Luk Lau Ying

Luk Lau Ying was born in 1937. When she was a child, she lived in the Lower Lascar Row in Sheung Wan. Her parents engaged in herbal medicine trade and operated an herbal store on the Lascar Row. Luk Lau Ying’s parents had 7 children. Luk Lau Ying is their third child. Luk Lau Ying’s father died when she was 14 years old, leaving her mother operating the store on her own. Having no alternatives, Luk Lau Ying quitted school and helped her mother in the shop, which her younger brothers took over the ownership and management when they grew up. Luk Lau Ying started with learning how to use a weighing balance and to pick herbs of good quality. Later on, she learned taking orders from the store attendants and delivered goods. On one occasion when she delivered goods to Man Ying Tong on O'Brien Road, she came to know a man who is now her husband. Luk Lau Ying married him in 1963 after dating for 7 years. After marriage, she moved into her husband’s home in To Kwa Wan.

Luk Lau Ying’s husband’s native place is Qingyuan. His parents stayed in the native place. When he first came to Hong Kong, he lived in Gresson Street, Wan Chai. He was employed by Man Ying Tong which was well known for the ‘crackling’ candies and herbal tea. Later on, he changed his occupation as a painter and plaster carver. He had worked in a plastic factory in Ngau Tau Kok for 3 years and was committed to grasping the skills. When he had mastered the skills, he started his own business. Because most of his clients came from the industrial areas in To Kwa Wan, Kwun Tong and San Po Kong, he started his business on the 13 Streets, To Kwa Wan. Through a referee, he found an apartment on the 2nd floor of a building on No. 14 Ying Yeung Street. Because it had a quiet surrounding and electroplating operation was permitted in the building, he decided to set up his workshop there. He produced plaster molds for hand-made samples of plastic products according to the design drawings provided by the clients. The workshop had clients from local factories in To Kwa Wan as well as other districts. The couple seldom visited offices and factories to solicit business.  Instead, they got orders through word of mouth.

The household workshop had an area of about 560 sq. ft. One half of the area was used for setting up the workshop, with the other half for residence. The electroplating process was carried out in the kitchen, with a small portion reserved for cooking. The workshop had simple facilities including one table and a few tools such as cutters, grinders, hammers, pliers and drillers. In the building, each level had 4 apartments accessible by two stairways. One had to take 3 flights of stairs (24 steps) to go from the ground floor to the 2nd floor. Opposite to the workshop was the Bun Tai Kindergarten. There were small plastic factories operating on the 2nd floors of other buildings nearby. When Luk Lau Ying first moved into Ying Yeung Street, the road off their building was bumpy but it was later surfaced with concrete.

Wing Ming Craft Shop, the mold casting workshop operated by Luk Lau Ying and her husband on Ying Yeung Street, had a factory license when it first started operation. When the workshop was first set up, the couple had to take care of every task. Luk Lau Ying helped her husband with the duties of preparing invoice and mixing dry powder with water to produce plaster. Occasionally she went to their customers’ office to collect payments. In most cases, the customers had to pay by cheque when they came to ask for the service of Wing Ming Craft Shop. The couple had a son and a daughter. After Luk Lau Ying gave birth to her eldest daughter in 1965, she spent most of her time cooking and taking care of her child. At that time, the workshop was working on stable orders, so her husband recruited an apprentice to help him out. It normally took a few years for a young apprentice to learn the skills. During the period, an apprentice had to work 9 hours a day. He would sleep in the workshop at night in the beginning stage of the apprenticeship. When they worked under a pressing delivery schedule, her husband worked overtime at night. Luk Lau Ying could not share the hard time of her husband until all the children reached schooling age, when she could spare time for the workshop. At the beginning she learned how to refine the joints of molds.

At that time, her husband had already set up a better-equipped factory in Kwun Tong. Wing Ming only produced plaster molds but not plastic products. They mainly produced molds for making coasters of various shapes such as apple shape and pear shape. Not very educated, her husband was unable to make complicated molds. Wing Ming mainly supplied moulds to the factories in Kwun Tong and San Po Kong for making products. They had few customers from the areas surrounding Ying Yeung Street and actually they only had orders from one small factory nearby. There were many small factories on the 13 Streets, such as an ivory factory, welding workshops (on the ground floor), plastic factories (on the ground floor and 2nd floor). When Luk Lau Ying moved into the apartment on the 2nd floor No. 14 Ying Yeung Street in the 1960s, there was a workshop producing components and parts for automobiles on the ground floor. Opposite to her home workshop was another home workshop producing plastic flowers and small accessories with small plastic machines such as the ‘3-oz model’, ‘5-oz model’ or ‘7-5 model’. In 1972 or 1973, the couple closed down their plaster mould workshop and operated a plastic factory in Kwun Tong. They took orders from the hongs (commercial firms) and produced products such as tooth pick holders. 12 years later, the couple re-started a workshop on Ying Yeung Street when their plastic factory was losing money.

