Ah Ying

Biography

A native of Zhaoqing in Guangdong, Ah Ying was born in Hong Kong in 1942. She was the eldest daughter in her family and had seven younger siblings. Ah Ying had a poor childhood in which her father worked as a barber while her mother was a housewife. The many twists and turns she experienced in her schooling included studying in Rosary Church Free School in Tsim Sha Tsui, Boys’ & Girls’ Clubs Association Free School (“BGCA Free School”) and Motor Workers’ Night School in Kowloon City. To help her family make ends meet while she attended Primary 2, she did embroidery work at home. When aged just 11, Ah Ying took casual jobs at squatter factories and later worked for hardware factories in To Kwa Wan and Tai Kok Tsui. She learned sewing at 17 and subsequently worked in embroidery factories in Tai Kok Tsui and Tsim Sha Tsui. After mastering the craftsmanship needed for high-end fashion, she took the garment industry as her lifetime career. When she got married in the early 1960s, Ah Ying set up a sewing workshop of family style and took on sub-contracting orders from garment factories. During her childhood, Ah Ying lived in a tenement building in Yau Ma Tei and a squatter hut in Lo Fu Ngam with her family. In the mid 1950s, they all moved into a resettlement block in Tai Hang Tung Estate. In the mid-160s, Ah Ying and her family successfully moved into a public housing unit in the New Territories. They lived in the same district until today.