and a half hours route to school. Occasionally I had to take detour to deliver goods to the customers for my parents. It was either jade or pants. Once I was to carry a very important piece of jade to meet Father in HK Island. It worth so much money that they had brother and his friends come along as bodyguards. The reward for those special days for me was to eat lunch in a restaurant.
I had half day school, which started at 1pm. I usually shopped and cooked my own lunch and left home around 11. By the time I got home from school it was between 6 and 7pm. I enjoyed seeing, learning and day dreaming in the streets far better than the time I spent at school. In school, I often thought girls were smarter than I was in books, and they were prettier too. I just loved starring at them, especially the two smartest in my class. I must have fallen in love with one of them because I followed her home every day for a few years before I turned my way home.
For a few years, I had a male teacher who taught Chinese and Bible studies. He was a sadist. There was never a day he did not beat some student of his who either got a low grade or didn't line up straight. He would punish students, especially boys, for the smallest mischief. He almost twisted my ear off once because he caught me chatting to a classmate during line-up. I used to think if I were to kill a person, it would have been that asshole. One day I was so happy to see his herpes was acting out on his lips. Another teacher named Fung, who had never taught me in a class, found me adorable for some reasons, and asked my mother whether she could be my godmother. For that I got to eat her peanut butter on fresh French bread during recess. I thought that was a great tradition to have god-mother because I was hungry all the time anyway. Her husband did painting and calligraphy. He wrote everything and anything with a pen and a ruler. It was amazing to see the speed he moved the ruler around. He gave me lots of encouragement for the very few pictures I drew. They had a daughter who was a few years older. She was the first person I saw playing a piano. It was so precise and the piece she played for me the most, was the Moonlight Sonata. The relationship continued until I left home for the USA in 1975. This is a picture of Godmother and her husband .
One activity I disliked the most about my primary school was Bible Studies which was one of the everyday classes. Every student walked in the school through the metal gate and was locked in to study a set of classes from 1 until 5. There were no choices. Complaints were met with a blow to the back of the head. That was the way. It was certain that the Salvation Army was not going to give these kids financially subsidized education without trying hard to make them Christians. Everyday we started school walking single file into the chapel for half an hour of conversion speech, which included sweet talks of JC's love and threats of hell and angry punishments. First and foremost was punishment by sadistic teachers who caught you not paying attention to the speech, not bowed and praying or not singing those hymns to glorify their God. Then if a student did not make the grade in Bible Studies, the student would have to repeat the entire school year all over again. The whole British HK education system was set up to force young minds to conform to non-thinking dogma through fear and threat of organized religion. The alternatives were Buddhist schools, which was another example of the same thing, or independent schools with the worst reputation, where I finished my later high school years.
The time I spent in that school was force feeding in every way. Academically, students were rewarded for remembering facts but punished for thinking. The only thing I retained from it was a sense of resentment. It was probably not a whole lot better than Mao's idea of training youths. For me though it was positive because I learned what not to trust and obey deep inside. On the surface I was so sweet and naive, but inside I was building up my anger and disgust for suppression.
News from the other family members in China was not very good. When Mother and I left, remaining were Big Sister (BS), Sister 2nd (S2), Sister 5th (S5) and 6th (S6) and my younger sister (YS). In order to get the permit to go, Mother had to find one adult relative to agree to be in charge of all the kids on paper. Mother soon found out who her real friends were . Of all the close relatives, there was only one man Uncle Duc who came forward to offer help to be sisters’ paper parent. He lived far away from Canton, and could only make occasional trips to check on the kids. BS was either in training or traveling to perform opera, she was rarely with the other sisters. Due to the decrease in number of family size, all my sisters were assigned to move to a smaller house, the house was located in a dead-end alley. Here is a photo of them eating dinner at that house in later years.
