Cheung Chi Cheung

Cheung Chi Cheung spent his childhood in Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei. He had lived in old tenements on Canton Road, Shandong Street, Shanghai Street and Sai Yeung Choi Street. Canton Road was the road he knew best. When he was a child, he did not think the Fruit Market was dirty because the old Chinese tenements had poorer hygienic conditions. There were no flushing toilets; the tenants used buckets instead. The buckets were placed at the porch by 7.30pm everyday to be collected night soil workers. The children worried most about belly pain after 7.30 pm because if that happened, they had to go downstairs to defecate. The stairways of an old Chinese tenement were dimly lit; children were afraid of the darkness and the noise from the wooden staircases when somebody walked on. In those days, it was common that the dead body of a deceased resident would be sent off to their funeral directly from their home. They were placed into a coffin at home which were sent down along a bamboo slide connecting between the balcony of their home and the street. Because the wooden stairway caught fire easily making escape difficult during a fire, Cheung Chi Cheung’s parents always prepared ropes at home in case they had to send their children down into the street when a fire broke out.

Cheung Chi Cheung’s father had a cousin who operated a cooked food stall in Yung Shue Tau selling noodles and mud carp soup with arrow root. Cheung Chi Cheung was willing to help out when his parents asked the children to send something to this uncle. He enjoyed running the errand because his uncle would give him delicious food. In those days, many cooked food stalls operated on Temple Street in the front of the Temple. There were other hawkers who played martial arts, sold medicines, did haircut and physiognomy. On that part of Temple Street, he did not see hawkers selling dry goods (clothes, stationeries and other daily necessities). When the living standards improved in the 1970s, the cooked food stalls on Temple Street sold a greater variety of food such as deep fried chicken, mollusks, mantis shrimps, hot pot and fried vegetables. In his childhood days, a lotus seed bun in the Chinese restaurant was enough to make him happy. When he worked in the Fruit Market, the employees had lunch at 11 am and 5 pm at the stall. On the 2nd and 16th days of every lunar month, they enjoyed the chicken served as a worshipping offer. On Saturdays, they had pork belly soup with vegetables, so there was a saying in the trade: Pork Soup for Saturdays. Over the years, the Fruit Market only closed on the 1st day of December to celebrate the anniversary of the Merchants Association and the 1st day of the first lunar month for Chinese New Year.

Cheung Chi Cheung spent a lot of time with his father when he was a child. He always went to the Fruit Market to visit his father at 1 pm and went to have lunch with him in a nearby teahouse. They usually frequented the Fu Yu Teahouse on Reclamation Street, Bun Sum Teahouse at the junction of Shanghai Street and Man Ming Lane, and Yat Ding Ho Teahouse opposite the Yung Shue Tau. Because his father loved small animals, he preferred Yat Ding Ho where customers were allowed to bring bird cages there. His father used to keep pigeons on the rooftop of the Tai Yik Laan and brought them home to make soup on Saturdays. Cheung Chi Cheung thought that the Fruit Market in the old days was like a large family. Everybody knew who was whose child, when the children came to visit their fathers, they knew whom they should lead them to. When he visited his father at the Market, he received candies from the elders.

The Fruit Market was not spacious for children to play around. It was a dirty place packed with baskets. In the early 1970s, Cheung Chi Cheung had once caught half a basket of rats. In the past, water melons from China were shipped in square-footed baskets. After these baskets were emptied, they were set aside for a month or so waiting for the next boat to go back to China. The baskets were stored at the back of the respective stalls by ten in one pile. Very often the rats were attracted to the leftover of the fruits in the baskets. The rats crowded together in the baskets. Cheung brought the baskets into the banana enclosure and killed them all. The dead rats could fill up half a basket. Today, an aqua privy remains in the Fruit Market and night soil collection service is provided 2 to 3 days a week.

When Cheung Chi Cheung joined the trade in the early 1970s, he had to work the whole day in the Market. He opened the market at 7am each day and did all kinds of odd jobs. He had lunch at about 11am and continued to work after lunch. Occasionally it was less busy in the afternoon, when he became a senior worker, he would have tea in a teahouse such as Fu Yu, Bun Sum and Yit Ting Ho. Sometimes he would go to the air-conditioned Kam Wah Theatre or Yau Ma Tei Theatre for a nap. He would return to the Market at 4pm, the day’s work ended at 5pm and then all employees had dinner together at the stall before going home. Sometimes they had to work overtime. In those days, Cheung Chi Cheung had little time for entertainment; he worked even harder after marriage. In the past, the Fruit Market only closed for two days in the year: the first day of December to celebrate the anniversary of the Kowloon Fruit & Vegetable Merchants’ Association and the 1st day of the first lunar month. On the Lunar new year’s eve, the workers had to work until 3am. Some time later, the Fruit Market closed on the 15th day of March to celebrate the anniversary of the Stall Merchants’ Group. Until today, the day following the anniversaries of the Association and the Merchants’ Group respectively continued to be designated as a holiday. Some stalls continued to operate as usual in order to clear up their stock. A fresh fruit can sell at a better price. So the stall merchants would rather work than having holidays if they still had unsold fruits in their stock.

