Tam Sau King

In 1924 Tam Sau-king was born in her hometown Kaiping. She moved to Hong Kong in 1953 and ha been living in Yau Ma Tei for half a century. She was married before she came to Hong Kong and had several children. Her youngest daughter was born in Hong Kong. Initially she came to Hong Kong alone; her husband and children stayed in her hometown. She had to return to her hometown frequently to visit them. When she first arrived she lived in her sister’s home at 47 Kwun Chung Street, now Kwun Chung Municipal Services Building. In the 1950s the location was a deserted park surrounded by wire fences. There were many Tai Pai Tongs selling cooked food on the streets. She changed many jobs after coming to Hong Kong, ranging from garbage disposal, washing stairs, cooking for westerners, and as a hawker. She once worked for 10 years for a British and later her employer returned to England with the intention of bringing her along. Tam refused thinking of her children.

Later Tam became a hawker and set up stalls with her friends at many locations in Hong Kong selling various goods such as jade, toys, headbands, etc. To be ready to escape from the Hawker Control Teams at any moment, she used a small briefcase to carry her goods. Her father ran a jade business in her hometown, and used to take her to Guangzhou to purchase goods, therefore she came to be acquainted with many jade traders. Tam’s source of goods were mostly loaned from fellow traders. The jade goods Tam sold came from two jewellery stores: Tung Shing (now Don Shing Building) at Jordan Road and Canada (near Shanghai Street). The proprietors of both stores were friends of her father, and thus she was entrusted with the loaned goods. Later she moved back to Bowring Street in Yau Ma Tei and set up her stall outside an eatery where there were many tourists. Later she heeded the advice of her fellow traders and set up her stall at Canton Road. Soon afterwards her husband came to Hong Kong to reunite with her and the couple made a living from the stall.

In 1953 Tam brought her 4-year-old daughter and two sons (aged 2 and 3) to Hong Kong and lived at her younger sister’s unit at Kwun Chung Street. The principal tenant of the unit was her brother-in-law. Tam and her children rented a bedsit under the stairs at a monthly rent of HK$30. In those days she applied to come to Hong Kong from her hometown, and regretted that she had not gotten her children HKID cards. After settling down she found employment with a garbage disposal company. The company won a tender for garbage disposal services at the old buildings, and their staff was sent to places all over Hong Kong. Tam had been to Yau Ma Tei, Tsim Sha Tsui and Hung Hom to dispose of garbage. Her work was very tough that she had to walk many flights of stairs with a large bucket on her back, which earned her only HK$60 per month. Because she had to work outside, she paid HK$30 each month to another family to care for her children. To earn extra HK$30 per month, she also landed a part-time job washing the stairs. She barely made her ends meet in those days. Her income was divided into four portions: rent, personal expenses, traffic and sent-home money. Soon she sent her children back to her hometown and cooked meals for westerns to earn a living instead. She had worked at Tsim Sha Tsui and Conduit Road in the Mid-Levels.

Later she became a hawker selling miscellaneous goods at Bowring Street. Her jade goods came from two jewellers: “Tung Shing” and “Canada”. Every time she took the goods on loan from the shops on a fixed purchase price; Tam would then set a retail price. After the goods were sold Tam would reimburse the purchase price to the shops. Because her parents favoured sons, Tam did not receive an education and could only read newspapers but not write. Tam figured that she was smart and good at remembering account details; she invented a method of circling items in the books, which kept her from being cheated out of a deal. Her husband had arranged tuition classes for her, but having to care for the children she had not had the time to study. When running a stall in Yau Ma Tei she had already moved to a rented unit at no. 4 on 6/F of Man Yuen House at Jordan Road. The unit was previously occupied by an old lady who emigrated to the US. Tam lived in Man Yue Building for many years and left when the rent rose to HK$7000. She was then given a public housing unit at Tsui Ping (South) Estate.

Before becoming a full-time hawker Tam was loaning goods from the jewellers and spent half of her time as an employee and half as a stall proprietor. Each piece of jade goods was sold from several dollars to under 20 dollars. When retrieving the goods she did not know of the retail price of the jewellery store. If there was a profit, even though it was only 1 or 2 dollars, she would take the goods and resell them. Meanwhile, she also place her jade goods with the stall owners in the Kwun Chung Market, loaning packs of jade items to them and returned to gather the money and the remaining goods the next day. She went to buy food at the market every day and became acquainted with the proprietors of vegetable and meat stalls, and had building up a relation of mutual trust. She was never worried about being cheated by the stall owners and the latter did not know of the source of her goods; they reaped mutual benefit.

Later Tam became a full-time hawker, and soon afterwards she followed the advice of trade veterans and set up stall outside Yan Yan Teahouse at Canton Road. Patrons include ordinary citizens and tourists. After the jade business prospered at Canton Road, she travelled to Singapore to sell jade rings. She applied for a local license there and set up stalls at the market to sell the goods, earning a good profit. As business expanded she invited a relative to come help out at Singapore, but was later owed over 100,000 by a local customer. She returned home suffering heavy losses, and her dreams of buying an apartment gone up in smoke. After Tam began working in Hong Kong, her children in her home town joined her through various means, either through official application or illegal entry. Her elder son and second son became tailor apprentices in Wanchai. When the jade business was brisk she had planned to buy a unit at Eight Man Buildings at HK$140,000, but the losses she suffered in Singapore ruined her plans. She continued renting a unit at Man Yuen Building until she moved to the public housing estate at Kwun Tong in the 1990s.