Leung Pui Ching

Leung Pui Ching was born in 1930. Her family origin was in Pingzhou, Hainan. Family property was divided among the descendants of her grandfather’s generation. His father ran a small weaving factory using manual looms in the ancestral hall. Her mother blessed her father with 9 children, his elder brother being their only son. Leung Pui Ching was her father’s favourite child and he would buy her deep fried dumpling from Chinese restaurants. Her mother’s sister’s fiancé died young and her mother made Leung Pui Ching adopted daughter of this aunt. When her adopted mother worked as a household maid, Leung Pui Ching helped her with daily chores such as chopping firewoods (Singaporean firewood) and tending the fire, so the employer liked her. Later, her adopted mother returned to her native place in Hainan for treatment of her swollen hand and Leung Pui Ching returned to stay with her natural mother. Shortly afterwards, Leung Pui Ching went to Guangzhou to work with her elder sister. They rented a room in a building on Fuxing Lane. She earned money by binding books with stitches for bookshops. She was then not ten years old.  

When the World War II was over, Leung Pui Ching returned to Hong Kong in December 1945. Her brother-in-law’s cousin ran the Lee Kee Weaving Factory (installed with weaving looms) in No. 7 Nga Tsin Long Road. The factory was also named as “train station” as the boss arranged friends and relatives to stay in the factory when they first came to Hong Kong. Her brother-in-law was called Wong Wah Hin and his cousin was called Wong Kam Tong. Later, Wong Kam Tong opened the Hong Shing Weaving Factory in Ha Heung Road, To Kwa Wan. Lee Kee had manual weaving looms, as well as iron and wood weaving looms which Leung Pui Ching did not know how to operate. Her elder sister arranged her to work in Lee Kee where she could learn to operate the iron and wood weaving loom from a female worker. Wong Kam Tong established the Lee Kee Weaving Factory before the war where Leung Pui Ching’s elder sister also worked there. Having worked in Lee Kee for 2 to 3 years, Leung Pui Ching joined the Hong Shing Weaving Factory against her brother-in-law’s objection, because she wanted to learn the new four-shuttle weaving machine. Working in another factory, Leung Pui Ching could no longer take care of her sisters’ children. For convenience, she rented an attic room with 4 workmates which was close to the factory. Leung Pui Ching came to know her future husband through the introduction of a workmate. She had an unhappy marriage and felt regretful of marrying him against others’ advice.

She worked 12 hours a day in Hong Shing; the factory did not implement the eight-hour work day system until 1958/59. All factory workers were females. Later on male workers were employed for the night shift. In those days, getting a job was easy because the employers would display recruitment notices on the streets. Leung Pui Ching worked for 2 to 3 years in Hong Shing until she was about 20. Upon a friend’s referral, she left Hong Shing for a factory run by a Shanghainese who offered higher wages. In that factory, each worker attended 2 machines. Leung Pui Ching joined this Tai Wah Weaving and Garment Factory in To Kwa Wan. Both Lee Kee and Hong Shing were owned by a Cantonese proprietor. They adopted the twelve-hour work day system. The workers worked from 7 am to 7 pm and each worker attended one machine. The workshop of Tai Wah was an enclosed design with water on the floor. Later, the factory was moved to Tsuen Wan where it continued to operate under the name of Luen Wah. The eight-hour system was not implemented yet back then. Workers took turn to rest on Sunday and were provided with a dormitory.

When Leung Pui Ching worked in Hong Shing, she attended the YWCA’s evening school for female workers from 7 pm to 9 pm. She stopped to go to school at Primary 3 because she failed the examination. At the time, she was working in Tai Wah. Later in Luen Wah, she was made to attend 6 machines and clean them before getting off duty. Because the workload was too heavy, she resigned from work and became a full-time primary school student. While working in Tai Wah, she lived at the Tsuen Wan’s dormitory and had meals supplied by the employer.

Under the introduction of a workmate, Leung Pui Ching attended the YWCA’s female workers’ evening school. The school was in To Kwa Wan and close to her workplace. She had lessons from 7 pm to 9 pm and learned modern Chinese texts. She stopped going to school in Primary 3 after failing in the examination. When she moved out of the family, her mother was upset. She asked for a monthly payment to meet the family expenses. But Leung Pui Ching could not conform to her mother. 

