Master Kong

Born in 1930 in Fenghua in China’s Zhejiang Province, Master Kong dropped out of school after completing Form 2 when he went off to work in Shanghai. A relative working in Shanghai’s Chung Hwa Printing Works referred him for a job in the company’s Hong Kong Printing Works. Master Kong arrived the Territory in May 1947 and went on to work for Chung Hwa all the way through until his retirement 46 years later in December 1993. When Master Kong first arrived in Hong Kong, Chung Hwa’s full name was the ‘Chung Hwa Book Co Ltd Hong Kong Printing Works’. The whole plant back then had around 2,100 workers and was divided into two departments – one for printing banknotes and the other for printing books. About 2,000 staff were engaged in printing banknotes with only about 100 workers in the book section. Employees going to work in those days had to wear a company badge for identification and the banknote printing and book publishing divisions each had their own distinctive forms of ID. When window-shopping along Nathan Road, Master Kong once saw a shirt priced at HK$23 in a tailor shop. While he had only HK$20 in his pocket, the lady shopkeeper saw he was wearing a Chung Hwa badge. As she also worked at Chung Hwa she generously allowed him to take away the shirt and pay her later.

Master Kong initially served as an apprentice in the printing workshop, eventually qualifying as a master three years after completing his apprenticeship. A few years later he was transferred to the plate-making workshop, working there until his retirement in 1993. When Master Kong first joined Chung Hwa, there were three main methods of wage payment, namely a daily, monthly and piece rate. Daily-wage earners were the most insecure of all staff as they could only come to the plant and earn when there was work to do. Master Kong was among the monthly earners such as plant managers, apprentices, masters and office workers. During his early days with the company, he earned a salary of around HK$70 per month. At that time, it was stipulated that if Chung Hwa’s boss were to sell the company, all of the apprentices there would also be transferred to work for the business’s new owners. Master Kong feels that piece rate workers enjoyed more advantages than any other sectors and were able to earn more by working more. Employees entrusted with ensuring that banknotes and their identifying numbers were free from error were paid under the piece rate system. The printing and plate-making workshops had no guaranteed wage earners.

Workers at Chung Hwa Book Co Ltd Hong Kong Printing Works mainly came from the city of Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Of them, people hailing from Changzhou, Wuxi and Suzhou in Jiangsu Province were the largest group. Master Kong points out that this was almost certainly due to the fact that Chung Hwa had came to Hong Kong from Shanghai to set up the workshop, bringing many skilled workers from Shanghai saving on the trouble recruiting staff in the local market. Master Kong joined Chung Hwa’s printing workshop as a result of being referred by the husband of his cousin (i.e. Mrs. Kong’s grand uncle). During the 1967 riots, many workers left Chung Hwa, and Master Kong was promoted to a job in the plate-making workshop. Plate-making was one of the more advanced processes in the printing industry back then. So much so, the apprentices in Chung Hwa’s plate-making workshop included three university graduates! As foremen in the plant’s various departments tended to recruit colleagues from their hometowns, different departments were usually filled up with workers from one particular area. Master Kong recalls that workers from different regions did not form into cliques as most staff treated Chung Hwa as their home and got along with one and other very well. Although the workers spoke different dialects, the local languages of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces were similar and people could communicate with each other with few problems. Further, almost every member of staff also spoke a little Shanghainese.

When Master Kong first arrived Hong Kong, he lived in a company dormitory where there were many Shanghainese people. At that time, working hours were very long, starting at 8:00 am in the morning and stretching through all the way until 9:30 pm at night. Master Kong would return to the dorm to sleep after long days working at the plant. Often, he even had to work overtime on Sundays! He rarely had any kind of leisure activities or entertainment, only occasionally joining his workmates and going to watch movies or share meals when overtime finished at 4:00pm on Sundays. Once, a colleague asked Master Kong to join him on a cycling trip. As Master Kong had never learned to ride, he could only sit on the back of his colleague’s bike. The pair eventually rode along To Kwa Wan and Hung Hom where they were blocked and stopped by a private car. The driver said it was an offense to carry someone on the rear of a bicycle and took Master Kong and his friend to the police station where he reported them. Because of his mainland background, Master Kong had difficulties in communicating with the police officers there. The desk sergeant subsequently called a man who spoke a little Shanghainese and informed the two that Hong Kong laws did not allow cyclists to carry passengers. Master Kong and his friend subsequently faced a fine of up to five dollars each. At a period when Master Kong’s daily wage was only about HK$2, this was a lot of money! Luckily, the police officers let the pair off on the grounds that they were unfamiliar with local laws. While Master Kong did not really understand the words of the interpreter, he remained insistent that he broke no law!