According to the labour law, fruit stall employees are entitled to more holidays. If they had to work on holidays, they were allowed to get off work earlier. The membership of the Association is individual-based, anyone who works in the fruit wholesale trade can apply for membership. The transport workers working for fruit stalls are also eligible members, but most of them preferred to join the Fruit and Vegetable Trade Workers Union. The feast held in celebration of the Merchants Association’s anniversary is sponsored by the Association, but the members have to share a part for the expenditure. The Merchants’ Group is opened to stall merchants only. The stall merchants and stall employees plus their families are welcome join the anniversary feasts. In recent years, the anniversary feasts are usually held at the Nathan Restaurant.

In the past, the Fruit Market had accommodated as many as 200 to 300 stall operators. However, there were only a few dozens of stall premises available. As the space of a stall was much larger than what it was like today, several stalls operating in one stall premise was a common practice. In recent years, many outsiders started up fruit operations in Yau Ma Tei, some in rented shops of private buildings and some in the stalls left by the operators who moved from the Fruit Market. So, the stall landlord may not be the stall operator. Today, the premise of a stall is smaller while the premise of the whole Fruit Market remains the same. Apparently, the Fruit Market operates from 12am to 9am, but in practice it works 24-hour daily. Outside the Fruit Market, the transport workers continued their work. For example they had to send goods to supermarkets at noontime. Some had to deliver goods to Macao or to the mainland in the day.

There is a fine division of labour among the transport workers in the Fruit Market. Before container transportation was used, goods were sent to the market from the pier. The wholesale stall operators sent their transport workers to carry the goods from the boat to the stalls. The transport workers formed into different teams and shared the total wages earned in the day equally among the members at work. Each team may work for two to three wholesale stalls. In the past, about 90% of the transport workers were Dongguan natives. After container transportation was used, the market operators hired workers at the container terminal to unload goods from the container onto the ground with a Forklift truck. Other groups of transport workers were hired to deliver goods to the retailers. Nowadays, Cheung Chi Cheung works until 2 pm and sometimes up to 5-6pm. He usually checked the quality of fruits at the stall and office. He always keeps track on market trends and business conditions. After work when he walks on the street, he continues to pay attention to the price of fruits at retail stores.

In the past, people of different stalls interacted harmoniously. The employees of a stall were also harmonious. The market operator, merchandise, seller and odd-job boys had their own social circles. When they met, market condition was a common topic of conversation. When they had tea at the Chinese restaurant, the operators talked about the supply of goods and the merchandisers discussed about pricing trend. The odd-job boys had no sense of status difference, and Cheung Chi Cheung enjoyed no advantage although his father held some shares in the stall he worked for. The odd-job boys did not chat about market conditions, they talked mostly about movies and ball games. When Cheung Chi Cheung was an odd-job boy, he used to play football with his acquaintance at the Fa Hui Park and Macpherson Playground. Sometimes, they would play basketball in Temple Street or take a nap in an air-conditioned cinema. In the early years, the cinema sold several types of tickets: 70 cents for the front row, 40 cents for the middle row and 20 cents for the back row. Cheung Chi Cheung usually bought a front row ticket with 20 cents.

As fruits used to be transported by water, the operators at the Fruit Market worship Tin Hau (the Goddess of the sea). Tin Hau’s birthday is on the 23rd day of the third Lunar month but that day is not a statutory holiday. In the past, the operators took a boat from the Typhoon Shelter to the Tin Hau Temple in Sai Kung. It took them one whole day to finish the worshipping ceremony. After the ceremony, they returned to Yau Ma Tei and had a festive meal at a Chinese restaurant. The stall owners would bid the fa pau which had been enshrined in the Tin Hau Temple. The bidder would bring fa pau back to his fruit stall to continue worshipping. The fa pau was a beautiful floral wreath in which an idol of Tin Hau was placed. Usually there are several hundred worshippers joined the ceremony when the Fruit Market was at its peak, including the boat people, hawkers, transport workers, retailers, stall merchants and their families. Although the Market continues to celebrate Tin Hau’s Birthday, many stalls remain in operation during the normal work hours. The workers would go to the ceremony at around 8 to 9am by boat, while their offerings and wreaths go separately by a coach. After the ceremony, they would have a festive meal together. At the feast, the market operators bid for the sacrificial offerings, the money will be used to promote the Association’s recreational activities such as football and basketball matches.

