Law King Hei

Law King Hei was born in his hometown of Foshan.  His father came to Hong Kong before WWII and had worked at a light bulb factory run by a his fellow townsman.  During the war, he returned to his hometown and got married there.  Law King Hei was the third of his five children.  After 1949, he once again went to Hong Kong followed by his wife not long later, leaving their children in the rural hometown.  Due to economic hardship, the couple sent the children to Macau for several years under the care of their grandmother, while the parents continued their work in Hong Kong.  In the 1960s, the children finally reunited with their parents in Hong Kong.  In Hong Kong, the father worked in a light bulb factory which was situated in a four-storey building on 29 Sheung Heung Road, To Kwa Wan.  The reunited family lived on To Kwa Wan Road which was close to the father's workplace.  To Kwa Wan was then a very desolate residential district for the poor.  The area had many factories, such as Five Rams Battery (Hing Wah Battery Factory), Freezinhot Bottle Co., Ltd. and Chiap Hua Manufacturing.  Manufacturers of light bulbs, batteries, torches and other related goods concentrated in the area near to Sheung Heung Road. Law believed that the concentration of related industries made it easy for the manufacturers delivered products from the upper stream to the lower stream.  Law King Hei’s home was not far from the drums of Hong Kong Gas, the slaughterhouse and the industries using the remains of cattle, such as bone factory and leather factory.  There were farmlands near Lok Man Sun Chuen on the hill slope. Because of these offensive industries, the air in To Kwa Wan was seriously polluted, carrying strong smell of fuel gas and rotten animal bones.  Nevertheless, during lunch hour, many workers still enjoyed their lunch on the streets at cooked food stalls.

The light bulb factory on 29 Sheung Heung Road produced small light bulbs for installing into torches, radio, Christmas lights, and electrical switches.  Many workers were from the Law family in Foshan.  Light bulb production involved many steps.  Some steps had to be carried out inside the factory workshop, including: 1) binding of copper wires and filament, 2) binding cooper screw cap and the light bulb, 3) mounting copper wires on the light bulbs, and 4) welding the copper wires with the screw cap (Editor's note: The above four steps are known as “binding wires”, ""adding powder”, “mounting wires”and “soldering"" respectively).  Other procedures could be outsourced to home-based workshops, which helped lower the production cost.  Because of this, Law King Hei’s parents converted their home into a workshop, working for the light bulb factory on power tests, packaging and dyeing.  A home-based workshop did not have a licence, and did not complied to the law even, for example it hired child labour.  All workers at Law King Hei’s house were young girls of 12 to 13 years old earning low wages.  They usually worked at the home workshops for several years, and then moved on to factories when they reached14 or 15 years old.  The door of Law’s home workshop was always open for people and goods coming in and out. Summer was the busiest season because they had to make Christmas lights for exporting to the US market.  It took them more than one month to ship the lights to the US. So the factory had to get the goods done in July and August and had them loaded onto the ships in September, so that the lights could be available in the market in November.  Law King Hei said with a smile that he had never had a real summer holiday during his childhood.

During the Cultural Revolution, many rural residents fled to Hong Kong illegally from the Mainland and took refuge in Law’s in To Kwa Wan.  Most of the migrants were married men who left their wives and children in their hometown.  Since they lacked professional skills, they mainly worked in restaurants and light bulb factories.   The factory on Sheung Heung Road had provided shelter for many rural townsmen, giving them food and accommodation in the factory.  After settling down, the migrants would move to live in rented bed spaces in the nearby old buildings in To Kwa Wan.  Since China's economic reform, Law’s father shifted the main production processes to Dongguan in order to reduce labour cost.   As direct export from the Mainland was not possible, the goods had to be shipped back to the factory on Sheung Heung Road, where Hong Kong workers made some processing in a symbolic way and finished packaging.  The factory workshop there became almost an empty nest.  At that time, Law King Hei’s family had moved to Kwun Tong.  After he and his siblings grew up and worked outside home, they no longer helped with the home production and there were no more child labour working in the workshop.  The family workshop literally collapsed as a result.  Later, China allowed direct export of foreign invested factories, and there were no more processes required to be done in Hong Kong. In addition, Law's father had grown old. In the early 1990, the factory was closed down.