(2nd from right, daughter of S2)
Parents made as many visits as they could and sent money back for financial support. Father started trading with the Chinese Trading Department. He was in Canton more often than Mother. I was told that Uncle Duc was very nice but child-care was not his specialty. One day BS came home to find all her sisters had their heads shaved. They had head-lice. Uncle Duc had a couple of teenage sons. He sent them to help the girls in the house maintenance and such.
S2 being the oldest soon found out that she could be her own boss and ran away from home to explore her possibilities on her own. She later joined a minor opera troop which performed in villages and came home only for important events. Left in the house were three sisters, ages only 8, 10 and 11, to be with each other. The departure of Mother and I was the final straw for S6, she began to exhibit extreme emotional outbreaks and self-destructive behavior. Once Father was expected to arrived at the Trading Center where S6 was waiting to see him. For some reason Father did not show and S6 had a fit. Father’s friends, using their special status as guests of the Republic of China, managed to have S6 admitted to a hospital to be cared for. She stayed there till she recovered.
BS was enjoying most of her training except for the splits. Her legs were split by gentle force daily and caused her a lot of pain. She said that the whole class of girls was hiding in the toilet to avoid the stretch exercise. Of the 30 applicants whom the Canton Opera picked from the group of 3000, only five were picked for acting. She was among them. After training, the group was split up to join different acting units traveling to different villages and cities. She was assigned to be the apprentice of Chan Yeye a very famous star of the Canton Opera. Due to the fame of her teacher, they got special treatment anywhere they went. The first major role BS took was the part of a princess who went to her father’s home and broke lots of antiques, which proved to be a bad omen for my father during the heat of the Cultural Revolution. BS received 30 dollars a month for food which was good money then.
YS was developmentally delayed, she took extra time crawling before she could walk on her own. Together with S6’s emotional situation, S5 had a handful to take care of. Besides she herself was only a little girl. They all were practically orphans. But S5 did everything to be done like a grown person. Her determination and courage deserve a gold medal.
I don’t recall too many of my trips back to China. Old photos suggested I was back there a few times. These photos are telling on the stages of sadness or happiness each one of us was going through. I was probably the happiest of all. By and large, I haven’t stop smiling since the day I left Canton. One trip I remember was when we went back for S2’s wedding. I was 12. It was 1967, the political atmosphere was tense. To ordinary folks who were living in Mainland, what they witnessed was nothing less than a civil war. The Red guard was already well organized and fighting was happening all over Canon City. Due to the lack of mass media except for the official billboard postings of certain kinds of news and witness accounts, folks didn’t know much of what was going on. So one part of the city could be chaotic one day, and be normal the next. It was under such circumstances S2’s wedding took place.
Mao was telling the whole country to purge all old ways, but the method of her wedding went the same as always. We, the siblings, were to arrive at the man’s house to received gifts and lucky money before we sent the groom his bride and her stuff. On that day, I was, like other kids in HK, dressed in trendy bells and pointed shoes. We hired a tricycle to get home after dropping off S2. On the way back, I saw trucks loaded with dead bodies followed by masses of young people screaming and yelling in madness heading our direction. The tricycle peddler looked back at me and said, “ little brother, you may want to take off your trendy clothes to avoid being hurt or killed.” Being smart as I was, I at once took of my tie, rolled up my trousers and kicked off the shoes and hid them together with the camera.
me in the tricycle
We got home and stayed in the house until it was time to go back to HK. Meanwhile fighting, burning and destruction didn’t cease because we left but intensified. People stopped having work due to the closure of factories and so on. BS had to come home because everyone doing anything important could be nailed for prosecution. The Opera was closed down. Many stars had to escape or face punishment. The city was paralyzed by fighting. Many simply stayed home to avoid being killed for some or no reason. Neighborhoods started constructing gates to protect themselves. Being in a dead-end alley my sisters’ neighborhood only had to build one gate to block off intruders. The male members of each family, armed with sticks, took turns to watch the gate. My sisters were let off of that duty. Uncle Duc sent one of his sons to stay with the girls to keep them safe.