Leung Pui Ching worked hard. After she had saved some money, she resigned and attended the Mong Kok Workers’ Children School under the introduction of a workmate. She want to study in Primary 4 but was admitted to Primary 3. The school was operated in its self-owned premise which was next to the Hong Kong St. John’s Ambulance. The premise was a 2-storey building with all classrooms on the ground floor. In the year she graduated, the school had an enrolment of several hundred students. When the school planned to build the new 2nd floor, Leung Pui Ching helped with flag day for fundraising. The school had morning and afternoon schools. Each class had several dozen students and they sat in rows in the classroom. The Principal was Ms. Chow. It was mainly for overaged students from poor families. Leung Pui Ching observed that intake of naughty students from rich families had affected the school’s reputation. Leung Pui Ching was 24 when she went to this school. She was older than the average students, but to hide this fact she reported herself a teenage girl on the application form. Teachers mixed students of different academic performance into the same group and asked them to study school work together.

Unlike other classmates who had tuition fees paid by their parents, Leung Pui Ching paid for the full-time study on her own savings. In the column indicating the information of guardian box, she stamped the seal of her elder brother without his awareness. As study had always been her wish, she was delighted to go to school. At school, what she liked most was hand writing. Her family could do nothing to stop her from going to school. Although her family objected to her moving out, they still kept her in touch. During the time of her full-time study, her mother’s foot was hurt by their pet cat. She brought her to the Lee Kee Memorial Dispensary, Kowloon Hospital and Kwong Wah Hospital for injections and dressings.

The Mong Kok Workers’ Children School taught subjects such as Drawing, Arithmetic, Composition, History, Chinese Model Letter Writing, Physical Education and English Language. In the English lessons, students practiced on copybooks. Among the subjects, Leung felt that the school emphasized more on Physical Education and Arithmetic. Leung Pui Ching remembered a Class Mistress Ho who was a learned and enthusiastic teacher. It took Leung Pui Ching some effort to catch up with the class. She got average grades for academic subjects but scored high for conduct. She had been given the Second Best Conduct Award. Composition was one of the subjects at the graduation examination. During the four years of full-time study, she forced herself to memorize what was taught in the class. It was a half-day school and she spent the other half of the day learning sewing skills. She got married upon graduation because her boyfriend’s family urged her to marry soon. After marriage, she gradually forgot what was learnt at school. Upon graduation, some of her classmates taught in the evening school, though she believed a clerical job had a better prospect, and some got married. There were more male students than female students at school but she had no contact with the boys after graduation.

Leung Pui Ching remembered that there was an exhibition jointly held by China and Czechoslovakia in Guangzhou (probably in 1956). The school organized a visiting tour for a group of selected students, Leung Pui Ching being one of them. In the trip, she visited her grandmother at her native place. Occasionally she would join the school picnics, such as the picnic held on the National Day on 1 October. The teachers encouraged students to participate in extra-curricular activities. Due to her good results in Physical Education, Leung Pui Ching was chosen as the leader of the procession holding school flag on the Sports Day. She stood with other students in ‘H’ shape on the sports ground and took part in the shot-put competition. They had their Physical Education lessons at the school playground. In the lessons, they did high jump, running, ball games and gymnastics. Other subjects offered by the school included workmanship, teaching students to sew and to embroider. It was optional to the students.
 
The Mong Kok Workers’ Children School had its own anthem and motto. The students went to school in white shirt and blue trousers or an overall. The tuition fee was cheap but there were no subsidies for individual students. Class began at 9 am and ended at 1 pm and each lesson lasted for 1 hour. During recesses, Leung Pui Ching would talk to her classmates and she never thought her younger classmates were child-like. The students had similar social backgrounds. Most of them were children of workers and therefore they related well with each other. Leung Pui Ching made good friends with some of them. The teacher focused more on the bad students. They would pay home visits and meet their parents. Leung thought the school ran in a good way and was able to teach naughty students transferred from better schools to behave themselves with good manners. These students had unsatisfactory academic results and conduct. Some of them were materialists and too much attracted by products of famous brands. The Principal Ms. Chow would meet these students personally. In the weekly assemblies, the students lined up on the playground and listened to the principal’s speech, which was about the students and the school. Class Mistress Miss Ho was popular among the students for her eloquence. Leung Pui Ching admired Miss Ho most among all the teachers. Leung felt that the teachers were committed to teaching the students. They were mostly middle-aged, some being local Hong Kong people and some from the mainland.
 