Law King Hei’s father ran the Chiu Kwong Light Bulb Factory, where the ratio of male and female workers was about 2 to 1.  Many male workers were fellow members from the Law family, some of whom later worked in the restaurants.  Female workers were either local residents or Mainland immigrants.  Some of them once worked in Law’s home workshop before entering the factory.  Chiu Kwong’s workforce was predominately male workers.  The subcontractors who did electroplating had to mix screw caps into cyanide liquid.  They had to carry the heavy and clumsy bamboo baskets which kept these screw caps. That’s why most home-based subcontractors were male workers and there were more men than women in the factory.  Some male workers worked for Chiu Kwong until retired and seldom changed jobs.  They would work as security guards at factory buildings after retiring from factory work.  Young women were agile and had good eye sight, so they were more capable to do high-paying job of wire binding.  They usually left the factory after getting married.  Female workers of 40 to 50 years old would be considered old and only suitable to do simpler tasks such as power and light tests.  The factory began to operate from 8am.  Law’s father stayed at the site all the time and came home at 10pm.  He had two meals a day at the factory.  Only the managerial staff could take meals inside the factory.  Most workers left work at 6pm or 7pm each day.

Chiu Kwong’s factory workers lived mostly in To Kwa Wan.  When Law King Hei’s relatives first came to Hong Kong, many rented bed spaces or rooms together with families.  Old bunk beds were available for rent at Chinese-style tenement buildings.  The lower level of the bunk beds cost higher rent.  Later on, his relatives began to move to low-cost housing estates, such as the Choi Hung Estate, Wo Lok Estate, Wang Tau Hom Estate, Lok Man Sun Chuen and So Uk Estate.   Bed spaces and rooms were more available in the three-storey buildings in Chi Kiang Street, Cheung Ning Street, Sheung Heung Roa, Ha Heung Road, Lok Shan Road and Ma Tau Wai Road.  The To Kwa Wan Market today was once surrounded by old buildings.  Cheung Ning Street and Chi Kiang Street were back streets so the rents there were lower.  Ma Tau Wai Road and other main streets had higher housing prices.  Law King Hei considered buildings near Hung Hom poorer, including those buildings around Wah Lok Theatre and Green Island Cement.  Those on Mok Cheong Street and the Thirteen Streets, on the other hand, were more newly completed and more ideal.  Law King Hei lived in a building on To Kwa Wan Road, which was a good environment facing the Hoi Sham Temple.  The civil servant quarters on Maidstone Road stood out in the region, and Law King Hei envied his classmates who lived there.

Law King Hei’s distant uncle went to Hong Kong from Foshan before WWII, and established Chiu Kwong on 29 Sheung Heung Road in To Kwa Wan.  His Father married in Foshan in the later stage of the war.  Due to economic difficulties in the late 1950s, he came to Hong Kong through legal means with the help of his townsman there.  He sought shelter with townsmen in To Kwa Wan, and started working at Chiu Kwong.  Chiu Kwong’s workshop was located in the third floor of an old four-storey factory building, with two units on each level.   Each unit was about 1,000 to 2,000 square feet with high ceilings.  Law’s distant uncle could not afford to buy a factory workshop when he first came to Hong Kong, so he rented the third floor to start his factory.  As the factory expanded in production capacity, the boss set up another workshop on the second floor and put it under the management of Law King Hei's father.  The boss later opened one more workshop on Maidstone Road.  His uncle then bought the first factory premise, while his father also had some shares in it.  The building on 29 Sheung Heung Road did not have a specific name.  Now the building has been converted into residential apartments and subdivided into small rooms for rent.  In the old days, there was also a sugar factory on the second floor.  Right next to it was the Rose Knitting Factory which occupied the whole building.  Around the area, there were smaller factories that worked with small-scale machine.