Then it came, the big bad moment for my family. Parents’ name was posted on the billboard of the street for being capitalists. BS was advised to take all things of value for a burning demonstration in order to avoid the Red Guards’ entrance to their house for destruction. No one would be hurt that way. So came the omens of her first operatic act. Father’s hundreds of art and antiques were reduced to dirt and ashes. This destroyed my father’s wealth but more so, China itself was damaged because many of these treasures were made by the most significant Chinese people of culture. There was a pot of precious metal coins she did not know how to destroy. She gave it to an uncle to dispose of and no one knows what he did with it. The on going fighting in China did not affect HK people too much. The HK government did have to fish out many strapped corpses which were floated down river from Mainland.
Meanwhile back at home, my parents were like lions but working like dogs. One day Mother came home announcing that they had actually put a down payment to purchase a mortgage and bought an apartment. Grand-uncle (GU) was remodeling the inside to fit our needs. We were going to have a kitchen and bathroom of our own with a hot water heater! The building even had a security guard, except he looked too friendly, old and weak to be threatening. But it worked. Owners of the apartments were willing to chip in together to hire him to watch the door. I suppose there were the Royal Police to call for help. Later on the owners even paid to put up a metal gate.The apartment was over 600 sq ft! It was on the 11th floor of a corner building on Leechi Koc Rd. There were four apartments on each floor. Our apartment faced the Victoria harbor but it was too far inland to see the water. There were so many tall buildings all around to block our view. The road to the side of our building was unique because along the middle of the two-way traffic was a row of one story metal buildings of shops and venders which stretched all the way to the shore. Along that street, we could buy most anything, from shoes to snakes, from underwear to leopards. GU built a bedroom using 1/4" plywood and 1x2 pine construction for our parents. He built a loft for us four to sleep in and another two lofts for Mother to cut patterns day and night. We could go to bed while Mother was working if she wasn't making too much noise. Well, at least, we had a permanent place called bed. I even was able to put my personal belongings on a shelf at the foot of my sleeping mat.
The apartment was not in a new building and cockroaches were well established. If we left our bedding unfolded during the day, we would find ourselves sleeping with crawly creatures all night. We checked and sprayed for bugs often, but it was not a guarantee for us not to jump out of bed screaming in the middle of the night. Sometimes it was something bigger--mice!
For Mother to stand at the right height to cut patterns on the lofts, GU built huge tall cabinets on the main floor that she stood on, and in which they used to store pants. There was actually a little bit of space reserved for our dining table. We also had a small but full kitchen. Our parents put in a double gas stove. It was very efficient. On busy days, some of the girls had to stay late to work. Mother had to feed them as well. The rest of the space Mother stuffed with as many sewing machines as possible and added a table for the pant-steamer who only came only to work at night.
To increase space and also to fulfill some of Father's re-emerged needs, they hired iron-workers to build a huge fully enclosed metal cage along the line of windows outside of the apartment. It was 4 ft deep and six ft high.
Father started his life-long hobby of planting orchids. More than once, he used fresh clams as fertilizer. The rest of us had to put up with it for weeks. I also started my hobby of gathering animals. At one point, I peaked at having thirteen dogs, three primates, an owl, two cats and turtles and many tropical fish. I told my parents I was going to be a biologist in order to have all those creatures. It was rather chaotic and unsanitary to have all these animals living in that cage. My heart was broken when I finally decided to cut back.
