Leung Yuk Jan

Leung Yuk Jan was born in Hong Kong in 1925. She recalled the encounter when she got her identity card. Her grandfather operated drayage business. The business was to provide motor boats to tow barges to load and unload cargoes from the large trading vessels in the harbour. Besides Hong Kong waters, the vessels also anchored in Macau and Guangzhou. It took several days to tow the barges to waters beyond Hong Kong’s border and her mother would join the crew and cook for them. Her mother’s own family had barges for cargo loading. Mother married at 16 and gave birth to the first child at 18 and then to Leung Yuk Jan two years later. Leung Yuk Jan’s younger brother died before he was weaned. Her grandmother bought a boy of Leung Yuk Jan’s age to replace the dead grandson.

This nuclear family of five lived with the grandparents and other relatives. Grandfather provided for the 3 grandchildren while Mother supervised the expenses on food for the family. Leung Yuk Jan started school at 7 years old. She remembered travelling to Guangzhou in her parents’ tugboat before she started schooling. In Guangzhou, she went to watch Cantonese opera performance by Sun Ma Sze Tsang and Shek Yin Tze at the Tai Sun Department Store. Later on, Father had a concubine against the objection of Grandfather and the youngest uncle. He married her with the excuse that the family was always left unattended when the couple was away for work and complained that Yuk Jan's mother paid too much attention to her natal family.

Leung Yuk Jan recalled meeting the concubine at the Tai Sun Department Store. The concubine was a boat girl whom Father came to know in Guangsha. She used to take passengers across the river. Leung Yuk Jan believed she earned extra income by offering sex. When Father married the concubine, Leung Yuk Jan was six years old. The relationship between Father and Mother turned bad since then. Mother was given a daily allowance of four dollars to meet the expenses of four persons (Mother and the 4 children) but the concubine enjoyed the same amount of money for her own purpose. Ten years later, as the concubine did not give birth to any children, Leung Yuk Jan was allowed to continue to go to school.

When Leung Yuk Jan was in Primary 1, she lived with her family in the Wing Sing Street (colloquially known as Duck Egg Street). After Grandmother died, the family moved to Wing Kut Street. Mother died when Leung Yuk Jan was in Junior Secondary 3. When Leung Yuk Jan was seven, she attended the To Chi Girls’ School with her siblings. In one school term, the school changed the start of the term in the fall (rather than in the spring as what it used to be), the students were promoted to one level higher after half a year study. Therefore Leung Yuk Jan and her siblings completed the whole course of primary education in 5 years. In To Chi School, boys were also admitted while some of the girls were overaged.

Grandfather left his native place for Hong Kong with Grandmother and worked in the sector of tugboat transportation. Initially they worked for earnings. Gradually they saved up enough to buy their own tugboats. Because Grandfather was illiterate, he insisted that his grandchildren had to enjoy education. Grandfather’s eldest son was good at studies but he died of plague (when it was an epidemic disease in 1894). For this reason, Grandfather did not allow Father to go to school. Father learnt some Chinese characters at a si-su (old-style private Chinese school). Father was the owner and qualified driver of a tugboat. On the boat, the sailors ran errands on the board; below the board, the mechanic was the one in-charge and his subordinates took care of coal. Grandfather controlled the operation and the accounts of the business. The boat owner’s sole duty was to steer the tugboat. The boat owner, mechanic, assistant mechanic and sailors all worked for Grandfather.

In those days, the small barges and fishing boats in the Triangle Pier were not motor-driven. They were towed to move by a tugboat on stormy days. Business was best when typhoon signal no. 7 or no. 8 was hoisted. To protect the boats and cargoes, boat owners would have their cargo boats towed to typhoon shelters as soon as possible and they would pay whatever price tugboat owner asked. Besides local typhoon shelters or cargo piers (such as the Triangle Pier), towing services were also offered to destinations outside Hong Kong such as Macao and Guangzhou. Grandfather worked at a pier adjacent to the Japanese-operated pier. When Father was on board, Grandfather worked onshore and communicated with him with a makeshift red flag from a small red sack. At the time, the Leung family lived in the old Gilman Street. The pier was close enough to be seen from the balcony. [Editor’s note: The pier where Grandfather had worked for should be Kwong Wing Pier or Luen Cheong Pier. The Japanese-operated pier should be the Osaka Shosen Pier].