In this school, teachers talked about China’s national conditions and read to the students the current news in the mainland. The PRC flag was hung on the post and national anthem was sung, but no portrait of Mao Zedong was shown in the campus and the Quotations from Chairman Mao was not a compulsory subject. The school emphasized more on students’ conduct. The teacher would guide the students to give comments among themselves. Students were organized into groups to review each other’s shortcomings. Leung Pui Ching was being criticized as ‘never hesitate to criticize the others’. At Primary 3, the Geography teacher taught the curriculum of Primary 4. Arithmetic was also a difficult subject as it was beyond the level of Primary 6. In the Chinese lessons, the teacher taught only modern Chinese texts. The History teacher taught feudalism in China and modern Chinese history. In the English lessons, the students practiced copybook. There was no examination for English Language and no vocabulary was taught. In drawing lessons, the teacher drew and explained the principles of shading and reflection. The blackboard was used as the teaching medium. Students who failed to meet the school’s requirements would be expelled. Leung Pui Ching did not sit for the Secondary School Entrance Examination as others did in Primary 6. She only sat for the school examination and she passed it for graduation.

During the four years’ study in the Mong Kok Workers’ Children School, Leung Pui Ching had made clothes at her cousin’s family workshop for one and a half years through which her sewing skill was improved. After school, she never invited her classmates to her home. She would go home and do her homework. She never wasted any paper and would keep every piece for writing. Leung Pui Ching’s roommates (who were her former workmates) either changed jobs or got married one by one. Therefore she rented a bed space in Nga Tsin Long Road for a monthly rent of $15. She lived alone, cooked her own meals and saved up for the exercise books. Leung Pui Ching had good conduct but only made average grades in academic subjects. Although she had difficulty catching up with the class, she seldom consulted the teachers on the lessons. Most of the time she learnt on her own.

Before attending the Mong Kok Workers’ Children School, Leung Pui Ching had joined the Hong Kong & Kowloon Spinning Weaving and Dyeing Trade Workers General Union. When she was at school, she knew there were riots (in 1967) and ‘pineapples’ (colloquially means bombs) were planted throughout the streets. At the time (in 1956-57) when the rightists attacked the leftists, there were heavy casualties in the riot that took place in Tsuen Wan. She learned from the news report that the leftist trade unions, schools and associations were attacked by people who threw them strong acids. [Editor’s note: Leung Pui Ching apparently were talking about two different riots in Hong Kong.]

Leung Pui Ching’s elder brother had studied at school for nine years; but with her own effort, she was the only educated daughter in the family. Her brother-in-law criticized that had she not spent the money on studies, she would have owned several property flats. Leung Pui Ching argued that everyone should have his/her own way of thinking. If she did not insist on her beliefs and wishes, she would have faced much hardship today. Leung had many siblings, but some died in childhood and some were sent for adoption. Only the younger sister joined them in Hong Kong. Leung Pui Ching grew up with the elder brother, elder sister and younger sister. Her younger sister also worked in a weaving company fixing yarn onto looms and weaving cloth. Leung Pui Ching had learnt sewing, but she couldn’t find sewing jobs, because by the time she learned the skill, Hong Kong suffered from the embargo imposed upon China. As a result, export trade of garment from Hong Kong was greatly affected. She felt she had wasted money on it. The YWCA female workers’ evening school charged lower tuition fees for the evening course than the day course and the school also provided textbooks of Chinese Model Letter Writing.  

A cousin of Leung Pui Ching also worked for her mother’s 9th brother during the Japanese Occupation, where they met each other. After the World War, he came to Hong Kong and studied traditional Chinese medicine. Leung Pui Ching met him again at the time when she was studying in the Mong Kok Workers’ Children School. She visited him in his home in Carmel Village, To Kwa Wan. As both cousin and his mother were Christians, they were given a place to live in this village. Her cousin stayed at home to take care of his daughter while his wife (formerly a boat resident) and his younger sister worked in a garment factory in Sham Shui Po.

After work, cousin’s wife would bring home some fabric items and sew them with cousin. Cousin’s wife focused in sewing sleeves because a higher wage was paid. In exchange for a chance to learn sewing, Leung Pui Ching took care of cousin’s daughter and did household chores without pay; sometimes she even bought them food out of her own pocket. Leung Pui Ching went to school in the morning and went to cousin’s home in the afternoon. At that time cousin also worked part-time in a shop selling herbal medicine for a daily wage of $3. Finally Leung Pui Ching didn’t learn much sewing because she had to do homework and household chores. This had lasted for one and a half years until cousin’s wife was pregnant again and she stopped going to their home. Leung Pui Ching worked in the afternoon in weaving factory and plastic flowers factory to earn for tuition and living. Not long later she graduated and got married.