In the 1960s, Luk Lau Ying would have tea at the Chinese restaurant every morning. After tea, she would take her children to school before getting back home to help around in the home workshop Wing Ming Craft Shop. Before noon, she would go to the market to shop groceries and prepare meals for her husband and his two employees. They would take some rest for one hour after lunch. Work resumed at 1 pm and ended at 6 pm when they had dinner. The employees (apprentices) get off from work at 6 pm, leaving her husband to work overtime at night. At first, the employees took the workshop as their lodge. They used to set up his cot next to the work table and fold it up in the morning. The recruitment of apprentices was handled by her husband. It took one 3 years to complete apprenticeship, but those who were not patient with the hard work would leave before completion. It required much effort to train up an apprentice, Wing Ming usually asked an apprentice to work for 3 more years without a full pay after they completed training. It was usual for most apprentices to work for 3 more years, but as it was an unwritten practice, some would only work for one more year and left for better paid jobs. Apprentices were young boys aged 14 or 15 years old. For every several years, Wing Ming had to recruit new apprentices.

In 1972, Luk Lau Ying’s husband closed down the Wing Ming Craft Shop and started the Ming Wo Product Manufacturer in Kwun Tong. The factory was situated in the Tak Lung Industrial Building on Wai Yip Street, Kwun Tong. It had an area about 3,000 sq. ft. The factory mainly produced hard plastic products by moulding machine, with a workforce of 15 or 16 workers at the peak of its business. The male workers molded plastic products and the female workers did the packaging. Luk Lau Ying carried out duties such as collecting bil payment from customers, answering phone calls and preparing workers’ wage slips. When the deadline was tight, she would help with the packaging. Her husband negotiated price with the intermediary “hong”. When the couple started the factory in Kwun Tong, they were still living in To Kwa Wan. They left home for work early in the morning and returned home late. Every day, they had morning tea shortly after 5 am and then went to Kwun Tong for work. Luk Lau Ying said with a sigh that she had not seen sunlight for more than 10 years. At the time, her son and daughter were still studying at school. After 12 or 13 years, the couple decided to closed down the business due to the soaring price of raw materials. After closing down, they re-opened the Wing Ming Craft Shop at home in To Kwa Wan.

With the experience accumulated in the early years, Wing Ming Craft Shop had much better business in the 1980s, so the couple could afford education for their children. As before, Wing Ming produced hand-made samples according to customers’ specifications. Toy animals like snakes and crocodiles were popular toy at that time. Because of limited work space, they employed only one apprentice in the workshop. Wing Ming Craft Shop seldom worked with the squatter factories nearby, but some workers of these factories were their friends. Electroplating workshops were operated in the shops on ground floor (whole or half of the shop) of some buildings on Shim Luen Street. In the past, Wing Ming had business relationship with some of these electroplating workshops, and they sometimes share skill and experience with each other. Today these workshops have disappeared from the 13 streets. Their workshop premises are now occupied by car repair garages.

Luk Lau Ying had lived in Ying Yeung Street for several decades. She considered that the Neighbourhood relation was good. With a candid and helpful character, Luk Lau Ying got along with her neighbours well. Her husband had served as the chairman of the mutual aid committees of the buildings on Nos. 14-16 Ying Yeung Street and Nos. 13-15 Pang Ching Street for more than 3 decades. (The residents of these two buildings used the same stairway for access.) Luk Lau Ying’s husband resigned in 2003 under advice of Luk Lau Ying for health reason. He was succeeded by a neighbour who lived in the opposite building, the building management was better since then. ‘Mutual aid committee’ was not an official name and it was different from today’s Owners’ Corporation. Luk Lau Ying’s husband is an enthusiastic person, he installed stairway lamps and iron gates for these buildings without asking for payment, therefore his neighbours nominated him the chairman. Luk Lau Ying held no official post and the residents called her ‘Mrs. Wu’. Her main duties were to collect management fees and help with minor management issues. For example, she would visit each household to collect money for paying electricity bill of the stairway and then she would post the electricity bill on the wall of the second floor.