Originally, the Leung family owned three tugboats - the Tai Loi owned by Granduncle, the Sun Tung Fat owned by an employee, and the Ping Bo owned by Father. After Granduncle and the employees died, their tugboats were sold to others. Ping Bo was expopriated by the Japanese which was returned to the family after the World War II. In a trip to Guangzhou, Father and the boat were detained by the communist authority, who asked the Ping Bo crew to disclosed the bad deeds of their boss (i.e., Yuk Jan’s Father). The registered owner of Ping Bo was Mother and the concubine.. Father asked the concubine to send a request to the communist authority to return Ping Bo through legal procedure so that he could escape with the boat. Meanwhile Father had tried to escape but was captured and detained again. In exchange for Father’s freedom, Leung’s family surrendered the tugboat Ping Bo to the communist authority. Father ended the towing business after he returned to Hong Kong. Unfortunately he died in a car accident.

Leung Yuk Jan’s mother was an adopted child. Her adopted parents worked at the pier and transported cargoes with the scows. Sometimes boat owners had to store their cargoes on a scow for one or two days awaiting a tugboat to tow the scow to large cargo ships anchored at the Victoria Harbour. The scows were privately run and many scow operators adopted a little girl and used her to run errands on the boat. Grandfather thought Mother was a capable girl taking good care of the boat so he made her his daughter-in-law. When Father asked for a concubine, Grandfather could not insist on his objection because this was his only son. Leung Yuk Jan thought Grandfather compensated the misdeed of Father by showing much love to his grandchildren.

Leung Yuk Jan related well with his adopted brother who was about her age. When they were children, they used to imitate the mandarin opera with a stick. Leung Yuk Jan could read at the age of eight or nine. She took the adopted brother to Kau U Fong where they borrowed comic books at one cent each. The stories they read included Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Xue Rengui’s Expedition to the West, Di Qing Storms Three Passes and Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was Leung Yuk Jan’s favourite. The comic books were extra-curricular reading. She and her brother read them for hours on a wooden stool. When they were hungry, they would eat at the cooked food stalls on the street. There were dentists and barbers in Kau U Fong. When Leung Yuk Jan went to the barber, she used to read the comic books while having her hair cut.

Grandfather stopped business for three days during the Lunar New Year. Her adopted brother would be dressed in a long gown, mandarin jacket and a round hat. The grandchildren would kneel to Grandfather and paid him their new year blessings. In return, each of them was given a red packet which contained a coin of the Qing Dynasty or Republic of China. During the New Year, Cantonese opera was performed at the theatre. The first opera performed in the evening was usually Six States Installation of Minister Murder, while The Fairy Brought the Baby Home would be performed in the day. Grandfather only watched the day programme performed by famous Cantonese opera artists. Mother and the concubine baked lots of pastry. In the early morning, they prepared the bowl pastry with glutinous rice and lard to share with people on the tugboat, at home and at Mother’s maternal home. Leung Yuk Jan described how the Tankas bowl pastry was made. The Tankas believed that poorly cooked new year cakes brought bad luck in the new year.

Leung Yuk Jan recalled the customs they observed on the first and second new year days. In the first morning they ate only vegetarian food. On the second day, they had meat such as the mud carp and barbecued meat which they prepared before the New Year. In those days, the market resumed business in the evening of the first new year day. Every year when Lunar New Year was approaching, her family would go worshipping at the Tin Hau Temple in Fat Tong Mun with offerings such as chicken, barbecued meat and bread. In those days, there was no pier outside the temple and the worshippers had to take a barge. It was the Hakka customs to invite non-family members home for the ‘Dipper Worship’. Leung Yuk Jan told about the ritual of ‘river dragon boat’ held at the wedding ceremonies and funerals.