Leung Pui Ching’s husband was a sworn brother of Leung’s workmate in Hong Shing Weaving Factory. This workmate introduced her sworn brother to Leung. Their marriage was delayed by her study plan. On festive occasions, her future husband sent festive cakes to her mother to please Leung’s family. After marriage, the couple rented a room in a tenement house in Nga Tsin Long Road. Leung Pui Ching gave birth to her first son at the end of that year. Originally she planned to give birth at the Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital because she hated the poor attitudes of nurses in public hospitals. Eventually she gave birth at the maternity home because of unforeseen incident. After delivery, she had a kind of gynecological disease and it was cured after some injections at the Kwong Wah Hospital. After his son was born, the landlord asked them to leave the room in Nga Tsin Long Road. They rented a stone house for a monthly rent of $60. Later, they lived in a government’s resettlement block with a white card purchased through ways instructed by a workmate.

Her husband was a Vietnamese Chinese. He worked as a cobbler for the Keung Kee Shoe Stall at a back alley on Lockhart Road. He was good at repairing hiking shoes. At Leung Pui Ching’s advice, he bought up a shoe stall on Carpenter Road and started his own business. On the shoe box wrote the advertising phrase: ‘Keung Kee lays insole for old shoes, tailor-makes new shoes, repairs worn out shoes’. When husband ran his own stall, their son was not yet born. One day when she visited him at the stall, Leung Pui Ching found him not at the stall. She looked for him everywhere and only discovered that he was a lazy worker but a heavy gambler. Leung Pui Ching described her husband gifted with shoe making but he failed himself due to addiction to gambling. Once he had lost all the deposits from his customers in gambling.

Leung Pui Ching lived on the seventh floor of the second resettlement block in Lo Fu Ngam. It was a Mark I design. She invited her mother and the son of another cousin to join together in one household for the application so that they were allocated a large unit. The monthly rent for the flat was $18. It was hot in summer and cold in winter. In summer, they had to sleep on the floor on a straw mat. Leung Pui Ching had her first son when she was 30. When his son was 10 months old, she hired someone to take care of him at a monthly wage of $50, so that she could leave home for work. When she had the second child (a girl), Leung had her mother taken care of the children for several months. Her husband left home early for work and returned home late. But he could only give her $3 per month for family expenses which was far from enough for the big family. Leung Pui Ching had worked for different Cantonese-run weaving factories nearby, including Mei Dik in San Po Kong, Yip Wah in Tung Tau Village and Tai Shing in Tam Kung Road. At the time, weaving technology was improved. When she worked in Yip Wah Weaving Factory, she weaved patterned cloth with a four-shuttle loom.

When the second daughter was born, mother took care of the baby. Several months later she stopped helping because she came to take care of Leung’s brother’s son. Her husband was upset with it. To save money, Leung Pui Ching resigned and stayed home to take care of children and housework. Her husband continued to addict in gambling and did not give her enough money to meet the growing family expenses. She earned money by assembling plastic flowers at home. This had lasted for 8 years. She worked again from 7 am to 3 pm when she was 37-38 years old (by then her youngest daughter was two years old). When her fourth daughter was born, her husband had a sterilization operation at the Kwong Wah Hospital. It was difficult for Leung Pui Ching to take care of four children on her own. Because of a lack of child care experience, the children always fell ill. She didn’t allow her children to play outside home and sometimes enjoyed the help from her neighbour watching the children. She bought electrical appliances such as an electric fan and a radio by installments. When she returned to work again, she instructed her husband on how to cook and take care of the family.

When her children were in secondary school, Leung Pui Ching understood that they could no longer be kept in the house. She worked the night shift from 11 pm to 7 am, so the home would not be left unattended. During that period, she slept four or five hours per day. As she had to work sedentary for many hours a day and climb staircases to and fro from ground floor to 7th floor, her knees were badly damaged. She had walking problems and had been under medical treatment for 3 years. She went to night work as usual while having injection every week and seeking occasional treatment from Chinese bonesetters to maintain her health. Around 1984, Leung Pui Ching underwent a surgery at the Prince of Wales Hospital and had stainless steel joints implanted on both knees. In 1985, she moved to a Home Ownership Scheme flat in Shatin.