When Luk Lau Ying first moved into the building on Ying Yeung Street, there were no lights along the stairway, nor was there an iron entrance gate. It was not until the late 1970s that they were installed. At the time, prominent persons including the Hong Kong Governor had visited the place. In the early days, each household installed a lamp outside their own porch. Later on, the mutual aid committee applied for a separate meter to charge the electricity for lights installed in the stairways as public expenses. In those days, the mutual aid committee collected electricity fees very frequently. When the couple took over the committee management, they gradually reduced the frequency of fee collection. For every six months, each household committed $100. The residents of Ying Yeung Street used to place their garbage bins outside their own porches. When Luk Lau Ying first moved in, each household had to pay $2 or $3 for garbage disposal. At the time, they hired the street sweeper to collect garbage from each household apartment. Later on, there were cleaning companies which arranged specialized services of cleaning for all the buildings on one side of Ying Yeung Street, and sent workers to each household to dispose garbage. In the early days, $20 or $30 was charged as refuse disposal fee, but it has been increased to $90 today. Any resident who did not pay the fee had to dispose their refuse at the nearby collection point.

Luk Lau Ying felt that law and order in the areas surrounded by the 13 Streets was satisfactory. It has been very safe for the last several decades and shouting for help was rarely heard. Luk Lau Ying seldom went out at night, when she does, she would stay highly alert. To this day, she is unwilling to move out because her apartment is spacious with high ceiling. Although the buildings appear to be old at the outside, residents could improve the interior by furnishing and decoration. Although there have been a slaughterhouse and the Towngas production plant nearby, she did not see them as problems. Some workers of the slaughterhouse lived in rental units at the 13 Streets, they were seen returning home in blood-stained clothes. The slaughterhouse started operation at 4 am or 5 am. When the workers killed pigs and cows with guns, the shootings could be heard from a distance. The noises from the slaughterhouse do not upset Luk Lau Ying because she could not hear clearly after an accident at her head. Towngas storage durm had no impact on her because the smell from the plant was diverted to places away from her home. Besides, the building on No. 14 Ying Yeung Street was far away from the road, so they were not affected by traffic noise.

When Luk Lau Ying and her husband first moved into No. 14 Ying Yeung Street, they rented an apartment from a professor who himself lived in Kowloon Tong. They paid some $200 for rent, which rose to $3,000 in 1995 after several increases. The professor kept the apartment for several decades. He came to collect rent every month until he emigrated to the USA. After emigration, he had a solicitor to collect rent for him. The professor had another apartment on No. 12 Ying Yeung Street (the building next to No. 14). Luk Lau Ying collected rents from No.14 tenant for the professor and kept account records for him. In 1995, the landlord professor asked Luk Lau Ying couple to buy off the apartment or they had to move out. With no alternatives, Luk Lau Ying’s husband purchased the apartment with $400,000.

Most members of the mutual aid committee of No. 14 Ying Yeung Street were the apartment owners. The couple rented the apartment in the early days, but her husband earned trust from the neighbors as he volunteered to do minor deeds for the building such as repairing lights. Through members' nomination, he became the chairman of the mutual aid committee. The couple were willing to participate in the matters of the mutual aid committee because they ran the home workshop on the 2nd floor. The residents of the building had to walk past their doorway going up and down the stairway. It was therefore convenient for the residents to submit their share of electricity bill to Luk Lau Ying couple. They came to the residents to collect the money only when they did not pay their part on time. Later on they reminded the residents to pay the money by telephone. In fact most of the residents were willing to pay their share on time. Those who were unwilling to pay were people from the countryside who thought Luk Lau Ying were cheating them money. They were only willing to pay after Luk came to visit them and explained to them that the fee was collected for the building. For apartments shared by several households, they paid only a single fee, which was equally shared by the sublet tenants. Luk Lau Ying considered that the duties she was responsible for were easy tasks, and she kept the accounts transparent to gain trust from the neighbours. Though the jobs were tedious and trivial, she enjoyed the respect and admiration from the neighbours.  She resigned in 2003 due to health problem. When she resigned from the committee, she passed the account books and contact information of the residents over to her successor in the witness of a District Board member.