Parents were making very good money at that point. I was beginning to make money from them by working for my father to organize jade pieces. Also, in Mother’s factory, I did her book keeping and accounting on paydays. I was no longer starving, but I made up for the past food deficiency by the way I went to restaurants to feed. My father began to go to a restaurant to drink tea and to have Dim Sum for breakfast every morning. He went there to read the newspaper and wait for mother to join him after she finished with her work in the wholesale market. Father didn’t start to leave for the jade market until after 10. Then Mother would go to another restaurant down the block to have tea and do her material purchasing. I was almost always there for a free breakfast and conversation with them before I went shopping for lunch. Sometimes I went with Mother to the other restaurant to eat lunch instead. That restaurant didn’t have good food. Mother went there because that was where the fabric people did business. Occasionally I felt a lump in my chest. I was feeling guilty for how much of their money I spent for breakfast, but my parents didn’t mind and loved to see me hog. Another example of my transition from poor to doing OK is that I had a good sized tropical pet fish that died on me. I cooked it for lunch because I could not stand to see it wasted. Later when I was in high school, I did dissection of small animals for Biology in the balcony cage. I did not eat those remains.
At the beginning of Mother’s sewing business, she only hired experienced and mature sewers. Later she took in one or two young teenage girls as trainees. There were many girls from poorer parents dying to learn a skill to support themselves and to plan for the future. It was almost charitable for a employer to agree to take in someone’s daughter. The girls stayed in the factory so much of the day that it was like an adoption. The only time she went home was to sleep or when the factory was closed for one day a week. During busy days, they would be staying over and sleep in the loft with us. Today Mother is still close friends with a couple of the grown girls. Because our home was also the factory, sooner or later anyone who worked there became friends and we enjoyed many social activities outside of work. I thought it was a very good working condition except for it was so crowded. The young lady whom we met through Aunt 2nd in Macao moved to HK later and worked for Mother for many years until she got married. Mother’s half brother was let out of China and worked for Mother as the steamer. He and one of Mother’s best workers, Wy Min, were later married. So you see, it was one big happy family most of the time. Mother was very generous to her workers--good years were followed with big bonuses.
Father was buying high quality jade pieces from China. I loved the stuff which included many treasures from Imperial China. I asked him to keep some of that stuff because they were so rare and beautiful, but he did not listen. Today these things are not available for whatever price. From seeing and touching all these rare objects I learned to understand Chinese art and craft.
Father has not collected another painting again in his life after all those he had in China were burned. But he had put away a few pieces of porcelains and antique jade for his collection. It is a tiny collection compared to what he had. Father was a great judge for quality of arts and a very educated man, but he was not a very good business person. I used to get so mad at him for selling some of the most exquisite items for so little profit to this one particular guy who knew just how to sweet-talk him. The worst was that I was the person who would deliver the objects.
Our parents enjoyed giving big banquets for birthdays when they sometimes invited over a hundred friends, relatives and business correspondences. It was at those banquets I learned how to dine on rare food. A banquet would usually start at 6 when guests would arrive to play Ma Jok and drink tea for a couple of hours. Dinner started at 8 with at least 12 Chinese courses and beverages from the West. Most Chinese were not big drinkers, but they got very happy after a little bit. Some of the standard main courses were shark fin soup, bird nest soup, sea cucumber and dried scallop, fried chicken testicles, all kinds of seafood, and so on. Those were good times for socializing and to catch up with everybody because people in HK had to work about 12 hrs a day. Our parents were extremely driven workers, and they were sure willing to spend their hard earned money to have a good time.
Money in the bank brought me more freedom to do things that were fun. It also helped that neither of my parents were too serious about my school study. I studied just enough to pass tests so I could have the rest of the time to do more important activities. I didn't need to help out in the factory as much, only the accounting. My parents also let me go a lot of places by myself because I had proved myself with my trip to school and they trusted my skill in taking public transportation. One thing they did not let me do was camp over-night.