Leung Pui Ching resigned from the weaving factory under the advice of her doctor. She worked four hours a day as a cleaning worker at the Kai Tak Airport. Later, she served dim sum at the Shing Shun Restaurant in Sun Tin Wai Estate, Shatin. She worked there for two years. By then, her youngest daughter got married. Shing Shun Restaurant hired workers for one shift of four hours. Leung Pui Ching resigned because she was asked to manage a pushing cart with a heavy load of dim sum. In 1990, she changed to work in the Heung Kong Restaurant in Wo Che. This restaurant hired workers for one shift of eight hours. She worked from 8 am to 4 pm and earned a monthly wage of $2,200. She got a wage rise of $200 because she was hardworking and was willing to manage a pushing cart with a heavy load of dim sum.

Leung Pui Ching had worked for 10 years in Heung Kong Restaurant. She worked hard and was admired by her superior. In the restaurant, the kitchen leader was dubbed the ‘big brother’ while the dim sum and dish washing leader was dubbed the ‘big sister’. At the workplace, the ‘big sister’ and sometimes some customers would shout at the workers if they found anything unhappy. Leung Pui Ching adapted to it be keeping quiet. To her, that was the most uneasy experience. Her principle is to please the customers if one wants to keep the job. Leung Pui Ching retired in 2000. She felt that everyday life becomes boring and so joined the activities in elderly centres.

Leung Pui Ching used to live a busy life. Before marriage, she was busy studying. After she got married, she was busy caring children and housework. She had little time for trade union activities. When working in Hong Shing, she joined the Hong Kong & Kowloon Spinning Weaving and Dyeing Trade Workers General Union. She joined it because one of her workmates earnestly invited her. She didn’t join it to protect her interest as a worker. The Union strived for members’ interests and some of her workmates were union members. The union headquarters was in Tsuen Wan, with branch offices in Kwun Tong and To Kwa Wan. Leung Pui Ching used to buy goods at the union’s retail section at the end of the year.

The union kept in touch with members through phone calls by volunteer members and organized different types of activities such as picnics, singing and dancing parties, ceremonial feasts, Spring Festival feasts and vegetarian feasts. On election days, the members would vote according to the union’s instruction. Leung Pui Ching kept the union updated of her new address every time she moved her home. But she stopped paying membership fee after moving to Lo Fu Ngam. When she returned to work again, she renewed her membership. She stopped being member of the spinning and weaving workers union when she worked in catering. She renewed her membership later and paid some $200 to become a permanent member. After retirement, Leung Pui Ching had served the Hong Kong Federation of Unions as a volunteer at its Tai Wai office for several years. She remarked that the relationship between a member and the union depended on the former’s degree of involvement.

Leung Pui Ching only remembered the riots started by the rightists (in 1956/57). The rightists started the riots which caused the deaths of many leftists. The rightists demanded that they were allowed to fly the Nationalist flag in Hong Kong. Otherwise they threatened to set fire in the community. Both the rightists and leftists had planted pineapples (bombs) during riots. Some of them were fake bombs and some were real ones. Leung Pui Ching knew nothing about the riots in 1957, nor those in 1967. She had only heard of the ‘uprising’ of the silk flower factory workers. (Editor’s remark: it should be the labour dispute at a plastic flowers factory.) She disagreed that it was the leftists who started the riot because at the time many leftists had already been deported. When the riot occurred in 1967, the spinning and weaving workers union was under the government’s close surveillance because it was an active body. Leung Pui Ching claimed herself to be an ordinary worker, never an activist.

Leung Pui Ching learned weaving at Lee Kee Weaving Factory for 3 months at a mentor’s fee of $300. The mentor was a skilled female worker. At the time, most mentors were female. The mentor sat next to the learner and gave instructions. Each of them operated an iron and wood weaving loom. They weaved the grey ramie cloth with a single-shuttle loom. The mentor demonstrated and explained the shape, colour, properties, materials and weaving method of the ramie cloth. The learners had to learn how to start the loom, knotting, dismantling, cutting and yarn adjustments. Weaving was a skill easy to learn but difficult to master. The speed depended on the agility of the worker’s hands. The wage and worker’s output were counted by yardage and the volume of output depended on the quality of the yarn. If the yarn was rotten by the wet weather, only 2 to 3 yards of cloth could be produced in a day. The workers’ wage depended on their output. The more they weaved, the more they earned. So the income was not fixed.