There were many light bulb factories in To Kwa Wan such as Chiu Kwong, Ho Kwong and Sun Kwong.  These were registered factories which are obliged to comply with labour regulation.  The Labour Department regularly inspected them.   Some home-based light bulb factory mostly engaged in electroplating, soldering and other processes.  In Law King Hei’s understanding, there was no legal restriction against the employment of child labour (Editor’s note: The related ordinance of child labour was passed in 1922 and re-instated in 1947 after the WWII, but in practice many small factories employed young workers aged under 15.)  A bulb factory rarely carried out all the processes.  Each manufacturer only took care of one single process such as the production of screw caps or glass shell, hence Chiu Kwong had a lot of business dealings with the home-based workshops.  Processes that needed to be conducted in the formal workshop were exhaustion, placing wires, binding wires, light testing and so on.  By exhaustion, it means workers would extract air from the light bulbs.  Large machine and coal gas were required to undertake this procedure, which could not be done in the home environment. Similarly, placing wires, binding wires and light testing had to be done with large machines and adequate factory facilities and therefore remained to be factory processes.

To Kwa Wan's old factory buildings concentrated on Sheung Heung Road, Ha Heung Road, Lok Shan Road and To Kwa Wan Road (near San Ma Tau Street).  Chiu Kwong was located in a separate building whereas old-style factory buildings on Ha Heung Road stood next to Chinese tenement houses.  The old style factory buildings were four-storeys high, with two units on each level but had no elevator.  One factory mostly ran in one unit in a building, whereas Rose Knitting Factory occupied the whole factory block.  Near to these small factory units were large factories such as Five Rams Battery (Hing Wah Battery Factory), Freezinhot Bottle Co., Ltd, Chiap Hua Manufacturing and a large garment factory running in a separate building.  These factories were more modern, equipped with new machines and operating in larger factory premises.  There were many cottage industries on Sheung Heung Road and Ha Heung Road specializing in electroplating.  Since the use of cyanide was involved in electroplating, the families of the workshop owners, who also lived in the workshop, were highly susceptible to chemical poisoning.

Law King Hei’s grandfather generation came from Foshan to Hong Kong working in the restaurants and in light bulb factory.  Law guessed that the low rents in To Kwa Wan attracted these townsmen to open the light bulb factories there.  Later, other fellow townsmen arrived in Hong Kong, working at the factory and living in rented flats in the old buildings near Ma Tau Wai Road and Ming Lun Street.  To Kwa Wan was good for these townsmen to build their foothold there.  Law King Hei’s parents already came to Hong Kong for work before the war - both in the light bulb industry.   His mother was a wire-binding worker.  The couple met in Hong Kong and got married in Foshan during wartime.  Two of Law King Hei’s distant uncles came to Hong Kong in the early years to open the Chiu Kwong Light Bulb Factory.  After 1949, Law King Hei’s father began to work for the uncles.  Being the most educated one among the three, father took charge of clerical and managerial work at the factory. 

Later, as the business expanded in scale, the bosses opened another workshop.  To ensure father’s loyalty to Chiu Kwong, the uncles offered him shares of the factory.  The three townsmen became partners of the industrial venture.  Law King Hei felt that life was hard when father was almost wholly committed to run the factory.  He had only a few days of rest in a year, and had no festival holidays. He would only leave work early to join family celebration parties.  The factory had a cook, and father had two meals a day in the factory before returning home at 10pm.    Uncles and father did not know English, but the factory relied on orders from export firms (i.e. hongs).  Therefore, they hoped their children would learn English.  Law King Hei had helped his father to read clients’ instruction on purchase orders with the aid of a dictionary, when he was only a young kid.  Unfortunately, after the second generation finished their studies abroad, they had little interest in working for the family business, because by then most young people preferred not to suffer from the harshness of working in the factory.