Before the World War II, Sit Kok Sin was resident performer at the Ko Shing Theatre and played with female lead performer Shanghai Mei and clown figure Boon Yat On at the opera performances. Ma Sze Tsang was resident at the Tai Ping Theatre and played with female lead performer Tam Lan Hing. Mother used to go to the theatre late as there was a discount when the performance had started. Later on, Mother also took Leung Yuk Jan to the performance. Before the war, there were many second-hand clothes shops near the Ko Shing Theatre. In those days, the long gown was the common clothes. The men wore the rust-coloured silk in the winter and the gambiered Guangzhou gauze in summer.

At seven, Leung Yuk Jan went to school with her sister and adopted brother. Her family held the school opening ceremony for her brother. The ceremony was convened by a non-family member who chanted the Three Character Classic. To Chi Girls’ School was operated in a Chinese tenement house on Wing Kut Street where the Leung family lived. The school ran classes from Primary 1 to 6 in separate classrooms for each class. The Principal Mr. Lee taught the senior class Chinese Language. Mr. Lee’s father, who learnt the Eight-legged writings, taught Primary 6 students couplet and classical literature. The students had their first English alphabet lesson in Primary 5. At Arithmetic lessons, they learnt addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They had no drawing lessons; nor physical education because there was no playground nearby. Most of her classmates were girls, but seven or eight year old boys were also admitted. Leung Yuk Jan’s husband was one of them.

Leung Yuk Jan did not have pocket money when she was in primary school. She went to school on foot because it was a short distance from home. At lunch break, she went home for lunch with her siblings. Mother always took her to Sheung Sun Western Restaurant on Wellington Street for lunch or afternoon tea and brought her back to school after lunch. Her brother had lunch at a Chinese teahouse with Grandfather - Grandfather only took grandson to Chinese teahouse. Her open-minded grandfather believed that it was the most important for his grandchildren to learn to read so that they could work in offices, as a nurse or a teacher. He believed that study and marriage were two different matters. When Leung Yuk Jan was in secondary school, sometimes she would go to the pier to visit Grandfather asking him for money to buy English textbooks. She would spend part of the money on old books in Lascar Row and kept the remaining money with her.

In primary school, Leung Yuk Jan joined extra-curricular activities. It was the custom of To Chi Girls’ School to deliver gifts to students at Christmas parties. In a school picnic in Shatin, Yuk Jan remembered that they had to shut the windows, while the train entered the mountain tunnel, because of the strong smell of burnt coal. Leung Yuk Jan’s classmates came from well-off families. A classmate’s grandfather opened a gold shop on Wellington Street. Before the World War II, only daughters of well-off families were able to go to school. Many of her female classmates attended school so that they could marry to another well off family. These girls studied Primary 1 at teenage and got married after studying for two to three years. Leung Yuk Jan had this plan with two classmates: The one who got the highest grade in the examination would be awarded with snacks and peanut candies. At To Chi Girls’ School, teachers distributed the marked examination papers to the students so that they could check with their results. Students had to return the marked papers to their teachers. The school did not produce whole year academic report for each student, but only publicize the ranking position of each student on notice boards. Though Grandfather was concerned about Leung Yuk Jan’s studies, she did not feel pressurized about school work at junior secondary level because she paid much attention at class. When she was about to be promoted to secondary school, the family moved to the old Gilman Street. On school holidays, she would visit the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens and the park on the Bowen Road with classmates.

Ms. Chan was the class mistress of her senior primary levels. She advised Leung Yuk Jan to study in Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School. She had heard that Ms. Chan was an old classmate of Ms. Lee the principal of Lai Chack. With her academic results, Leung Yuk Jan would either be admitted in True Light Middle School of Hong Kong or in Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School. The former was considered higher in academic standard. After graduating from the primary school, Leung Yuk Jan’s elder sister entered the Shun Sau Middle School on Caine Road and her younger brother studied at Nam Chung Middle School which was a boys’ school. After discussion with her sister, Leung Yuk Jan eventually chose Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School because she could save more for pocket money.