The Fruit Market supplies in wholesale different kinds of bananas, such as Dong bananas, plantains, milk bananas, fragrant bananas, baby bananas and Del Monte bananas. “Dong bananas” is the common name of Dongguan bananas. Dongguan province produces plantains and fragrant bananas. Most of them are for the domestic markets in the mainland. Shunde and Panyu produce milk bananas, fragrant bananas, plantains and baby bananas. The plantains and fragrant bananas available in Hong Kong come from Shunde while Del Monte bananas come from the Philippines. In those days, the bananas were made ripened with joss sticks, and the ripening process goes from the inside to the outside. When the skin showed black spots, it meant that they were ready for sale, so they were known as the ‘quincunx bananas’. Today, the green colour on the skin is removed by chemical gas. Sometimes, a banana with yellow skin may not be ripened in the inside. A banana with black skin and hard body is alright to be eaten.

To Cheung Chi Cheung, the sound from an abacus is a characteristic of the Fruit Market. He thought that the abacus was a quintessence of Chinese culture. In the past when the calculators have not been widely used, the abacus was used between the suppliers and the Fruit Company as well as between wholesalers and retailers, for price negotiation, calculating charges and settling bills. In the past when traffic was not convenient, the Fruit Market operated the whole day. It started from 7am to 5pm so that retailers who travelled a long way from the New Territories could have enough time to buy fruits at the Market. Some regular customers from the New Territories would make orders by telephone calls and buy fruits on credit. The stall workers would deliver the goods to the customers and then a stall employee would go visit them in the New Territories to collect the charges.

To Cheung Chi Cheung, the strongest smell of the Fruit Market comes from the bananas. In the past, bananas were imported from the mainland. Before selling them, the market operators had to undertake special steps to make the bananas ripened. When the bananas arrived at the Market, they were sealed in an enclosed room where stall workers put in a special kind of joss sticks and some ice. The number of joss sticks and the length of sealing time depended on the temperature of the environment. In the summer when it was hot, they were kept for at least 12 hours per day; while in the winter they were kept for 20 hours per day. An experienced worker was assigned to attend to the ripening process because any misdeed would damage the bananas and cause a loss of money. The banana skin remained green although the interior of the bananas were ripened after being kept with the joss sticks, because with this method, the ripening process goes from the interior to the exterior. However to ripen bananas was a dirty and harsh job. Today, the bananas are imported from the Philippines and are processed in the warehouse before sending to the Fruit Market. A new method is used to make the bananas ripened: a chemical gas is applied to remove the green colour of the skin and an air-blowing machine is used to make the bananas ripened from the outside to the inside. Cheung Chi Cheung exclaimed that the fruits in the past were more delicious because nowadays fruits are exposed to too many chemicals. The enclosed room for processing bananas is now used for other purposes. Besides bananas, water chestnuts and mangos need special attention too. The water chestnuts have pores and so workers who have taken alcohols should not touch chestnuts. Otherwise the chestnuts would absorb the alcohol vapour through their pores. To make mangoes ripened, the fruits are kept in a basket and sealed and coal rock inside newspapers.

Before Cheung Chi Cheung got married, he spent most of his time working in Yau Ma Tei. The wholesale Fruit Market closed on the 1st day of December and the 1st day of the first lunar month. Later on, Sunday was made a rest day for the Fruit Market employees, but the stalls continued to be in operation. But they finish the work earlier than normal work days. In the 1970s, Cheung Chi Cheung established the Chi Hop Laan as a joint venture, in addition to the Tai Yik stall his father had owned in partnership with other proprietors. Seeing movies was his favourite entertainment. There were a lot of cinemas in Yau Ma Tei, the nearest ones including Kam Wah Theatre and Yau Ma Tei Theatre. When there was not work, he would go there to take a nap. After Cheung Chi Cheung got married in 1981, he moved from Yau Ma Tei to Homantin, and then to Sai Kung in 2006. Today, he spends more than 10 hours in the Market. After work, he seldom hangs around in Yau Ma Tei.