Lee Kee employed a secretary, a deputy director and a director. The proprietor Wong Kam Tong was a cousin of Leung Pui Ching’s brother-in-law. Lee Kee was a 3-storey factory. The production machines were installed on the ground floor. They included two rows of weaving looms (four looms in a row). The processes of dyeing, turning yarn into thread, materials and production record, and packaging were carried out on the 2nd floor. The manual weaving looms were kept on the 3rd floor. The rooftop was for dyeing. The manual weaving loom was of the oldest design. The operator had to use both hands and legs to move the machine which actually weaved at a low speed. Electric loom was more advanced than the iron and wood loom. The latter needed oil lubrication to keep the movement of the wheels smooth. The iron and wood loom was electric-powered. Sometimes accidents occurred to female workers who had their long hair stuck at the loom’s wheels. That was why most women operators kept their hair short. At the Cantonese-run factories, Leung Pui Ching’s job was to watch and fix broken yarns while weaving was going on.

Lee Kee produced single-breasted and double-breasted blouses. They were mainly for local sale while a small quantity was for export. The factory had several dozen employees and their tasks included recording materials and production volume, dyeing, packaging and production. Most weavers were female and each worker operated one machine. In the Shanghainese factory Leung Pui Ching had worked for, she found male workers weaving in night shifts. In Lee Kee, there was division of labour by gender: men worked in the sections of dyeing and setting yarn onto large wheels while women turned large wheels of yarns into smaller loafs. Men also worked for the section of materials and production records. They recorded the sending out of materials and the yardage of finished products. The packaging department had workers of both genders. Once packaged, the goods were ready for delivery. The production process included checking yarn quality, dyeing, setting yarn into large wheels, moving yarn from large wheels to smaller loafs, weaving, recording production volume, packaging and delivery. The Lee Kee workers were paid biweekly or monthly. Lee Kee Weaving Factory operated in an old building in Nga Tsin Long Road.  There were many other weaving factories nearby but it was not an industrial area. There were also shops selling rice and pig fodder.

Leung Pui Ching earned a daily wage of $2 to $3 in Lee Kee Weaving Factory. She worked 12 hours a day from 7 am to 7 pm with a one-hour lunch break. She was entitled to no holidays. Of all the workers, the highest paid were the loom mentors. The dyers, yarn workers and weavers all earned a few hundred dollars per month. Leung Pui Ching’s younger sister learned the skill of running large wheels of yarn into small loafs. Leung Pui Ching had described this process. A worker’s wage depended on the quality of the yarn. A weaver earned more than a yarn worker.

When the World War II was over, many cotton mills moved to Hong Kong from Shanghai, so there were more cotton mills in Hong Kong than weaving factories. To work in a cotton mill, a referee and a guarantor were needed. The candidate must be 18 to 22 years old. Some workers were natives of the factory proprietor. In those days, a worker could surely find a job if he/she had the skill. Later some cotton mills recruited new workers by posting notices on the street. For one knew someone working in the factory, they could exempt from a test.

An accident happened when Leung Pui Ching was working in a Shanghainese factory. She was hit in the lips by a shuttle flown from a machine out of order. She bled but was not compensated. If accident happened, the seriously injured workers would be sent to the hospital. The workers were covered by workmen’s insurance. Leung Pui Ching had never seen officers from the Labour Department for inspection throughout her work life in the factory.

Later, the Lee Kee Weaving Factory was moved to Ha Heung Road, To Kwa Wan. Leung Pui Ching worked in Hong Shing Weaving Factory and moved out of the family. There she weaved with a four-shuttle loom and the more she weaved, the more she earned. The four-shuttle loom could weave fabrics with four colours in grid patterns. It could also be turned into the single-shuttle model. A weaver had to learn to operate the loom from a mentor. There were not any taught courses outside factory. Weaving was a skill easy to learn but difficult to master. Leung Pui Ching could operate the single- and four-shuttle looms but she did not know much about weaving patterned cloth. She mainly operated the single-shuttle loom. Hong Shing Weaving Factory operated in a separate building rather than in Chinese tenement house.