When I was about 11 I took a group of 4 kids about 9 and 10 years old from lower grades in my school to picnic in the country. At 6 am, we met at the bus station in Jim Sha Joi. Everybody was pretty much on time. Each took with them a water bottle. They all had paid some money for me to buy chicken wings and bread. I also brought long metal folks to cook the wings with.We took the bus for an hour to another bus station to transfer to another bus to the country. We got off the bus and walked an hour to a waterfall. We swam, climbed rocks, caught shrimp, and on a huge rock we started a fire to roast wings for lunch. We had great fun and in the afternoon we started to walk to catch the bus. We waited a long time, but no bus came. We took a vote and decided to walk in the direction of the bus route to catch the bus along the way. It must be half an hour later, when I sensed trouble was coming. Walking towards us were five guys with the intention to rob us. Two of them walked to me. I was the tallest. They made us sit down on the curb facing away from the road. Two guys were about twenty yards from us and one was right behind me. They told us to empty out our pockets and take off all our jewelry and watches. I was so mad that I had to give him an unusual piece of jade my father had just given me. I kept having to talk myself into not pulling out a knife I kept at the bottom of my pack. My body wanted to fight those jerks, but my mind reminded me we were out numbered and out sized. Because I was the oldest, I had to make my decision with the other's in mind. My heart was pumping with fear and excitement because I did not fight those guys. After they counted up their treasure they give us bus fare to get out of there.
After that I decided to take up Kung Fu. I had one of mother's workers sew me a long and narrow bag that I stuffed with sand and hung in the building stairway to practice punches and kicks.On hot summer afternoons, I could buy a Kung Fu movie in an air conditioned theater. These movies were so much fun to watch that I still watch them with my wife and son these days. Most of the movies portray very similar stories. Usually it started with a good man, with a son and/or daughter, who was killed by a bad guy. The kids escaped. Then some years later, the kids grew up, found the killer and got revenge. Everybody in the audience was happy and walked out in the heat. On Saturday morning the movie started at 10 and it was a double feature. I walked out in the heat with a headache because the ventilation was pretty bad in the theater which was closed a couple years later. It was a great disappointment because it was the only theater showing those old movies. Another entertainment I liked was Chinese opera. They had made some Chinese opera into movies and it was a lot cheaper and shorter in length than the traditional live Chinese Opera. I liked to sing Chinese Opera when I was young.
No place was safe in HK, but the robbery didn't stop me from going to the countryside because that was my most favorite thing to do. I sometimes went alone. There was a mountain named Da Mo San, or Big Fog Mountain, because it was often foggy. Many people got lost when the fog came, which usually happened in the late afternoon. The first time I went there, I went just to get lost. I waited till the fog came in. It was no kidding. The fog was so thick that I could not see my foot at times. It got cold so fast it was actually scary. It was a good learning experience for me. I learned that the force of nature was bigger than man, and I learned to be afraid of it. I knew if I panicked I would loose my judgment. I would then be lost and end up spending the night cold and hungry, and put fear on top of fear. I took a deep breath and started to use my head. I remembered the main road wrapped around the mountain and meandered up, and if I keep walking down I should run into the road, so I could follow it down to where the cars and buses were. And that was the way I went home, but I missed dinner time. Mother saved me the best part of the chicken, the leg. I also learned to be late for dinner more often.
I never would read any book if it was not required by school. I have never found much interest in literature, but if someone else reads it to me I like Chinese poetry. That was the reason I liked Chinese opera. They used quite a bit of old poems and proverbs. That was my main source of cultural education because school in Hong Kong is all about pragmatics. By now I was in high school. I did okay in the grade school graduation exam. I found a high school that was supposed to be pretty good, at least in name. I ended up hating it so bad. First of all was the uniform we had to wear. In the summer it was white pants and shirt and a red tie. If you were caught with a spot on it you would be disciplined. Girls wore white dresses with the length below their knees. Winter we wore gray wool pants and a blue wool sport jacket, with white shirt and a tie. If you wore a vest it had to be brown. Boys' hair had to be short, not to touch the ears. The school treated the uniform as if they were training soldiers. This was an all day school. The day started at 8 with lining up at the yard and marching into the chapel for 45 minutes of forced bible study and prayer. We were being forced to go to church five days a week. Every few weeks they would ask whether you had turned Christian. And of course nobody was allowed to ask questions or move in the chapel. They had trained Christian students to be watch dogs to take the rebels for punishment, which was 45 minutes of detention after school. Those preachers made the most idiotic talks. All it made me was angry. The main object of this school was to make Christians. The way they did it was to threaten and beat you into submission. Again the teachers were nothing but sadist. I went from one Christian school to the next and it was much worse. I was old enough now to not be willing to take that shit.