Chung Hwa’s printing plant had no dormitories itself, just security guards stationed at its entrance and workers who lived offsite. When Master Kong joined the company as an apprentice, he stayed at the Lok Shan Road dormitory which was comprised of a row of seven identical bungalows. The company’s dormitories were all located on the hillside at the junction of Lok Shan Road and Kau Pui Lung Road near areas of farmlands. The dormitory was provided free of charge to Chung Hwa by a wooden box company which supplied it with containers for transporting finished orders. All unmarried workers including apprentices and masters were eligible to stay at the hostels. Most of those who did so were natives of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Each bungalow was about 200 square feet in size and had to accommodate six staff. Master Kong’s roommates were all apprentices and the dorm they shared had no kitchen. Worse still, the residents of all seven houses had to share just one shabby outside toilet.

Working days in Chung Hwa’s printing workshop were divided into an 8:00 am to 9:30 pm day shift and a 9:00 pm to 8:00 am overnight session with workers rotating their hours every week. When Master Kong worked nights, he spent most of the day sleeping, but occasionally found time to stroll the local streets. To Kwa Wan was very barren back then, and there were still vegetable plots along Ma Tau Wai Road and Lok Shan Road area. Adjacent to Pau Chung Street was the remains of a hill which had been levelled to become To Kwa Wan Sports Centre. Sometimes Master Kong went to Hoi Sham Temple pier, paying ten cents to ride a sampan there and back. As youngsters could ride the ferry for free, Master Kong sometimes brought the children of his fellow workers along to the island to play on the beach. Many hawkers sold live seafood next to the temple.

Chung Hwa’s plant was surrounded by four streets, namely Ma Hang Chung Road (now the entrance of the Chung Hwa Building), Pau Chung Street, San Shan Road and Pak Tai Street. Directly opposite the factory on San Shan Road was located the Nanyang movie studio. Next to it was a very smelly cowbone powder plant. To the north of the movie studio was the Kai It battery factory. Beyond that lay the Tien Chu Ve-Tsin plant and Kai Tak Airport. Every time he set out from the dormitory in Lok Shan Road to go to work, Master Kong passed the dai pai dongs (cooked food stalls) that surrounded every factory gate back then. Much of Ma Tau Wai Road across Pak Tai Street was still being used to grow vegetables.

Chung Hwa Printing Works consisted of three three-storey buildings. Several bungalows, the largest of which was in the middle with the remaining units dotted around the grounds served as production workshops. There were also many open spaces within the plant compound which was itself surrounded by four streets full of residential buildings. The plant manager was the most senior figure at Chung Hwa. While he maintained an office in the middle bungalow, he did not reside at the plant. Lunchtime in those days was one hour. The company occasionally provided meals to the workers, sending someone to cook in the plant before the workers broke off for lunch. On days when meals were not provided, many workers went home to eat or visited cha chaan teng or teahouses. Once Master Kong went to the Nanyang movie studio in the evening to watch people filming but didn’t know any of the actors. As Chung Hwa’s working hours were very long, workers rarely made friends outside the plant. The fact that Kai It Battery Factory and Tien Chu Ve-Tsin barred outsiders from entering meant Master Kong knew very little about life inside Chung Hwa’s neighbouring factories. Back then, Chung Hwa closed on every Sunday, while other manufacturing facilities nearby had even fewer holidays.

On the rooftop of one of the three-storey buildings inside the Chung Hwa compound was a basketball court which regularly hosted tournaments between Hong Kong’s news and publishing industries. As they published pictorials and belonged to the publishing industry, Great Wall Movie Enterprises and Feng Huang Motion Pictures were among those who entered these competitions. The competing teams were selected by a draw and could meet up regardless of whether they came from the publishing or the news sectors. The movie studios had both male and female players, but top female stars like Hsia Moon and Shu Hui never played in the matches, preferring to cheer their colleagues on from the sidelines. Players representing Chung Hwa were all male workers. While Master Kong did not play in the games, he was a member of the cheerleading team. Because Chung Hwa flew China’s red, five-starred flag from its plant roof in what many saw as a political act, all participating teams came from leftist organisations. Chung Hwa never hosted competitions for factories from other industries.

1946 to 1949 was something of a ‘Golden Age’ for Chung Hwa Printing Works. Back then, the senior masters with the best skills tended to come from Shanghai, while local workers usually filled the lower skilled and lower paying jobs. In those days, Chung Hwa employed over 1,000 workers - some 90% of them local people – to examine and count banknotes. Banknote examination was very easy to learn. In addition to checking whether each note’s numbers were correct, the job involved ensuring the front and the back of the notes had the same value, and whether or not any banknotes had stains. Most of the checking was performed with the naked eye and was carried out by female workers who were mostly young ladies with good eyesight.

