Li Lin

According to Li Lin, To Kwa Wan and Hung Hom were effectively connected together as one place and boundaries between the two districts were almost impossible to make out. Living in Hung Hom while still a child, Li Lin often went to To Kwa Wan for fun. Hoi Sham Temple was the most famous attraction back then and was located on an island to which day-trippers had to take a boat in order to visit. The areas surrounding the temple were later reclaimed for constructing factory buildings. In the 1970s, Wyler Gardens – the district’s first large scale private housing estate – was completed.

In the past, To Kwa Wan was an industrial hub and was a magnet for jobseekers from outside the area. Industrialisation brought great prosperity to the district. Back then, there was a market at the junction of Kowloon City Road and Lok Shan Road. Many people there sold breakfast foods such as soybean milk, fried dough sticks and steamed rice rolls outside the small temple in Ha Heung Road (Editor’s note: To Kwan Wan’s Tin Hau Temple). Many workers on their way to their jobs in nearby factories stoped off at these stalls as their goods were so affordable. Li Lin was one of the many who frequented this area. Li Lin thought that the Eight Wan Streets area had the oldest and most unhygienic streets. In the past, there were a lot of squatter factories in the area as it was popular back then for such factories to hire casual labourers to do processing work. Because of her poor background, Li Lin often took plastic flower assembling work from squatter factories from when she was around 10 to help her family keep its head above water. In those days, To Kwa Wan’s bigger factories were located near Kowloon City Ferry Pier where a lot of spinning and weaving was carried out.

By the time Li Lin had turned 10, she had already joined a few friends looking for work in factories all over the Territory. She mainly worked in industrial areas such as To Kwa Wan, Kwun Tong and Sham Shui Po. She was especially fond of jobs in To Kwa Wan which was nearest to her home and did not require much travelling to or from work. Over the years, Li Lin was employed in many industries such as battery production in a factory located in what is now the Hing Wah Centre, wig making, spinning and weaving. As wages in those days were pretty good, workers frequently changed jobs to improve their quality of life. Very few people stayed in the same factory for long periods. It was popular back then for factories to pay piece-rate wages and employment was free and flexible.

Young people like Li Lin were eager to gain experience of different industries and often referred jobs to their pals. In those days, factories had a rudimentary training system. For example, garment workers joining as new recruits had to learn sewing before they could go on to the production lines, earning a meagre daily wage of HK$10-20 while they learned. After learning for a few months, applicants for sewing posts had to pass a foremen’s inspection before they could start doing a real job. Li Lin and her other young female workers were all big fans of film stars like Connie Chan Po Chu and Josephine Siao Fong Fong. This was probably because they starred in films in which they played self-confident factory girls and this had a deep resonance for their largely female fan base. In those days, To Kwa Wan had many cinemas such as Ruby Theatre and Wing Kwong Street’s Wah Lok Theatre. Tickets for off-peak morning matinee and late afternoon shows were very affordable, and going to the movies was a popular pastime.

When Li Lin worked in factories, she often changed jobs and did not worry about surrendering whatever skills she had picked up during her previous employment. Most factories in those days had assembly-line operations and it was fairly easy for workers to master techniques as they generally only worked in one section. Li Lin thought that workers back then had a strong sense of survival and high adaptability. She and her colleagues all hoped to learn more skills to ensure that they would not be starved whenever an industry fell into decline. The wig industry, for example, was booming in the 1970s and attracted a lot of people who subsequently switched to sweater factory jobs after demand for wigs disappeared. Li Lin says now that people back then were more willing to bear hardship and everyone was keen to work overtime to earn more money. The Labour Department had already passed working hours regulations into law and regularly sent inspectors to factories to ensure their enforcement. Each time departmental officers called, workers had to hide away until they finished their inspection and left.

Li Lin started looking for jobs with her mates when she was around 10 years old, shuttling between different types of factory buildings in search of work. As a result, she became very familiar with the operation of many factory areas. She maintained good contacts with her friends through their common membership of their trade union and its regular picnics and dinners. In those years, each industry had its own trade unions, each of which was responsible for resolving labour disputes and seeking jobs for unemployed members. The unions also organised networking and socialising activities for the workers under their care as well as looking after those who had fallen on hard times. Li Lin attributes her strong level of social care and commitment to the many union visits she made to squatter and resettlement areas during this time.

Li Lin lived in Hung Hom during her childhood and attended a school for workers’ children which was near a dockers’ union. The school was committed to the working man’s cause and encouraged its students to do voluntary work for the union. While still at school, Li Lin joined visits to the poor organised by the dockers’ union and also taught workers for free in literacy classes. Looking back, she still feels very happy about this today. The garment industry was the first trade Li Lin worked in and she remained a member of the Garment Workers’ Union (GWU) (now the Garment Fashion Practitioners Association) for longer than any other union.