There were also school bullies. I was not big and strong at that age, but I was assertive and good looking. I was picked on by one particular bully because the girl he liked was interested in me. He was a foot taller than I was. One confrontation I had with him I had to jump way high before I could kick him in the chest. Before he could retaliate, I was rescued by a couple of other big guys from another grade who appreciated my guts. From then on I was under their protection.After one year, I did not even try to pass bible study. Consequently, I was not allowed to be promoted to Form 2. So I left to find another school. I was so glad to get out of that school. But I had nightmares about that school for the next thirty years. They really knew how to send guilty feeling into my psyche.
I spent the next summer vacation, which was about a month, looking for a school. I was afraid to go into any school that looked like the last one. Almost every school looked alike. There were some that were known for gangsters and student criminal activities. There were schools that would only take elite students. I was not one of those. One day I passed by a school that did not look like a school. First of all the building was so small I did not think it was possible to put a whole school there. After walking back and forth many times looking at the sign, I decided to go in. The building was not in the best shape, and the stairway was uneven. I walked in the office which was a very small room. The man in it was the vice-principle in charge of admission and discipline.He looked at my report cards and said I was qualified. This school did not even have bible study, but students were required to wear uniforms. It was about a week before school started and I was relieved that I would have a school to go to.
This school did not look like much, but it turned out to be a school I actually enjoyed going to. The class size was about 20, half of the other school. The whole school had under a hundred students. I soon found out they were not too up-tight about the uniform and hair. For the first time ever in my life I saw some happy students. The principal of the school was a chemist who went to Australia for school. He taught us Chemistry. The first day of school he poured sulfuric acid on a shirt and a few other dangerous chemicals to demonstrate the danger of chemicals. Often he came in the class carrying some sort of exotic animals. My most favorite was an eagle the size of a huge turkey. There was a small courtyard in the school where he kept a black bear in a cage. I often got to school a little early to play clawing with the bear. I got scratches once in awhile. The bear loved bananas and peanuts. On hot days I was allowed to hose the bear down or clean his cage.
A few year later, the principle opened a pet shop near the school where he sold all kinds of wildlife.The biology teacher only came to school three time a week because that was all she had to teach. She was a wonderful teacher and was clear on what she was trying to convey, and it was pleasant to listen to her. The math teacher was also very good. He was from northern China and was hard to understand at times. Once he was giving an award to the person with the top score for a test. He was reading a name out loud which made everybody in my class laugh. So he did it again, by now some students were on the floor laughing. He did not understand the laugh and I finally figured out it was my name he tried to call. He never figured out the reason. His northern accent on pronouncing my name sounded like he was saying three vulgar words in Cantonese referring to genitals.
The teacher I liked the most taught Chinese literature. It was not because I did well in her class--to the contrary. She was a teacher because she just loved to teach. And I could tell she loved Literature. Listening to her was like watching a movie. She was also very forgiving. Her class was usually the first class in the afternoon and more than once half the class was late because of a ball game. All the boys ran in half dressed and stinky wet. It took 5 minutes before anyone could settle down. One would expect a teacher would get plenty mad. However with a big smile she continued to teach as if everybody was listening. The way high school worked in Hong Kong was to prepare all students for a matriculation exam at the end of five years. Students were mostly required to learn by memory the exact required material. In Chinese literature it was the same. If a student successfully remembered a set amount of classics and was able to recite them, that was an A. That did not work for me. I always got a big 0 because I refused to even try to remember one single sentence. The only class I liked in Chinese was the Composition. The problem I had was I always made up words. Sometimes I would combine English letters and Chinese symbols together in order to have the character sound correct. That was not exactly what my teacher liked to have me learn, but she was very thrilled with the kind of creativity I had. Nevertheless she did not give me a good grade for my ingenuity. I had never any decent grade in Chinese at all. But my teacher and I liked each other.A few months after I graduated, I happened to run into her in a bus. She told me that I should pursue something in the arts. I was surprised because the closest to the arts I ever had to do in school was her Chinese classes and I failed them.