Printing banknotes involved complicated processes which were handled by a number of departments. The transportation of large numbers of banknotes going from one workshop to another required a lot of manpower for counting. The female workers handling the banknote examination came from different districts, such as To Kwa Wan, Hung Hom, Kowloon City and Sham Shui Po. Chung Hwa did not place recruitment advertisements in the newspapers. As a result, before they could join the company, applicants had to be referred by another worker at the plant and also needed a shop guarantee. Banknote examination was a comfortable job which carried a good salary, and the female workers often stayed with Chung Hwa for many years. In 1949, the company stopped printing banknotes causing the size of its workforce to shrink dramatically. After this time, the plant only printed books, cheques and pictorials. While most of the female workers handling banknote examination were laid off, permanent staff with monthly salaries were kept on. After 1949, Chung Hwa only had a staff of about 300, most of them from Shanghai. The plant still retained its original physical size until it was demolished when the Chung Hwa Building was constructed. The To Kwa Wan plant continued to operate until the company relocated to Tai Po in 1992 after it opened a new plant there.

During his time with Chung Hwa, Master Kong lived in several company dormitories in areas such as Lok Shan Road, To Kwa Wan Road, Ha Heung Road and the Chung Hwa Building. While the company did not have a set policy for assigning staff quarters, it did consider each employee’s performance and other factors when doing so. All employees hired from either Shanghai or locally could apply for the company’s dormitories if they could not find a place to live using their own initiative. That said, it was not guaranteed that they would be allocated somewhere. After 1949, Chung Hwa had about 300 workers, some of whom lived in public housing or were left to find their own accommodation.

One of the properties Chung Hwa had rented to house its staff back then was a 1,000 square feet plus tenement flat in Ha Heung Road. The unit’s four rooms were respectively occupied by Master Kong and three of his fellow masters. Two of the men were single, while the other two masters lived with their wives and children. Around 1961 or 1962, the unit’s owner reclaimed possession of the property and paid compensation to Chung Hwa. Chung Hwa in turn compensated its workers for the disruption and to help them in their relocation to other places. Master Kong used the over HK$1,000 he was awarded to fund his move to a room in a tenement building in Wing Kwong Street in Hung Hom. The room was about 150 square foot in size and in addition to Master Kong also housed two other workers. The way Master Kong sees it, there was not much difference between living in Hung Hom and To Kwa Wan. Both were places for the working class and were totally free of any fancy restaurants or high-end housing developments. Master Kong points out now that the junction of Ma Tau Wai Road and To Kwa Wan Road served as the demarcation point of the two districts, and Wing Kwong Street was seen as being just inside Hung Hom.

After work during Master Kong’s early days with Chung Hwa, he sometimes joined his colleagues after work and took the 4:00 pm bus to Mongkok to catch a movie as To Kwa Wan had no cinema back then. Master Kong and his mates often went to Victory Theatre opposite King Wah Restaurant in Shantung Street to watch second-run Mandarin films produced by the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). Tickets were just HK$1.20. As Master Kong and his fellow workers did not understand Cantonese or English, they could only watch Mandarin films. Word of mouth among workers meant that many Chung Hwa workers went to Victory Theatre for movies. Master Kong stressed that working hours in those years were very long and that he and his colleagues were more interested in earning a living than in enjoying themselves. After 1949, the Chung Hwa plant still operated two shifts, but the hours for each had been shortened. The morning shift now ran from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm while the night shift workers started at 4:00 pm and worked through to 12:00 midnight. Master Kong spent most of his leisure time playing mahjong with his fellow workers in the dormitory, occasionally going out window-shopping. Some fellow masters liked to go dancing in local ballrooms, but Master Kong seldom ever joined them.

Following the Liberation of China in 1949, many Shanghainese capitalists came to Hong Kong. To Kwa Wan saw the setting up of four or five spinning mills as a result of senior managers and skilled staff’s migration to the Territory. Following this increase in population, shops in To Kwa Wan became more prosperous. Since new arrivals from Shanghai were not used to Cantonese dishes after first arriving in Hong Kong, many Shanghainese shops and groceries began opening their doors in To Kwa Wan. Very few of these Shanghainese businesses survived today. Such grocery stores tended to sell winter bamboo shoots, bamboo sprouts, salt pork, ham, bean curd sheets, broad beans and other popular ingredients in Shanghainese recipes. Many of the immigrants from Shanghai brought their wives along to cook them meals at home. Chung Hwa’s canteen mostly served Cantonese cuisine. On days when the facility was closed, Master Kong generally went out for lunch. Due to time constraints, he mainly patronised café (literally known as “icehouse”) or cha chaan teng-style eateries back then. In those days, cafés only served milk tea, coffee and sandwiches, those wishing to eat fried noodles or rice noodles had to visit a cha chaan teng. Sometimes Master Wong and his workmates also used catering services which offered both Cantonese and Shanghainese cuisines. The Cantonese menu offered four dishes with soup for a cost of around HK$0.40 per person per meal! For HK$3 per person per meal, the Shanghainese menu promised five or six dishes, including high-end choices such as pork leg and chicken with bamboo shoots.