Chiu Kwong worked for both local and overseas customers.  The factory employed sales representatives to help pitch for orders.  Local orders were more stable.  Customers included torch factories, battery factories, etc.  Chiu Kwong provided light bulbs for fixing into radios, torches and electronic appliances.  Overseas customers usually ordered the supply of Christmas lights. The production of Christmas lights were seasonal, with orders usually coming in from April to May.  Chiu Kwong received overseas orders through “Hongs” that mostly located in the Central District.  The staff of those firms spoke English and knew typing.  They contacted overseas buyers and asked local factories to produce for these orders.  Chiu Kwong had their sales representatives run to these firms bringing product catalogues with them to promote the factory to the “Hong”.

Law King Hei stressed that manufacturers had no bargaining power.  Most of the time, the “Hong” chose the factories which allowed them to gain the best profit in terms of price level and ability to meet delivery deadline.  The manufacturers had no access to overseas clients, so they had no information regarding price.  They could do nothing but to let the firms enjoy a good sum of commission out of the price of the orders.  There was a firm that Chiu Kwong worked with regularly. The firm selected the factories based on factors like production quality and ability to deliver on time. After receiving orders, the manufacturers would buy raw materials, work out a production schedule, and contract out certain produces to other informal factories such as making light bulb glass and screw caps, connecting copper wires, and soldering tin.  Different subcontractors were responsible for different processes. Chiu Kwong’s subcontractors were their townsmen.  The subcontractors had been factory workers, and equipping with the necessary skills, they left and opened their own factories and survive on hiring cheap child labour. Since the procedures were all linked to one another, the manufacturers had to observe the deadline for each procedure so as not to upset the overall flow of production schedule.  Subcontractors must be capable in management to make sure delivery on time.  Generally, the factories would initially engage a subcontractor for a trial period and would only outsource more substantive orders to them if the subcontractors had good performance during the trial.

The major raw materials for producing light bulbs were copper wire, filament, tin, glass, screw caps, etc.  During the time when Law King Hei’s father ran the factory, raw materials were imported from the Mainland, Taiwan and the US.  The US materials were imported through the “Hong”.  Chiu Kwong made good profits from producing Christmas lights.  Initially the factory offered simple models of Christmas lights: light bulbs on tying together with copper wires.  Later, the products became more sophisticated adding bird cages, tree branches, tree trunks and other plastic decorative items onto the “tree”.  The kind of lights Law King Hei remembered most was light bulbs hanging on the tip of each branch of the Christmas trees.  Chiu Kwong bought in plastic flowers, cages and other parts from local plastics factories.  The assembling process took place in Law King Hei's home where Law King Hei and other working girls threaded the plastic flowers onto the wires.  In theory, the factory could order complete ornaments such as Christmas trees, but that would be a big cost. 

Before a product was made ready for delivery, workers had to test the light quality, which depended on how the binding wire was done.  Quality bulbs had to be focused and sharp. Bulbs for torch lights required the highese standard in light quality.  These bulbs were made by the skilled masters to reduce wastage.  Christmas lights had lower quality requirement because viewers could not detect split lights from bulbs dyed with colours.  It was therefore alright to have them handled by the child workers.  Chiu Kwong did not have its own designers in the early days.  All lighting designs were done by Law King Hei father’s and the skilled masters.  There were new products launched each year but there were little change in the design of decorative items.  Chiu Kwong had a coloured catalogue, showing different models with different codes.  The sales representatives brought the catalogue to the “Hong” for promotion.  Occasionally, overseas clients would hand in specified model and the factories would decide whether they were able to take these orders, taking into account of their competence.

Light bulbs do not require high technology. The production sequence is: binding wires, placing wires, air exhaustion, adding powder and tin soldering– each process requires different techniques and facilities. 