Anyway, the school I was going to at this point was very satisfactory. I actually was motivated enough to want to do better in school. I started to work harder and went to the public library after school to study. I was making the top of the class in all the science and math subjects. Still what I enjoyed the most was when I did not have school.
My brother and his friends were very westernized and did many western things like hanging out in western style restaurants and eating like westerners. I joined them many times. They were older so they were making trips to Macao and other overnight trips. I liked those trips because I could see and do something different. The more I saw, the more aware I was of things I did not like about the HK social dynamic.What I disliked the most was the racial prejudices. Chinese were the majority but were treated as second rate citizens. Whites got the special treatment everywhere. White kids went to special schools which were well funded. They were not subjected to the kind of hard academic standard testing as the Chinese students. They lived in areas which were the prime places both in privacy and environment desirability. While the Chinese population was stacked sky high, the whites had houses and yards. Hong Kong was an intense commercial city with a lot of financial resources. The British government took the profit back to England. They did not put money back to improve Hong Kong or the Chinese. When they did, it was only to the minimum. One can see the drastic difference of the recent years= remake of HK after the British left. People in HK now are living in a much better place. HK is enjoying her own wealth for a change.
My brother had some trouble in school. The principle of his school really did not like him. I recall Mother had to go fend for him a few times. My parents solution was to sent him to finish high school abroad. He ended up in England. Now he is spending the rest of his life hating being stuck there. My mind was also pretty much made up to leave HK the first chance I got. That was the reason I started to work harder in school work. I wanted to study in the United States and to gain freedom. Meanwhile I started being interested in the sister of my brother's friend. Her name was Karen. She was a wild girl who went to a catholic girl's school. She was not very good in her math and science. I was her tutor. She reached down in my pants when I was trying to tutor her math. And that was how we started dating.
Mother was doing very well in her shop. She bought the apartment next to ours and moved the shop there. Grand Uncle did a marvelous renovation and converted the old place into a living apartment with all teak cabinets, wall panels and a hardwood floor. The bathroom was all decorative ceramic tiles. I now had my own bedroom. A color TV was the new major addition other than the all leather couches. We were getting pretty high class. For investment Mother also bought an apartment in Causeway Bay which was the most expensive shopping area in Hong Kong at the time. They are now living there. That apartment was the best thing for me because I decided to move in by myself. I told Mother that I could study there without disturbance. It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to have a place to learn to live on you own and I was 16 at the time. The semi-independence from my parent was an important time for me to start thinking about what I wanted in life. I enjoyed living alone so much that my parents had to beg me to come home. So I went home every few days for good food in exchange.It was also a great place for me and Karen. Karen was now my first love. We spent lots of time in my apartment. But she had to lie to her parents when she came to my place. I was very much in love with her and I thought about having a family with her after college in America.
It was the HK Matriculation Examination which determined whether I could go study in the United States. I was disappointed with the result but it was good enough for most US schools. I also did well in another going abroad exam. I was accepted by all the schools to which I applied. I decided I would go study in Minneapolis, MN, a place totally opposite from HK. Because my application to the States was late I ended up wasting a whole year studying in HK without any interest. I went to school just because I was feeling guilty not going. Finally I quit because it was just torture. I had to go away but my heart was torn and my enthusiasm for leaving was complicated because I was so in love with Karen.