In secondary school, Leung Yuk Jan got good appetite for lunch. She joined swimming classes with her sister. So she chose to go to school on foot so that she could save money for food and swimming. Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School only offered classes for primary section and junior secondary section. The kindergarten was opened after Leung Yuk Jan graduated. To consider senior secondary school, Leung Yuk Jan followed her sister’s advice and chose Heung Kong Middle School. Leung Yuk Jan and her sister took tuition classes during summer holidays. They got good exam results and were granted school fee subsidies. Sister got full subsidiy and Leung Yuk Jan got half subsidy, a way to save tuition fees for pocket money. Later, Leung Yuk Jan enjoyed free tuition as her academic results further improved while her sister got half subsidy. But their family had no knowledge of this. Leung Yuk Jan spent the money on Cantonese opera performance by Ma Sze Tsang and Sit Kok Sin on Sundays.

Leung Yuk Jan’s parents did not have much education, so they had little opinion about her studies in the secondary school. Father had little expectation upon her education, but he liked to ask about her ranking in examinations. Grandfather encouraged her to continue studies and expected her to become a nurse or a teacher. Mother thought that educated girls would have good marriage so that no one would look down upon her. At the time, Leung Yuk Jan had not yet thought of getting married. To her, education opportunity and pocket money were more important.  

Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School had two separate campuses in Hong Kong. Leung Yuk Jan studied at the Kennedy Road campus, which was an independent building. Leung Yuk Jan recalled the route to school she took. She went to school with Teacher Lo Wai Kan, who worked in the school library. Lo Wai Kan’s younger sister Lo Wai Man later became Lai Chack’s school principal. She taught English Language. At first, Lai Chack ran a primary school plus junior secondary classes. It opened a kindergarten when Leung Yuk Jan was in Form 3 and then ran the senior secondary classes after the World War II. Leung Yuk Jan had happy times in Lai Chack. She had a lot of pocket money to spend. There was a small sports ground for playing balls at school. When Leung Yuk Jan was in junior secondary levels, she was good at swimming and was an active player of volley ball and basketball. She joined the sports activities hoping that she could grow taller. Of all the sports, she liked basketball most.

Later, Leung Yuk Jan changed to Heung Kong Middle School to study senior secondary and she thought the school had more emphasis on sports. In those days, students of the Belilios Public School paid a monthly tuition fee, while other schools charged quarterly fees. Lai Chack charged a quarterly fee of $60 or so, compared to a monthly wage of $10 for ordinary workers at the time. Before the World War II, the Belilios Public School was a famous English school. Among Chinese schools, the famous ones included Pooi To Middle School, Pui Ching Middle School, True Light Middle School of Hong Kong and Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School. [Editor’s note: Lo Wai Man was the principal of Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School from 1974 to 1983]

The subjects taught at Lai Chack included Geometry, Algebra, Arithmetic, Chinese Language and English Language. The school had more emphasis on Chinese Language. The Chinese Language teacher Mr. Yu was a first-degree scholar of Imperial Qing. He left China for Hong Kong after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident broke out. In class, Leung Yuk Jan took a seat in the first row because she was short. Mr. Yu smoked the Luzon cigar taking advantage of his seniority in age and status as the former teacher of the school principal and other teachers. Leung Yuk Jan used baby banana a metaphor of the cigar he smoked. Nevertheless she got good grades in the Chinese Language. Mr. Yu always talked to her in the lessons but she hated the smell of the cigar. Mr. Yu also taught the Eight-legged essay once a week at the Hok Hoi Association on Caine Road. An expensive monthly tuition fee of $10 was charged. Many of the Hok Hoi students were adults in their twenties from Northern China. The 14-year-old Leung Yuk Jan was probably the youngest student there. The Eight-legged essay taught at Hok Hoi Association was difficult for her, although she was good at Chinese Language at school.

Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School had no staff room. The principal Leung Yat Fan went to school every day and taught classes occasionally. Leung Yuk Jan always met her at school but she had never met school directors such as Lau Pui Ying, Yau Fong Suet or Tse Hei Wan. Algebra teacher Tam Wai Fong did not teach the whole Algebra textbook, so Leung Yuk Jan had difficulty catching up the progress at Heung Kong Middle School when she studied Mathematics at senior secondary level. Geography was taught by vice principal Ms. Yip who taught in systematic ways. The curriculum covered the geographic features of countries such as China, Britain and France. Leung Yuk Jan was attentive in class, so she did not do much revision at home. The school did not emphasize English Language. The English lessons included story books, dictionary use, vocabulary and making sentences. The panel head of English Language was a graduate from the University of Hong Kong. She was the younger sister of Teacher Tam Wai Fong. She taught Form 2 and Form 3 students. Chinese History and Western History were also taught. For Western History, Leung Yuk Jan still remembered the October Revolution and Louis XVI. The Visual Art teacher was another younger sister of Tam Wai Fong and she taught water-colour painting. The school had Physical Education classes. As for extra-curricular activities, the schools had teams of girl guides, basketball and volley ball. Mr. Wong supervised the girl guide team. He had a younger sister who was a member of the school choir of Heung Kong Middle School. Only the senior students could join the girl guides team at school. They had to wear the uniform, learn marching, knot tie and building lookout terrace. Leung Yuk Jan had marched in a large playground near the Ruttonjee Hospital. She had little memory about homework from school and she faintly remembered that when the Mathematics teacher wrote the calculation problems on the blackboard, she was able to work out the answers in her mind. When she studied in Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School, the subjects she liked best were Chinese Language and Mathematics and what she disliked most were handwork and drawing. She felt awe for teachers.

The graduates of Lai Chack formed an alumni association called “Fung She”. That’s why she had the contact information of her old classmates. Leung Yuk Jan had participated in a choir at Heung Kong Middle School which sang songs to motivate people’s feelings of national identity. She visited her former classmates and asked them to buy tickets of the singing performance. Many of the Lai Chack graduates came from well-off families. At school, she had no idea about her classmates’ family backgrounds. She knew one classmate with a surname of Luk who came from a rich family operating a laundry business. When Leung Yuk Jan studied at Lai Chack, Kennedy Road was an underdeveloped area. The girls only played together in the parks and visited a classmate Luk’s home. Luk’s elder sister was a nurse at the Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital. Later on, classmate Luk also became a nurse. Leung Yuk Jan had once left home after a quarrel with the concubine. She stayed at her best friend’s home on Hollywood Road. A Tang family occupied the entire red-bricked mansion. It was the only one of its kind on the road but it was torn down already. These were the examples of classmates’ background Leung Yuk Jan recalled.

Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School emphasized academic performance of students. Leung Yuk Jan had been one of the top three in the exam results. She still remembered the school motto ‘Strive for progress’, the school badge and the anthem which had the first sentence of the Three Principles of the People as the lyrics. The anthem of Heung Kong Middle School was March of the Volunteers. Lai Chack’s school uniform was white double-breasted blouse and white pleated skirt. Except Chinese Language teacher Ms. Yu, all other teachers wore blue blouse and white skirt. All teachers of To Chi Girls’ School were female except the principal’s father. Heung Kong Middle School had teachers of both genders. After the war, Leung Yuk Jan kept contact with her classmates in Lai Chack. One of them worked as a clerk in alma mater. Another who went to study senior secondary classes in True Light Middle School of Hong Kong and became a teacher after the WWII.

Leung Yuk Jan had wished to study at the university but she understood she had little chance doing this. When she was in junior high, she complied to her mother’s decision of an arranged marriage. When she was in senior secondary school, she changed to study business course hoping that with the training she could find a job, lived an independent life and not to get married. 

Heung Kong Middle School was founded by Chen Jiong Ming who came from Mainland China. Like Heung To Middle School, it was a leftist school. Heung Kong Middle School was operated in an independent building in Sham Shui Po. It offered subsidized and free school places. In junior secondary level, Leung Yuk Jan’s elder sister was in the same class with the warlord Yu Han Mou’s younger sister. Ms. Yu had convinced Leung’s sister to study in Heung Kong Middle School, and Sister in turn asked Leung Yuk Jan to join her there to study senior secondary courses.