In those days, the GWU was headquartered in San Po Kong and Li Lin made a lot of friends there who cared for, and referred jobs to, one and other like a big family. She has retained her GWU membership up to this day. Even though some members moved to other jobs and no longer worked beside her, they still kept in touch. The main trade union facility in To Kwa Wan was the Union Workers’ Club in Ma Tau Kok Road, the construction of which was funded by the Federation of Trade Unions (FTU). Upon its completion, the club was just like a community hall with amenities such as an assembly hall and meeting rooms for holding parties, performances, seminars and other activities. Hong Kong workers took great pride in the building, calling it the “Workers’ Hall”. As she thought that it was hard for factory staff to have a place of their own for activities, Li Lin was one of those who was very appreciative.

Li Lin lived in an old-type seven-storey resettlement block (Editor’s note: at the former Tai Wan Shan Resettlement Estate) when she was growing up. While still attending school, she had already started taking outsourcing jobs from squatter factories in the Eight Wan Streets area by the time she turned 10. In those days, people used to find outsourcing jobs through street bills. Back then, lamp posts and walls were posted with a lot of A4 size bills with “Staff wanted” and the factory address written on them. Upon finding a squatter plastic factory, casual workers like Li Lin would take home plastic flowers for assembling. The most difficult type of flowers to make were bellflowers whose stems and blossoms were complex to fit together. Although the work hurt Li Lin’s fingers, she enjoyed doing outsourcing jobs because she was self-reliant and helped her family.

When she was young, Lin Li lived in resettlement and squatter areas where every family was poor and even tiny kids were expected to pitch in for their family by assembling plastic flowers. Li Lin considered herself to be very mature and bold when she was about 10 years old, regularly knocking on factory doors whenever she saw a recruitment bill in To Kwa Wan and San Po Kong. Back then, getting and changing jobs was easy as no one was that bothered about signing contracts. Seven days’ prior notice was all that was needed to resign. If a worker was willing to give up a few days’ salary, he or she could even quit jobs without giving any notice at all.

Li Lin knew the streets of To Kwa Wan well. As her parents had no time to take care of her when she was a kid, she often used to explore the surrounding areas alone. Her trips regularly took her as far afield as To Kwa Wan where she would play in the park, to Hoi Sham Temple and sometimes even to the nearby Ruby Theatre. After she grew up, Li Lin looked for jobs in To Kwa Wan, eventually finding employment in large, small and squatter factories. She mainly worked in factory buildings, staying in each job for a few months, changing jobs several times in a year. Back then, the precise times factories and their staff had to work were not fixed. Sometimes, if a plant lacked raw materials, the boss there would ask the workers to take leave for five or six days. Occasionally, these fallow production periods could stretch out for more than a month! As a result, workers would help each other out by looking for other daily wage paying jobs in groups. As she was still in schooling, Li Lin had not reached the legal working age yet. For this reason, she used her after-school time to take up outsourcing jobs from squatter factories in the Eight Wan Streets area. Usually operating with as few as 10 workers, most squatter factories took simple processing orders from the larger manufacturers. Before they could take up outsourcing jobs, casual workers like Li Lin often had to leave down their address, and sometimes even had to pay a deposit to the squatter factory boss! Fees might not necessarily immediately be received when work was delivered as the squatter factories would first inspect the consigned orders and return unsatisfactory items for redoing.

Larger manufacturers for whom Li Lin had worked included Mui Chun Nei Garment, Wyler Spinner, plus various weaving and flashlight factories. Bigger firms tended to have more employment opportunities which Li Lin found her jobs through street bills. Back then there were very few measures in place to protect the health of workers. Spinning and weaving factories in particular were full of dust, and staff had to wear masks and apron while on the factory floor. Spinning mill owners also regularly sprinkled water to keep the dust down. This made the plant humid and the air unpleasantly stale. Workers in spinning and weaving factories were especially susceptible to harmful occupational diseases such as respiratory ailments. Li Lin could not abide the poor working conditions in such factories and therefore rarely stayed there for very long. Her dream was to find better jobs that paid higher wages in a more comfortable and happy workplace.

