Contribution

Lok Sin Tong Primary School was previously known as “Lok Sin Tong Free School” before the 1970s. Being one of the most reputable schools in Kowloon City, it received an overwhelming number of applications that exceeded its actual admission offers for several times every year. During 1957-1963, I attended the morning session from Primary One…

These photos were taken in 1983. It was the time when the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Hong Kong handover received a great deal of fanfare that triggered a new wave of emigration. I still remember the day bidding farewell to a secondary schoolmate and her family who decided to migrate to America in the…

I was born in a subdivided unit inside an old tong lau building at 52 Nga Tsin Long Road. The building was demolished and rebuilt over 30 years ago. There were 50 people living in 9 units in the heyday. What a crowded house! Despite occasional conflicts, neighbours were helpful looking after each other most…

I used to live in Tung Tau Estate. It was just a 10-minute walk from the airport, where separation and reunion often took place. My first visit to the airport was with my mum in 1974, picking up my uncle who flew from Tehran to Hong Kong after competing in the 7th Asian Games. I…

I lived in Lok Wah Estate where our window overlooked Kai Tak Airport. I enjoyed watching the planes landing and taking off every sunset, considering the view a symbol of Hong Kong. My first visit to the airport was in 1986, when my uncle who had migrated to Germany came to visit us. Since long…

I was not a resident of Kowloon City, but I remember deeply about the airport. When I was young, I lived in an apartment overlooking Kai Tak Airport. I enjoyed plane spotting from the window during the morning and sunset on holidays. One morning in August 1988, while I was spotting as usual, a plane…

Airport is a place full of emotional moments. Happy reunions and heart-breaking departures can happen at the same time. It is quite a cliche happy-ending scene in films and dramas when the main actress is about to enter the restricted area, the main actor arrives at the last minute asking her to stay. Flying for…

Before the airport relocation, To Kwa Wan was where the key flight path passed through. I always played with paper planes and enjoyed plane spotting in close distance with my friends on the rooftop. The aircrafts flew so low that we joked we could stop and tow them off with a rising bamboo laundry pole….

When talking about rooftops, I have endless stories to tell. When I was a child, I lived on the top floor, just below the rooftop, in a “tong lau” building in To Kwa Wan. The rooftop was shared by four interconnected buildings, so you can imagine how spacey it was! During the daytime, the rooftop…

Kowloon City is a very special place. I studied in a secondary school there and some classmates were from Kowloon Walled City. Driven by curiosity, we often asked them to guide us for adventures. In fact, there was nothing special inside, except the poor sanitation. Drug addicts were spotted from time to time, but if…

I had been living on Third Street in Kowloon Walled City since I was born. In my childhood, I spent much time exploring the place and witnessed many interesting stories. Marble shooting was very popular among the kids in the open spaces downstairs. Sometimes the tricky young adults came to take our marbles away by…

I believed I was the last generation of residents who lived in Kowloon Walled City. I was 4 or 5 and I still remembered the green wall next to my bed where my mum always stuck my favourite paintings on it. Now, when I am looking at the picture, I don’t think it is good…

The Argyle Street camp for Vietnamese refugees commenced in 1979, managed by Hong Kong Police and the Civil Aid Service. In close proximity to the residential area, the camp sat next to Lomond Road and Argyle Street on one side, St. Teresa’s Hospital and Kowloon Hospital on the other side. Back then I was working…

I have never lived in Kowloon City, but my mom took me there at times when I was young. As I remember, the old-fashioned shopping mall in the district was crudely decorated. The wall and floor tiles were either in brownish or orange hue. Lined with tiny shops, the interior was very gloomy. As shop…

Back in the 80s, my parents liked to take us to Hung Hom Square during holidays. The entire top floor was occupied by New Star Restaurant, in which the gigantic water wheel installation was the symbol. Dim sum trolleys bustled around and there used to be a specific room for customers to dial the telephone. …

In my childhood, our family lived in a tenement building on Hung Fok Street in To Kwa Wan. As a haven for leisure, the rooftops of adjacent tenement buildings were connected and shared. Such architectural design broke the borderline set by concrete walls and staircases, and helped maintain a close bond among neighbours. After school,…

In a recent visit to 13 Streets, I was amazed by the dramatic changes in its environment, especially the improvement on hygiene and cleanliness. The streets are named after auspicious animals and I once lived in two of them. Living in 8-storey Chinese tenement houses that had no elevator, it was never a problem for…

When I was young, I lived in Sha Tin and my uncle lived in Hong Kong Island. My uncle had a full time job, but he sometimes worked part-time on the weekend nights and my aunt was a night-shift convenience store assistant. Whenever they had to work at night, they called my mum and asked…

The Kowloon City district was probably the area I visited the most in the 1980s. I spent my 7-year secondary school life there. Back then, the aeroplanes flew overhead everyday. The hawkers swarmed Lion Rock Road. Walking past the walled city on the way to school, snapping up some snacks in the international supermarket off…

Speaking about the unfathomable mystery in Kowloon City that is often too subtle to notice, it has to be the flyover as shown in the picture below. Its construction stayed unfinished for years. There has hardly been any progress since I was a student. Even though I have been working full time for years, it…