1) Binding wire – namely the process of binding copper wire and filament by human hand.  Done usually at the factory workshop, it required worker’s concentration and good eye sight, and so only young females were more preferred.  Workers doing binding wire had to learn the skills from the masters, and the training normally took six months to one year;

2) Placing wires – namely to weld two copper wires, filament, and light foil together by human hand.  It was the most difficult step that generally done in the factory by only male skilled masters.  Workers who did placing wires also had to learn the skills, and training took generally six months to one year;

3) For air exhaustion, workers had to evacuate light bulbs by pumping air out of it.  Coal gas was used for this work step and it was mostly done by male workers.  Air exhaustion was also a technical step;

4) By adding powder it means workers would fix screw caps onto the light bulbs with some wood powder.  It was a relatively simple process that could be done by both men and women, and could possibly be outsourced to home-based workshops. But workers had to learn the necessary skills; 5) Tin soldering – in which copper wire and the screw caps were soldered together.  It was mainly done by female workers and could be outsourced to the home workshop.

Before light bulbs were ready for delivery, they had to go through power test and quality control processes.  Any workers could handle these tasks.  An apprentice earned half of the master’s salary, whereas the masters were paid on a piece-by-piece basis.  Only the managers were paid monthly.  Each shipment usually contained 10,000 pieces of products.  Therefore the workers should have nimble fingers and worked fast in order to earn a satisfactory income.  Well-equipped workshops outsourced many production processes, mainly tin soldering and production of lights foil.  Subcontractors who were responsible for the first steps of the production had to deliver their semi-finished items to the factory.  After the factory checked and paid for the jobs, they would send the job orders to other subcontractors responsible for later steps.  Factories seldom depend solely on subcontracting.  Rather, the workers at the factory would work for certain amount of each process so that when something unexpected happened at the subcontractors, the whole production process would not be jeopardized.

Business was brisk before the 1967 riots, and to cope with increasing production orders Chiu Kwong Light Bulb Factory opened a branch factory on Maidstone Road.  It rented an attic on the second floor of an old building.  Part of the production process was moved from Sheung Heung Road workshop (second and third floors) to the new branch.  Maidstone Road was one block behind the main streets, so rents were lower.  There were many civil servant quarters nearby, including a police quarters opposite to the factory.  Although the new branch was located in a residential building, it was issued a factory licence.  Law King Hei believed home-based light bulb factories were generally not registered because they did not engage in hazardous processes. 

After the 1967 riots, Law King Hei’s family moved to Kwun Tong.  The original family workshop continued to operate but it did only light testing and packaging.   The workshop was run mainly by mother and grandmother; but in Kwun Tong it stopped hiring child labour.  After moving to Kwun Tong, Law King Hei and his siblings were not as involved in the family business as they used to.  Law King Hei only helped with managing account books for his father until the factory was closed down.  During the early years of economic reform and the opening of Mainland China, Chiu Kwong outsourced its main production to Dongguan's bulb factories.  Those factories produced semi-finished goods based on Chiu Kwong’s samples and they delivered the goods to the To Kwa Wan workshop for further processing and packaging.  Chiu Kwong continued to use sales representatives to pitch for orders from “Hong”.  They later employed two female clerks to negotiate deals directly with overseas clients.  More people know English and the “Hongs” could not monopolise the business.  Chiu Kwong’s  overseas clients once came to Hong Kong to visit the factory and Law King Hei helped with reception and interpretation.

Many factories in Dongguan who worked for Chiu Kwong were Hong Kong-owned – some were ran by former workmates of Law King Hei’s father.  These factories were able to be punctual in delivery and could provide plentiful and inexpensive labour power.  Chiu Kwong’s workshop on Sheung Heung Road did not have any air conditioner or electric fan, so the work room was filled with a strong smell of coal gas.  After the binding and placing of wires, air extraction, and other major processes were moved northward, the working environment improved significantly.  The number of workers also decreased greatly and all who stayed behind were old workers.  The subcontractors in informal factories who had worked for Chiu Kwong in the early days were eliminated because they couldn’t compete with the Mainland factories; some did not have successor from the second generation to continue the business.   Law King Hei’s distant uncles and father grew old and had no intention to open a factory in the Mainland.  When one of the uncles died, the other young uncle decided to retire and sell the first premise on Sheung Heung Road.  Law’s father continued to operate and offered some shares to an old staff member.  These two shareholders presided over the business.  At that time, the factory no longer produced Christmas lights, but focused on the light bulbs for local torch factories.  As there were not many local torch factories in Hong Kong, Chiu Kwong began to export directly to foreign countries before it was closed down in the early 1990s. 

