Ng Siu Kuen

Ng Sui Kuen grew up and lived in Nga Tsin Wai until he emigrated to Britain. He learnt from his grandmother that in the past, his family owned many houses in Nga Tsin Wai, but they were sold one after another because of poor living. When Ng Sui Kuen was old enough to understand, the only ancestral home the family owned was the house at no. 16 on the 1st Lane. Ng Sui Kuen grew up in the ancestral house on the 1st Lane. The ancestral house was a two-storey stone house. It had an attic with a partitioned room. The area of the attic was the same as the floors beneath it.

Ng Sui Kuen lived with his grandmother, parents, an elder sister, two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Later on, they rented one half of the attic to a family of five. Ng Sui Kuen’s family slept on bunk beds while Ng Sui Kuen lived with his grandmother at the attic. They accessed the attic by climbing a wooden staircase. In 1961, as his father had left Hong Kong for Britain, and Ng Sui Kuen and his younger brothers and sisters were still little, the living area was sufficient generally. In summer, the children either slept on canvas cots or a mat placed on the floor. There was a bathroom in the house. Two pump gas-driven kerosene stoves were placed at the corner for cooking. They were later replaced by the electric rice cooker. The family had their meals at the anteroom. The children seldom stayed in the house. They would go to the gatehouse and play after meals

 Ng Sui Kuen’s playmates all came from Nga Tsin Wai, and most of them lived in the 1st Lane. They included the younger brother of the incumbent village headman. When the construction works of the 7-storey buildings in Tung Tau Estate were underway, a pit was formed by piling at the construction site. On rainy days, it became a water pit with the depth of 4 or 5 feet - deep enough to drown a child. Ng Sui Kuen had jumped into the water pit for fun. As a child, he did not consider the mud water to be dirty.

There were many fruit shops on Nam Pin Street in Nga Tsin Wai. The children of the shop owners were his childhood friends. Because his family was too poor to afford the fruits, Ng Sui Kuen would collect rotten apples from the ground and cut them up with a knife borrowed from a fruit shop. In those days, there was a field behind the village. Ng Sui Kuen liked going to Tsz Wan Shan and Chuk Yuen (the current Chuk Yuen Estate in Wong Tai Sin) to catch jumping spiders. At the time, there were many fish ponds and vegetable farms in Chuk Yuen, while the Wong Tai Sin Temple was only a small shrine.