Ng Lik Bor

Seven years after the family moved into the flat on Cooke Street, Ng Lik Bor’s mother gave birth to his younger brother and younger sister. Because of the small living space, they moved to the 3rd floor of a building at No. 8 Wan Fuk Street. They purchased the flat with $14,000. At the time, more new buildings were completed one after another on the thirteen streets and Eight Wan Streets. Each flat was priced at $15,000 which shall be paid by installments. Ng Lik Bor’s mother thought paying $300 a month for the rent was not a wise choice, so she borrowed $10,000 and purchased the flat. She paid the remaining sum by installments. At the time, there was no low priced buildings in Hung Hom and the Matauwai Apartments was in similarly poor conditions as the resettlement blocks. Therefore, she chose a building on Wan Fuk Street near  her workplace, Hung Hom Workers’ Children Secondary School.  

In the early days, there were few shops on the Eight Wan Streets. Most of the shops on the ground floor were family-based plastic factories which manufactured plastic flowers and small plastic toys. When the workers operated the cutting pressers, their whole body vibrated as if they were ‘trapeze artists’. After Ng Lik Bor’s grandmother moved from Yau Ma Tei to Wan Fuk Street, every time she went outside, she would return home with a lot of semi-finished products which she processed at home with simple tasks such as sticking. She did not know anyone working in the factories, but the factory people knew she lived nearby, and would let her take products home for processing after registering in a book. Ng Lik Bor had helped her grandmother with her tasks after school and his grandmother would give him pocket money in return.  

When Ng Lik Bor was transferred to the Mong Kok Workers’ Children Secondary School in Ho Man Tin for primary 3, he walked to school from Cooke Street via the Oi Sen Path next to the train track. When the family moved to Wan Fuk Street, he would generally take a stroll in To Kwa Wan before walking to school along Tin Kwong Road. The walk took about 35 minutes. He took no fixed route to school. Sometimes he would turn into side streets for fun, such as Chi Kiang Street, Shansi Street, Lok Shan Road and Maidstone Road. He would pass the glass factory and the factories of Tien Chu Ve-Tsin Chemical Limited and Watson’s soft drinks which operated on San Shan Road.

When Ng Lik Bor attended the morning session in Mong Kok Workers’ Children Secondary School, he would leave home at 4am or 5am on rainy days and waited under the street light on Ma Tau Wai Road. When the light was out, the predaceous diving beetles and scarabs in the air would become dizzy and fall down. Then Ng Lik Bor and other children would collect them. There were many swallow nests under the balconies of the post-war old buildings on Ma Tau Wai Road. At the time, the police quarters on Tin Kwong Road and the Chiap Hua Flashlights Factory on Bailey Street was under construction. He would collect cartridge cases from the ground and sell them to the shops trading useless copperware and ironware. The shop owner attracted children to barter the cartridge cases they collected for electronic model sailboats and model trains.

The site where Sunshine Plaza now stands on Bailey Street used to be the Chiap Hua Flashlights Factory Building. Several floors of the building were rented to Uniden, which was a Japan-funded factory. On the ground floor of the building was a cold store. Every day, trucks would deliver ice for storage. In the 1960s, Ng Lik Bor used to return to Hong Kong from Guangzhou every year for the summer and winter holidays. Knowing that the female factory workers liked reading magazines such as Daily Pictorial and Daily News for the movie stars’ photos and intending to save up money for Western movies, Ng Lik Bor thought out a way to make money. He stole the outdated magazines such as the Southern Screen from his father and sold them at the entrance of Chiap Hua Flashlights Factory at the start and end of working hours. He sold them for 50 cents each and business was good.  

Ng Lik Bor thought that boundary of ‘To Kwa Wan’ was constantly changing. When he lived in Cooke Street in Hung Hom in his childhood, he had the vague concept that ‘Hung Hom is a city and To Kwa Wan is a village’. To Kwa Wan lied behind the stone houses at the junction of Wuhu Street and Ma Tau Wai Road. (Editor’s note: It is part of the Chatham Road today) Very few houses were built there, the Green Island Cement Plant and goose feather processing factory stood in a distance to the north. Bailey Street used to be the Bailey Shipyard. After the shipyard was demolished in the 1950s, the Matauwai Apartments was built at its old site. The surrounding area of Pak Tai Temple was deserted with only a few squatters built of iron sheets. To Ng Lik Bor, this was To Kwa Wan.

 When Ng Lik Bor was a child, he liked going up the mountain. On his way to school, he would walk all the way to the new mountain. He would walk from Tin Kwong Road to the foot of the mountain where he watched the workers blowing air into molten glass. There was a glass factory probably built of iron sheets. It looked like a hut to him. The factory had many workers and was equipped with many furnaces. The workers stirred the molten glass with a pole, and then pointed the pole towards the ceiling or floor and blew air into molten glass. The way they moved resembled dancing. The sizzling red furnaces around them and the dim light from the dusky sky which appeared at the time when he went home from school created a special light effect to form a splendid scene. It was a form of ‘performing art’. Later on, he found out that the factory was called the ‘Kowloon Glass Factory’.