Looking back at the changes of the factory, Law King Hei believed that it had the climax around 1967.  Before Mainland China adopted the open policy, the rapidly growing Taiwan and South Korea were Hong Kong’s major competitors, Chiu Kwong’s business declined. After moving the production process north to Dongguan, the factory’s competitiveness resumed due to the low labour cost in China. It enjoyed better profit as they no longer relied on “Hong” to find orders.  Before it was closed, the factory was still making profit and one could say it was a honoured closure.

In 1949, Law King Hei was born in his hometown of Foshan.  He has two elder brothers, a younger brother and a sister.  His parents first came to Hong Kong in the early 1950s, the whole family later reunited in Hong Kong in 1960. By that time, the family’s economic situation had improved.  His father spent a few thousand dollars to buy in a 300 to 400-square-feet flat on the sixth floor of 68 To Kwa Wan Road.  The building was nine storeys high and had no elevator. The apartment was partitioned into a sleeping room for the parents and the living room where Law King Hei, his siblings and grandmother slept on bunk beds.  The flat had a cockloft as the ceiling was nine feet high. The living room had a dining table where Law King Hei and other children did their homework and made light bulbs. The table could be described as a multi-purpose platform.

The apartment was also a light bulb workshop. Many people and workers came in and out of it. In the summer, there were five or six female child workers. One or two of them only worked in the summer, while the other three or four were stable hands. The girls started to work at 8am. Most of them brought their own lunch boxes and had their meal inside the workshop to save money. At approximately 5 or 6pm, the girls would leave work.  They were paid on a piece-work basis and receive their wages on the 1st and the 15th days of each month.  Later, Law King Hei’s mother asked the housewives next door to help with power tests and other simple processes.  The housewives and girls earned low wages. The Law family earned the price difference between what they received from the factory and what they paid to the workers. His mother was both a worker and a manager.  She knew how to bind wires. The light bulbs that she brought home from the factory were semi-finished products that had gone through the ironing and pressing process.  His mother would then connect the copper wire to the filament using small machines.  She also assigned jobs to the female workers.  As she was illiterate, Law and his siblings helped her record and calculate wages.  Under pressing schedules, she also took care of packaging and fire tests herself.

Law King Hei used to go to morning school of the primary school.  When he studied in secondary school, he was in morning school. It was only later when he studied whole day at school.  When all children were in half-day school, they would finish their homework right after going home; after that, they spent the rest of the day making light bulbs.  Other than binding wires, which their mother was responsible for, the children had to take part in all other processes such as packaging, fire tests, dyeing and installing accessories.  The boys would do delivery as well.  Law King Hei and his brothers would bring raw materials home from the factory on Sheung Heung Road and then return the finished goods to the factory.  They moved the goods with paper boxes which were used for carrying fruits.  They would walk up the stairs to the sixth floor and made several round-trips between home and factory every day.  It was especially tough during summer. 

Christmas lights needed dyeing, which was a simple process.  It was done by pouring paint into a basin or bowl, and then diluting the paint with chemical thinner.  The workers had to dip the products into the colour dyes, and then spread them onto the table for natural dry. But when deadline was tight, they had to blow them to dry.  There were small cans of thinner at Law King Hei’s home which made the apartment full of chemical smell.  Law felt that the environment was both harsh and dangerous.  Fortunately, neither his father nor grandmother smoked at home.  As workers kept on breathing in chemical vapours in the factory, they usually made themselves “de-toxicate” by having green radish soup. (Editor's note: Law King Hei added that the law did not allow children labour on the site because Chiu Kwong was a licensed factory.  He and his brothers learned of the production skills through talking to their relatives when they went to collect raw materials from the factory.)

