Lai Lok Shing

Lai Lok Shing moved from Mongkok Workers' Children School to Wong Tai Sin Government Primary School (WTSGPS). He believed the two schools shared a similar syallabus. But he learned English for the first time in WTSGPS. Sadly, as he had no prior knowledge in English language, he had to struggle to catch up with the course contents.  At that time, the Lai family was too poor to afford a private tutor for Lai Lok Shing to improve his English. Nor could they find help from the neighbours, as most of them did not know English too.

Lower Wong Tai Sin Estate consisted of more than 30 resettlement blocks and the Lai family lived in Block 19. At first, the government used English alphabets to name the resettlement blocks. However the residents were not literate in English and often could not say the block names accurately. For example, they said “a circle with a tail” to describe Block Q. Accepting these difficulties, the government subsequently changed the block names to numbers. 

In the early 1960s, there were even people smuggling rumours that said that children aged 7 to 8 were often caught and taken to the mainland where they were used as human punchbags. The stories quickly spread around the entire neighbourhood, only fading from view some six months later. No wonder parents in those far-off days kept their kids off the streets! Such tall-tales had a disastrous impact on custom at the Lai family store.

There was no major setback in Lai Lok Shing's life. He believed one should have confidence in solving problems. He idenified himself as a Hongkongnese who was eager to learn new things and keep pace with the times. Core values of Hongkongnese include perservance, fighting spirit and a never-give-up mentality.