Li Lin spent several years working in several wig factories; among them was a plant located in San Shan Road’s Sam Kwong Weaving Factory Building. At that time, the wig industry was thriving with local factories taking mass production orders from as far afield as the United States. As a result, workers’ wages tended to be very good. Some of the wig factories at which Li Lin worked had hair weaving and arranging among its several departments. As she was an experienced seamstress, Li Lin worked in the hair arrangement department. She found her job there through personal referral, and voluntarily agreed to pay a levy in exchange for her placement. As job competition in those days was fierce, Li Lin thought that paying such a fee was not unreasonable as the referrer was accountable to the foreman and had to ensure that his or her referrals would not miss work. Some young employees back then were neither very mature or stable, working only half day and clocking off in the afternoon as they found the work to be boring. Li Lin felt that the wig industry’s good times would only last for a few years, so she took every opportunity to make money as much as she possibly could. Even though plants were full of flying dust and hair, she did not really care.

The later stage of Li Lin’s working life was focused on the leather jacket industry which she believed to be ideal after having worked in so many other fields. For Li Lin, a dream job had to be stable, maintain her interest and also required techniques that paid a high income. Li Lin had learned to sew very early on and had always been interested in making clothes, learning cutting on her own after buying fashion books in her spare time. In those years, many female factory workers were keen to learn cutting and as a result there were many specialised schools.

Li Lin mainly worked in leather jacket factories in San Po Kong and Kwun Tong. She firstly designed drawings for the tailor to cut the fabric and then sewed up whole piece sample garments. Li Lin believed that making samples was not an assembly line operation, but required in-depth study in order to master the techniques. Feeling that she belonged to the fashion industry, she took pride in her work and considered herself to be a master. Looking back, Li Lin estimates that To Kwa Wan’s factories were not sufficiently advanced to make good quality leather jackets. Instead, the district was mainly home to garment, plastic flower, battery and weaving plants. Li Lin had worked in several leather jacket factories and had found employment there was more stable when compared with other fields. As a result, her employment there lasted years rather than months. Li Lin only resigned from the industry when she and her husband started a family. After her marriage, she also began focusing on community work, subsequently running successfully for election to the District Council.

Factories that relied on outsourcing for staff largely disappeared in the 1980s. Those who took such jobs were mostly housewives who had a home sewing machine they could work on while looking after their kids. In addition to casual workers who picked up goods from factories, there was another outsourcing mode between the 1970s and 1980s, with factories renting trucks to transport materials to homes in places like the Hung Hom Estate. Residents there then came up to the truck to pick up and take goods back home for processing. After a period, the truck would come back to collect the goods, sometimes despatching raw materials and collecting finished articles at the same time. Li Lin liked this approach as it was very flexible and made it more convenient for householders to take up outsourcing.

Li Lin recalls that workers in To Kwa Wan used to take their meals in three different ways. The first involved a catering service where a group of four or five workers ordered food which the caterer then delivered to the factory gate. The workers later returned the cutlery after finishing their meals when the caterers came back for pick up and to collect their money after a period. Li Lin felt that this approach enabled workers to make the most of their time. In those days, lunchbreaks tended to last one hour. Workers using outside caterers could finish their meals in 20-25 minutes, leaving them plenty of time to rest. Some caterers were family-run companies who hired additional people to deliver food and collect the cutlery when meals were finished. Each noon time, factory areas’ streets were full of wooden carts transporting meals. Food and cutlery for each group of workers was wrapped in a piece of cloth, with individual dishes placed on a plate covered with an antimony cover. Food intended for several groups of workers at the same plant was stacked in layers.

The second popular way of eating lunch was to go outside of the factory. At lunch time the streets were full of carts carrying all kinds of food. Workers just stood or sat around the carts while they ate. Li Lin did not like this practice as she feels it was not very hygienic. Once she recalls biting into a piece of nail and resolving to take more care of where and what she ate in future! The third way workers liked to eat was to bring their own lunch to the factory. Most factories back then had a stainless steel water heater that supplied hot drinking water and workers often used to heat the food in their lunch boxes.

Li Lin sighs when asked to consider the huge contrasts that exist between the past and the present. She recalls that To Kwa Wan was a manufacturing hub during her youth. Following years of industrial decline, the factories of the old days gave way to residential areas such as Wyler Gardens and Honour Building. Back then, Li Lin thought buildings served by lifts were very high class! As Hongkongers began to put more emphasis on recreation, more and more districts opened parks and restaurants became more popular. Li Lin remembers that there were eateries such as Gallant Restaurant and Foon Hei Yuet Restaurant in To Kwa Wan Road while she was younger, but she tended to always be disappointed as she could not afford to patronise.