Leung Yuk Jan mentioned again how she and her sister had their tuition fee waived. Leung Yuk Jan had her tuition fees fully waived for the first year. In the second year, she only was half subsidized, she believed it was because her academic result was not as good as it was in the first year. In addition, she found the school had more emphasis on sports than academic subjects. She therefore decided to go to a school run by the Wan Chai Methodist Centre and studied there for one year. When she was in Senior Secondary 3 in 1941, she chose the one-year business course thinking that she would not be able to enjoy university education. With the training, she could find a job easily and become economically self-reliant. At the time, her fiancé’s family insisted on them getting married soon. If she could not be self-reliant she would have no alternatives but married him. She started the course in September, but quitted several months later when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong.

In Heung Kong Middle School, she joined the school choir finding fun in it. Since it was not a body at school, they practised in the warehouse owned by a rich student’s family. When the Marco Polo Bridge Incident broke out, they sang songs such as March of the Volunteers and Ode To the Yellow River. She also played a role in a drama. Everyone in the school choir had the patriotic sentiment to save China from the Japanese invasion. On the day when the invasion broke out, Leung Yuk Jan chose to have cheaper vegetarian food and donated the pocket money saved from the meal. The choir raised funds to support the battles against the Japanese. She also took part in other fundraising activities such as drama, singing and book publication about the communist party. Besides performing, she also sold the books personally among her friends. She made home visit to the graduates of Lai Chack based on the addresses printed on the alumni booklet. She asked them to buy the books and performance tickets. In the end, she collected the largest amount of fund for donation. She was rewarded a pen for it. From the visits, she knew that her old classmates in Lai Chack were rich. One of her classmates lived in a church-like western-style mansion in Causeway Bay. She cried when she thought that many of her primary school classmates could not further their studies.

When Mother passed away, Leung Yuk Jan changed her mind; she did not want to marry as Mother arranged. She believed that it was most important to become self-reliant through having more education. So, she took a business course run by Guangzhou University which moved to Hong Kong from Guangzhou. 

When the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, Leung Yuk Jan and her family were very frightened. Grandfather, who worked adjacent to the Japanese-operated pier, heard that the war would soon break out. He converted his money into mainland’s currency. He also prepared the double-breasted blouse which only the married or older women would wear. The young Leung Yuk Jan were always in trendy clothes and seldom wore the double-breasted blouse, a common clothing among the women before the war. Most of the time she wore school uniform, skirts and cheongsam. At the time, the people mostly wore the long gown or the rust-colored silk (less common after the war) in summer and the wadded jacket and long wadded gown in winter.

On the day the Japanese invaded the Hong Kong Island, Leung Yuk Jan heard the civil defense siren wailed on her way to school. She also heard that the sea transport was suspended and Kai Tak Airport was bombed, so she knew the war had started. Before the attack, the deafening siren only wailed in the night. When it wailed, people had to cover their lamps with a black cloth to avoid being found. The students could not go to school. On that day, her elder sister was on her way to school in Kowloon. As she could not return from Kowloon back to Hong Kong Island, she went to the mainland with her classmates. During the wartime, the Japanese kept bombing the houses on the peak where the foreigners lived.

Leung Yuk Jan’s fiancé’s family was a rich landlord in their native place. They owned farmlands and collected crops as rentals from tenant farmers. They had asked Leung Yuk Jan to flee to China with them but she refused, although she knew that they were rich enough to support her family of 10 people. When Hong Kong was attacked, Father was working abroad and couldn’t return to protect the family. However the concubine fled with Yuk Jan’s fiancé’s family for their native place, while the maid of Zhongshan origin who had worked for the Leung’s family took Leung Yuk Jan to old Gilman Street where they took shelter in Fook Lee Clothing Company. The company had a retail shop and workshop. The proprietor and workers were all Zhongshan natives.