Law King Hei’s family ran the Chiu Kwong Light Bulb Factory on Sheung Heung Road, To Kwa Wan.  It was the busy season when they had to meet deadlines to make Christmas lights for export.  After the cargo was loaded onto the ships, the low season began.  During the rest of the year, the factory supplied light bulbs to local torch and radio factories.  Those orders came constantly throughout the year and had no dead line to rush.  Law King Hei said that he had no extracurricular activities during childhood except making light bulbs.  The only entertainment was to watch films at Wah Lok Theatre during the low reason after work.  Wah Lok was located at the junction of Wing Kwong Street and Ngan Hong Street.  In those years, it mainly screened Cantonese films.  The films that the Law brothers watched after work were mostly western ones.  The films were screened at about 5pm, and each ticket cost just 50 cents.

Law King Hei recalled that there were lots of mobile food stalls on the streets outside Chiu Kwong during lunch hours.  The stalls opened at around noon time, serving simple dishes, porridge, fried noodles, fried vermicelli and so on.  It was mainly male workers who squatted on the roadside to take their meals.  The women usually brought their own lunches to work.  Mobile stalls did not sell drinks but the workers could get some from the stores and enjoy the supply of drinks in the factory.  There were many factory buildings on Sheung Heung Road.  One could find Five Ramss Battery (Hing Wah Battery Factory), and Freezinhot Bottle Co., Ltd. in the area. The streets got very busy and lively during lunch time. Mobile food stalls in To Kwa Wan located predominately in the side streets such as Chi Kiang Street, Sheung Heung Road, Ha Heung Road and Lok Shan Road. The food vendors would place the cooked food into the trays on their carts and go selling on the streets. People did not care about hygiene. Food stalls were not found on the main streets like To Kwa Wan Road. Some stalls did business on the pavement. However, if there were rice shops or stores on the roads, the stalls would move out of their way in order not to affect the ground floor shops.  Though the stalls were illegal, the police often turned a blind eye on them.

In the early 1960s, there was not yet any public housing in To Kwa Wan.  Ma Tau Wai Estate, Chun Seen Mei Chuen, and Lok Man Sun Chuen were all built some time later. The present site of Lok Man Sun Chuen was previously occupied by stone houses and vegetable fields.  After the land was resumed by the government and the village demolished, the residents moved to a seven-storey building in Kai Liu (or Tsui Ping Estate, Kwun Tong).  Law King Hei thought that the living conditions at low-rent housing estates were not too bad and was far better than the seven-storey resettlement blocks.  One was lucky if he or she was allocated a flat in Choi Hung Estate or So Uk Estate.

Law King Hei and his family lived on 68 To Kwa Wan Road – a new building with two units along the staircase on each level.  One can also say that there were four units on each level as there was another staircase at the back of the building which connected the two buildings together.  The neighbour relationship was harmonious at that time.  When the family ran the home workshop, Law’s mother asked the housewives next doors and asked them to do power tests, packaging and other simple processes.  The housewives were delighted because they could make additional income while staying home.  Women preferred to stay home and take care of their children.  They found it convenient to work for Law’s home workshop so that they could skip the trouble of moving raw materials and goods between home and factory.  Law’s invited neighbours from the same building of their residence and the neighbouring building to do the outsourced processes.  Law’s parents, however, had also sent the outsourced jobs to residents on the Thirteen Streets through the introduction of friends and relatives’ referral.