For convenience, Leung Pui Ching rented a cockloft in a tenement house next to the factory with several female workmates. Most of the female workers were single in their 20s or 30s. Moving away from home was common among them. Both the married and single female workers worked 12 hours a day. Her elder sister worked in Lee Kee and took care of her daughters at the same time. She weaved with the manual loom and iron and wood loom. Different machines produced different products but all could produce cloths for making clothes. Leung Pui Ching earned a higher wage in Hong Shing but the wages depended on the quality of the raw materials. Generally, with yarn of average quality a worker could weave 20 feet of cloth per day, however, if the yarn became rotten and got stuck at the machine too often, only a few yards of cloth could be produced. In those days, the production was not aided by steam boilers. Hong Shing had an establishment similar with Lee Kee. The only difference was that the head of the factory was no longer called the ‘machine head’. In Hong Shing, the head of the factory was equivalent to a factory manager. The office holder must be familiar with the trade, but not necessarily a relative of the proprietor. The management system was improved in comparison with that of Lee Kee.

Leung Pui Ching did not go to picnics with her workmates until she worked in the Shanghainese factories. The Cantonese factories generally had long working hours and offered no holidays. The workers worked hard for money and got no time to find fun. They spent most of their income on rental and daily expenses. Leung Pui Ching was under 20 when she attended the evening school and she had little leisure activities too. She went to work early in the day and got off from work late at night. When she had finished her apprenticeship in Lee Kee, her mother asked her to bring home a fixed sum of money every month to meet the family expenses. But Leung Pui Ching only earned barely enough to make ends meet and she could not spare money for her mother.

With the help of a relative who volunteered to take care of her elder sisters’ children in place of her, Leung Pui Ching moved out of the family. That was the happiest time in her life enjoying much autonomy. She had no family burden and did not have to take care of her elder sister’s children, which allowed her to spend more time on studying. Her elder sister had seven children. Her brother-in-law referred them as seven pairs of pattens as a metaphor to describe the hardship of bringing up a large group of children. Leung Pui Ching was not the only rebellious child at home. Her younger sister also resisted their mother and moved out of the family. During wartime, her mother wanted Leung Pui Ching to get married when she was 16, but she did not like marrying young. She planned to get married at 28. She believed that ‘self-reliance makes a noble self, dependence brings disappointment’. In the conservative society, early marriage was common. Her mother married to her father at 16. Leung had seen a lot of negative images of a mother-in-law in movies. That was why she preferred not to get married at a young age.

In those days, female workers were in short supply. Leung Pui Ching learned of the job opportunity in the Tai Wah Weaving and Garment Factory from recruitment notices and the message from other workmates. It was a Shanghainese-run factory in To Kwa Wan. Under the introduction of a workmate, she was employed without any tests. When Leung Pui Ching applied for the Hong Kong Identity Card, she claimed to be 22, which was two years older than her actual age. The Shanghainese factories paid higher wages and workers were entitled to holidays too. Later, she changed to work in Luen Wah Weaving Factory (also a Shanghainese factory) in Tsuen Wan. Luen Wah provided workers with a dormitory but the condition of the workshop was disappointing. It was an enclosed unit with a wet and slippery floor and poor air ventilation. In Luen Wah, each worker attended six machines. They worked 12 hours a day from 7 am to 7 pm with one day off per week. Workers working for irregular shifts did not have fixed holidays.

The Shanghainese factories had higher output. They used automatic machines and produced white cloth and twill for military purposes. At the prime, each worker attended 16 machines. The automatic machines were easy to operate. With the basic skills learned in the Cantonese factories, Leung Pui Ching mastered these machines easily. But due to the frequent accidents caused by automatic machines and the poor working environment, Leung Pui Ching felt that it was a hard job. The proprietor was demanding and the factory was run by more rigid rules and strict management. A sick worker had to work as usual otherwise he would have his wage deducted. Workers who was absent from work would lose the attendance bonus. Leung Pui Ching had problems with her feet because she was fatigue from work. Later she resigned from Luen Wah as she couldn’t sustain the heavy workload and decided to study full-time. After she got married, she worked as a denim weaver.

After Leung Pui Ching got married, she worked as a denim weaver in the Cantonese-run Tai Fung Dyeing and Weaving Factory. The job was from 11 pm to 7 am the next morning. She went to work after her children went to bed. In those days, women worked overtime required approval from the Labour Department. Leung Pui Ching was employed by Tai Fung because she knew the ‘machine head’ (head of the factory). The skill of weaving denim was the same as the skill of weaving other types of fabrics. Tai Fung used automatic machines.