When Master Kong first came to Hong Kong and started working at Chung Hwa, his basic salary was around HK$2 a day or HK$70 per month. With extra work, his monthly pay packet could swell up to HK$170-180. Chung Hwa’s overtime pay back then was very attractive. While normal shifts lasted eight hours, the hourly rate for the next four hours was calculated at time and a half and was thus equivalent to six hours’ work. The four hours immediately after this were paid on a double time basis and so equivalent to a full day’s wage. The two final hours were computed at four times the normal rate and also equalled an entire day’s wage. There were several posts in the plant which had to be staffed 24 hours. The electroplating tank, for example, operated around the clock, with virtually limitless opportunities for overtime. That said, staff rarely worked all the time while staying late. Sometimes they slept next to the electroplating tank, waking up from time to time to ensure everything was running properly. Their wages were, however, very impressive.

Master Kong married his wife in March 1979 after the two had been introduced to one and other by his future partner’s aunt. Mrs. Kong came to settle in Kowloon Tong with her aunt in January 1979, initially taking work checking leather clothes in a garment factory in Tsuen Wan run by a friend of her aunt. After their marriage, Master Kong and his new bride lived in the married staff quarters at the just completed Chung Hwa Building on company land in Ma Hang Chung Road. Each of the building’s eleven-storeys was home to 14 units with a saleable area of around 700 square feet per unit. The Kongs’ unit had two rooms of about 100 square feet each. After their wedding, Mrs Kong transferred to Chung Hwa, working in a security printing subsidiary that inspected printed cheques for flaws. Aside from the elderly male master who led the team, this section was totally staffed by women, most of them from Guangdong. Some of them lived near the plant, while others lived as far afield as Hong Kong Island. Most staff here were recruited through introductions, joining as youngsters following referrals by leftist schools.

Master Kong married his wife in March 1979 after the two had been introduced to one and other by his future partner’s aunt. Mrs. Kong came to settle in Kowloon Tong with her aunt in January 1979, initially taking work checking leather clothes in a garment factory in Tsuen Wan run by a friend of her aunt. After their marriage, Master Kong and his new bride lived in the married staff quarters at the just completed Chung Hwa Building on company land in Ma Hang Chung Road. Each of the building’s eleven-storeys was home to 14 units with a saleable area of around 700 square feet per unit. The Kongs’ unit had two rooms of about 100 square feet each. After their wedding, Mrs Kong transferred to Chung Hwa, working in a security printing subsidiary that inspected printed cheques for flaws. Aside from the elderly male master who led the team, this section was totally staffed by women, most of them from Guangdong. Some of them lived near the plant, while others lived as far afield as Hong Kong Island. Most staff here were recruited through introductions, joining as youngsters following referrals by leftist schools.

Master Kong and his wife wound up living in the Chung Hwa Building from their 1979 wedding all the way through until they moved to Tin Shui Wai in 2008. The pair first went to Tin Shui Wai Park to join a gathering of their former colleagues. While there, they fell in love with the area’s beautiful environment and ignored bad comments about the area that sometimes appeared in local newspapers. As To Kwa Wan had no big park, their former colleagues who had moved to Tin Shui Wai were lavish in their praise of their new neighbourhood. As a result, the Kongs bought a home on a private housing estate there. When the two had first begun living in the Chung Hwa Building, they had to pay rent of around HK$0.60 to HK$0.80 per square foot. They subsequently bought their unit for just over HK$1,000,000, receiving a generous 32% discount on the purchase price due to Master Kong’s long employment with Chung Hwa with the bank valuing their property at approximately HK$2,000,000. The Kongs eventually rented out the unit after their move to Tin Shui Wai and subsequently sold it.

While Master Kong believes that Tin Shui Wai is cleaner than To Kwa Wan, he thinks shopping in To Kwa Wan was cheaper. He and his wife also thought that as there were more poor people in Tin Shui Wai, prices there were more affordable. In reality this was simply not so. After moving to Tin Shui Wai, Master Kong frequently returned to To Kwa Wan for shopping, first alighting from the bus at Hung Hom and then walking to the direction of To Kwa Wan to the shops. While there, he mainly bought daily necessities and popular Shanghainese food ingredients such as salted pork leg, winter bamboo shoots and bean curd sheets which were unavailable in Tin Shui Wai. Master Kong continues to think that To Kwa Wan is very convenient and made it very easy to find the things he wanted to buy. The area was also home to many small shops which repaired cell phones and household appliances. Such services were not readily available in Tin Shui Wai. As Master Kong had lived in To Kwa Wan for around 60 years, he understandably regarded the area as being his second home. He retains many fond memories of this area and regularly comes back to shop and visit retired former colleagues with whom he used to work whenever he has time.