At that time, factories paid their workers their wages in envelopes with the pay amount and production output written on the front for the workers to sign and acknowledge receipt. Each time Li Lin received for her wages, she would hand over everything to her mother for meeting household expenses. The day Li Lin received her very first pay packet, her mother gave her the go-ahead to go out and celebrate. She subsequently went out with several co-workers to a restaurant and ate steak. Back then, even taking a set meal was memorable for someone like Li Lin. Likewise, eating with a knife and fork was considered to be the high class. In those days, life was full of hope and everyone was easily contented and happy. Li Lin feels now that people of her generation were very loyal to their parents, simple and hardworking. While everyone had to think about survival at every moment, people’s lives in those times were enriched, full of ideals and goals. As Li Lin was an only child, she was expected to shoulder her share of her parents’ burdens in life and always had to worry about her next pay packet was coming from.

Li Lin gets nostalgic when asked to recall To Kwa Wan’s changes over the years. In the past, To Kwa Wan had many factories and the air quality there was very poor. Back then, there was a uniquely unpleasant smell specific to each type of industrial area. For example, areas around the cattle depot were filled with the smell of slaughtered pigs. Homes near the Nanyang Tobacco Company were filled with the aromas of cigarettes and smoke. Near the site of what is now Sky Tower was a cow bone factory whose production of fertilizers produced the most unimaginable stink! Li Lin recalls she used to feel uncomfortable simply walking past the plant! It was difficult to imagine that people actually managed to live next to such smelly factory. As people’s educational standards improved, service companies gradually replaced manufacturers and larger production facilities either moved away or closed down. Major employers affected by the change included Tien Chu MSG (now Sky Tower), Towngas North Plant (now Grand Waterfront), Nanyang Tobacco, the bone factory and the cattle depot.

The disappearance of such large factories greatly improved residents’ quality of life in the neighbourhoods where they used to be based. Modern residential estates and luxury apartments such as Grand Waterfront, Jubilant Place, 18 Farm Road and Celestial Heights eventually sprang up to replace them. To Kwa Wan even started to have some decent shopping malls. Parks and facilities for the elderly were also increased. Li Lin thinks that the To Kwa Wan of today is much more liveable than when it used to be a place only poorer and grassroots people would consider living in. Youngsters who had the ability eventually moved away leaving their elderly parents behind. Today, To Kwa Wan is a vibrant residential hub whose fine new residential buildings have attracted many young nuclear families. In future, the area will even boast its own MTR station. Such changes are greatly enhancing the area’s attractiveness for long-term development. Li Lin believes that while largely beneficial, acquisitions and redevelopment are not without their downsides. While residents’ quality of life will benefit, soaring property prices will be one major drawback. Li Lin hopes that much of To Kwa Wan’s original character will be preserved after any redevelopment.

Starting from when she was small, Li Lin was disgusted by the pollution that seemed to start with the beginning of Ma Tau Kok Road. As a result, she mostly hung out in the vicinity of Hoi Sham Temple, but occasionally went to the Thirteen Streets area to take plastic flowers home from squatter factories for processing. She recalls that the street names were very special as they were all named after birds or animals. While the air was poor, Li Lin does not believe that the To Kwa Wan of her youth suffered from noise pollution, thinking that such problems were inevitable. Before the East Kowloon Corridor was built, the centre of Kowloon City Road was full of mobile market hawkers who put vegetables on trays to sell. Back then, such stalls were still situated on roadsides and had yet to be moved into the as then yet unconstructed Municipal Services Building.

Apart from the cries of hawkers, Li Lin also has an abiding memory of the sound of the jackhammers at the many buildings that always seemed to be under construction there. Traffic noises on the other hand, were less intrusive. The area in and around To Kwa Wan was not large and could easily be covered by walking. The boundaries between To Kwa Wan and Hung Hom back then were also not clearly delineated. In Li Lin’s memory the billboards of Wearbest Garments and Vitasoy served as a dividing line, but even they could not indicate whether they were located in Hung Hom or To Kwa Wan. Only following the introduction of an administrative division of the District Council did the boundaries became more obvious.

Li Lin stresses now that the To Kwa Wan she grew up in was an industrialised area with the streets around what is now Sky Tower full of factories. Manufacturing companies who had made their home in the district tended to be very large scale operations such as garment, spinning, weaving, tobacco and monosodium glutamate manufacturers which often occupied entire blocks! When factory whistles blew for lunch each noon, the streets around the factory rapidly filled with mobile food stalls that vanished the moment lunch time was over! As she looks back, Li Lin points out now that To Kwa Wan used to support the lives of many poorer, grassroots people. This was a place where employment and living intersected with many residents here also looking for work near to their homes. In short, this was a place full of life. Were one to hang around in the district, one would be sure to experience life at its most vibrant.