To protect their hair from being infected by the colour pigments from the denim, workers wore a cap they brought to work. Tai Fung was situated in Wai Yip Street, Kwun Tong. Shuttle bus service was provided by the factory to send workers to work. The factory was also an enclosed unit. It had different departments such as production, dyeing, yarn work, materials and production records and packaging. The first step of denim production was dyeing yarn. A small number of the female workers were married. Leung Pui Ching worked the night shift at the time when her eldest son was in Form 2. Not long later her husband passed away.

Leung Pui Ching and her family lived in a large unit in a resettlement block in Lo Fu Ngam. The flat had one living room and one bedroom. A corner near the porch installed a kerosene stove for cooking, but there was no space for a dining table. The resettlement area had communal bathrooms, water supplies and flush latrines. Downstairs was a wet market with stalls. The flat was hot in summer and suffered from strong wind in winter. To Leung Pui Ching, being allocated a flat in the resettlement block was equivalent to winning the Mark Six because she no longer had to suffer from the inconvenience of living in rented rooms. She recalled that when she rented a room in Nga Tsin Long Road, the ‘nunnery’ and Sai Tau Tsuen, there was much inconvenient because all tenants shared the limited facilities and living space, not to mention all kinds of restrictions set by the landlord.

At the rooftop of the resettlement block she lived in was a service centre of YMCA. As Leung Pui Ching worried that her children might get into trouble meeting with a mix of people hanging around, she installed an iron gate at the porch to prevent them from going outside. But keeping them home made them feel annoyed and they sneaked out whenever the gate was opened. As Leung Pui Ching did not spend much time with her children, she had uneasy relationship with her two sons. To avoid uncomfortable remarks by the others, Leung Pui Ching did not remarry after her husband was dead. Instead, she worked hard to earn money to provide for the family. A neighbour helped her to take care of her children and occasionally sent her porridge and fruits. But her children played tricks on the neighbours because they were bored being kept at home. The neighbour had complained about it. Her children had not many playful activities; they were allowed only to play pogs at the stairways. In the 1960s and 1970s, the water rationing measure was implemented. By then Leung Pui Ching had four children. Under the measure, water was supplied once every two days. Tenants of the large units who paid $18 for rent were given a quota of 3 buckets of water and those who paid $14 for the medium-sized flats could get 2 buckets of water; and the small flat tenants who paid $10 for rent could have 1.5 to 2 buckets. Leung Pui Ching still keeps the iron bucket she used to fetch water in those days.

There were more than 10 resettlement blocks of Mark I and Mark II designs in Lo Fu Ngam. Her elder sister lived in one of the Mark II blocks which were built later. Before that, she was a landlady of a flat in the Ta Ku Ling Road, Kowloon City. There was a Christian graveyard nearby. On the Yu Lan Ghost Festival, Chaozhou opera and Chazhou music were performed at the hillside of Lo Fu Ngam. In those days, there were still resettlement blocks in Wang Tau Hom. Primary schools and the YWCA service centre were opened on the rooftop of the blocks. When Leung Pui Ching was a stay-home housewife, she assembled plastic flowers at home for the plastic factories in Ho Ka Yuen. Her children also helped out in the home work.

Her eldest son studied in the Lok Sin Tong Primary School and Workers’ Children Secondary School. The second and third children studied in the rooftop primary schools in Lo Fu Ngam and the Catholic secondary schools in Mei Foo. She did not send her first and second children to kindergartens. Leung Pui Ching let her children choose their own schools. Most of the children of her neighbours studied in the free rooftop school run by the Apostolic Faith Church.

Leung Pui Ching criticized her husband as lazy and irresponsible and was indulged in gambling. As her children grew up, she worked night shift. It was difficult at first because she was not accustomed to the lifestyle and fell sick. Her husband stopped giving money to the family after she had a job. To solve family problems, she sought help from Elsie Hume Elliot in the advice of a friend. Elliot referred her to an institution in Tsz Wan Shan. When her eldest son quit school and left home, she wrote to a social worker for help. Her children had health problems such as asthma and involuntary vomiting. To improve their health, Leung Pui Ching sought help from Elsie Elliot in the early 1980s to move home. They eventually moved to a resettlement block opposite the Hong Kong Buddhist Hospital. Instead of weaving, Leung Pui Ching changed to work in a silk flower factory. In 1985, the family moved to a Home Ownership Scheme flat in Shatin.