Law King Hei’s family moved their residence after the 1967 riots.  Due to inadequate space in To Kwa Wan and rising property prices, the parents could not afford moving to a new building there.  The family sold their property on To Kwa Wan Road and moved into a newly built building of cheaper price in Kwun Tong.  When news about the move of the Green Island Cement and slaughterhouse reached To Kwa Wan, the residents were excited because they did not have to suffer from the air pollution any more.  In retrospect, Law King Hei had mixed feelings toward the life in To Kwa Wan.  He loved it because he was able to come to Hong Kong from Macau to reunite with his family and ran the light bulb factory through hard times.  Yet, he admitted that the living environment there was not satisfactory as air pollution was serious with the cement factory and slaughterhouse nearby.  Cows were killed in the slaughterhouse every day, and the cows’ screams woke up people living nearby.  The slaughterhouse’s door was always covered with blood, and the air was full of the bad smell of cow skin.  He was astonished by how the people on the Thirteen Streets could live just opposite to the slaughterhouse.  He was glad to leave To Kwa Wan, but soon after the move, his family members all parted ways because they either got married or went abroad.

Local property prices fell after the 1967 riots and the Laws’ family took the opportunity to find a cheap apartment in Kwun Tong.  The parents were worried about the future of their children after the riots, and hoped that the children could live comfortably rather than suffering from the hardship they had encountered after arriving in Hong Kong.  When the financial condition of the family improved, they decided to send the children to study abroad.  When Law King Hei was in school, the family’s financial condition was not very good.  He met some rich students at school in Kowloon Tong, but in fact he did not care whether he was rich and poor.  All he wanted was to move to a residence with more space.  His home in To Kwa Wan was also a workshop with many female child workers coming in and out.  He felt that he had no privacy in this home workshop.

Law King Hei considered To Kwa Wan Road and Sheung Heung Road the centre of To Kwa Wan.  Two blocks away was the market (now To Kwa Wan Municipal Services Building) and Harper Car Dealers.   Five Rams Battery and Rose Knitting Factory were also nearby.  These establishments had made the area prosperous and busy. He considered Hoi Sham Temple the landmark of To Kwa Wan, behind which was the Fishtail Rock. The reclamation along the coastline had not yet taken place at that time, and people had to get onto the island by boat. Laws’ apartment was opposite to the pier.  Law King Hei remembers that the whole family had visited the temple once in a sightseeing trip.  Another landmark was the lighthouse behind Tang King Po College.  The buildings in those days were not as tall as today’s, so he could see the light from a distance. 

Law King Hei emphasized that To Kwa Wan was a very poor area without any department store.  There were a lot of things that he could not find there.  Law himself went to Mong Kok to buy uniforms and books.  His family was living at the centre of a poor district, while Mong Kok and Tsim Sha Tsui were the more refined and developed area in those days.  In his mind, the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (workers' clubs) and Holy Trinity Cathedral were  far away from home. Chun Seen Mei Chuen was considered a remote, rural area.  Farming fields and stone houses could be found in the area of today’s Lok Man Sun Chuen.  The residents cultivated the land outside their home and the green environment was beautiful.

Law King Hei thought that Green Island Cement marked the dividing line between Hung Hom and To Kwa Wan.  Hung Fook Street, Ngan Hon Street, Wing Kwong Street, Wah Lok Theatre (part of To Kwa Wan) were the farthest places where he would go as a child.  In the old days, there was a Farewell Pavilion on Chatham Road where funeral processions were usually ended. (Editor's note: it is the Grand Peace Funeral Parlour on 6 Cheong Hang Road).  Law King Hei felt frightened when he walked near the funeral home even in a car and saw people worship to the dead.  Farewell Pavilion was located on a small hill next to Railway Primary School. 

After the riots of 1967, the Law family moved to Yee on Street, Kwun Tong, and lived next to St. John the Baptist Catholic Primary School.  He considered the area from Choi Hung Estate to Kwun Tong part of the countryside, which was quite arid and barren as compared to To Kwa Wan.  Few buses would go to Kwun Tong and the residents there had to go to Kowloon City for shopping.   His mother always had to go back to To Kwa Wan for grocery shopping and to catch up with the old neighbours.   Law King Hei was familiar with the lifestyle in To Kwa Wan, and did not like Kwun Tong.  Although To Kwa Wan’s living environment was bad, he had dear childhood memories in this place.  He both loved and hated this community.