The residents of No. 14 Ying Yeung Street came from different native places such as Dongguan and Jiangmen. There were also the Hakkas. The couple related well with their neighbours. In the past, it was common that an apartment accommodated several households in it with a shared kitchen and toilet. Sub-divided units for subletting was not prevailing at that time. In those days, people would build squatter huts on the rooftop to live in. The residents of the topmost floor would make the rooftop their own property and rent it out for income. The mutual aid committee would report these cases to the government because it had no right to deal with it. When Luk Lau Ying went up to the 8th floor to collect the fee, she would visit the rooftop but she did not know the residents well, and the mutual aid committee did not ask them to pay for the fee of garbage disposal or stairway lights.

When Luk Lau Ying and her family lived in To Kwa Wan, the whole family would go to different places on Sundays for fun. After their son and daughter were born, her husband bought a car. On Sundays, he would drive the family to the New Territories. They would go hiking in Sai Kung or other suburban areas. They used to park their car right outside the building they lived. In those days, parking was not a problem. A car could be parked anywhere. It was Luk Lau Ying who chose the schools for the children. She considered that the schools in the vicinity of the 13 Streets were not good and would not be able to train her children into a person with achievement. Her daughter had studied one term in the Bo Bo Kindergarten in a tenement building on Fung Yi Street. She sent her daughter to that school because it was near their home on Ying Yeung Street. Later on, she arranged her daughter to study in the kindergarten section of Pooi To where she had her primary and secondary education as well. Upon completion of Form 6, the daughter went to university in Taiwan majoring in agriculture. Her son studied in the Munsang College Kindergarten and received his primary and secondary education in Munsang College. He left Hong Kong and pursued further studies in Britain upon completion of Upper Six majoring in computer studies. His son went to school on foot most of the time, but sometimes he would take a bus or go to school in his father’s car. In the later stage, he was taken to school in a nanny van.

When Luk Lau Ying’s husband opened a factory in Kwun Tong, their children (who were studying primary 3 and primary 4) would take a 'pak pai' (illegal rental car) from Mok Cheong Street to their father’s factory. The driver, who lived in the vicinity of Ying Yeung Street, was an acquaintance of the couple. In those days, the 'pak pais' were commonly seen on Mok Cheong Street, they were similar to a taxi in nature but without a licence. To prevent her children from being led astray, Luk Lau Ying would not let them hang out in To Kwa Wan, where she thought they would be contaminated by bad elements. To do good parenting, she made the children do homework in the factory office and brought them home in To Kwa Wan after dinner. As her children grew, Luk Lau Ying made them go shopping groceries and prepare meals at home. She did this so that they learned to be independent and mature.

Luk Lau Ying felt that the community environment in To Kwa Wan was not good for the upbringing of children. She had heard that children of some families had been taken away by the pork hawkers and vegetable hawkers for games without permission of their parents. The couple lived in the workshop on Ying Yeung Street. After their children were born, they rented another apartment on the 3rd floor of a building at No. 10 Lun Cheung Street through friends' introduction so that their children could stay away from the dangerous workshop. The family of four moved into the new home leaving the apartment on Ying Yeung Street solely for the purpose of workshop operation. The apartment on Lun Cheung Street was of the same size as the Ying Yeung Street apartment (560 sq. ft). When they first moved in, the rent was $200 or so. Their children were born and grew up in this home, they moved out when they got married. As it happened, the landlord recalled the apartment, so the couple returned to the Ying Yeung Street apartment and refurbished it into a residential unit. They had lived in the rented apartment on Lun Cheung Street for many years, and was invited to participate in the matters of the mutual aid committee, but they declined to take any official position.

Luk Lau Ying does not want to see the redevelopment of the 13 Streets. Luk Lau Ying was familiar with the living environment of the old building and the streets; and was well-acquainted with her neighbours. She does not want to change to a new environment. In the past, there were many vegetable stalls on the section of Ma Tau Kok Road opposite the slaughterhouse. Hawkers set up stalls with a canopy on the same spot of the street every morning and dismantled them in the evening. Later on, these stalls were removed and re-establish on Pau Chung Street. The pork, beef and fish hawkers now operate in the shops, such as the Kam Hing Meat Company on Ying Yeung Street. Luk Lau Ying used to frequent the hawkers on Ma Tau Kok Road, but she shops groceries in the To Kwa Wan Market in recent years. After the 13 Streets were surfaced with asphalt, the vehicle repair garages began to move in, they still keep moving in to this day. But the garages do not affect her life except the strong smell emitted from spraying paint.