Leung Yuk Jan used to do her homework on the balcony when she studied the business course at the Guangzhou University on Caine Road. The Fook Lee Clothing Company was visible from there so she recognized the tailor who had just completed his apprenticeship. She knew that a tailor apprentice had to overcome much hardship. The tailor came from an average family and learned tailoring as a life-long skill. In those days, making western suits for wealthy people was considered a good job. To go to the morning class of the business course study, Leung Yuk Jan had to walk through the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens where she ran into the tailor. She had ‘dates’ with the tailor – they talked at the gardens and had coffee in On Lok Yuen cafe on Queen’s Road Central. They went to the movie acted by Zhou Xuan (she remembered one sentence of lyrics was ‘a flower on the lapel’) and they went to Diamond Hill for hiking. They prepared canned food, bread and soft drinks for lunch. [Editor’s note: ‘a flower on the lapel’ comes from an interlude of the movie The Wandering Songstress produced in 1941.]

When the Pacific War broke out, the proprietor of Fook Lee Clothing Company stored up rice and shared it with his workers and their families. The proprietor’s wife did not mind giving free meals to Leung Yuk Jan, her younger brother and their maid, because she believed that in a few days people in Hong Kong people could not control their fate under the hands of the Japanese. Leung Yuk Jan met the tailor at the shop but they didn’t talk to each other.

During the Japanese Occupation, Leung Yuk Jan’s fiancé’s family once again tried to talk her into joining them in China but she did not want to go because they had not married yet. She was hesitated because her family was in Hong Kong and her future husband was so young that he still depended on his family. But Leung Yuk Jan eventually decided to bring her younger brother and a cousin to join fiancé’s family at his native place just for 3 months. At the time, she thought the Occupation would not be long and she could move between Hong Kong and the mainland freely. The young couple had the wedding in Leung’s fiancé’s native place. Her cousin also got married in the Mainland in 1944. Later, his younger brother returned to Hong Kong by himself.

Leung Yuk Jan’s husband and his cousin were in the same class with Leung Yuk Jan in To Chi Girls’ School. They lived in No. 107 Des Voeux Road. Her husband was one to two years younger than her. He had studied in an old-style private school. In school days, his cousin always asked Leung Yuk Jan to help her doing revision at her home. Her aunt and uncle (fiancé’s parents) met Leung Yuk Jan there and wanted her to marry their son. Leung Yuk Jan’s father-in-law had several wives. Her husband’s mother was his fourth wife and she used to be a servant girl. Her husband’s family was rich. They ran businesses and owned land properties in Causeway Bay, Mong Kok, Reclamation Street and Electric Road. When their business went bankrupted, all the properties were sold. Leung Yuk Jan told about the properties her father-in-law had owned and how her husband’s family took shelter at the mid-levels during the Japanese invasion.

When Leung Yuk Jan was in Senior Secondary 3, she quit school and joined a business course run by the Guangzhou University, which moved from Guangzhou to Hong Kong because of the war. She learnt English bookkeeping and Chinese income/expenditure account books (similar to the accounting of old-style shops) but not typing and shorthand. The course was suspended three months later when Hong Kong was occupied. Leung Yuk Jan had worked hard and did the accounting homework in the balcony with a desk light at night when it was more quiet. She did not remember much about her classmates in the business course because she had studied there for a brief period of time. But she remembered that one of them was a married woman, one came from a rich family and one was a doctor’s wife who lived in a house with a garden and maids. She remembered the least about the business class and more about the Heung Kong Middle School. She has the most heartfelt memory of the classmates in Lai Chack Girls’ Secondary School. 

The next day after the Japanese bombing Hong Kong, Leung Yuk Jan almost ran into the Japanese soldiers when she fetched water from the main hose on the old Gilman Street. After Kowloon Peninsula was occupied, Leung Yuk Jan left Hong Kong for her fiancé’s native place where they got married. Leung Yuk Jan did not stay with her elder sister during wartime. Initially Elder Sister lived in a classmate’s home and went home briefly before fleeing into the mainland again with her classmates. Leung Yuk Jan never starved in the mainland but Elder Sister, planning to study in the mainland, had a hard life. It was because the concubine did not send supplies to her as what the other Hong Kong people did to their relatives in the mainland. Elder Sister followed the army to the rear base where she studied and joined combating campaigns at the same time. Elder Sister first went to Shaoguan and then to Yunnan and Szechuan. It was a hard life because food was in short supply.

During the Japanese Occupation, the Leung family’s tugboat was detained by the Japanese and Father was made to work for them on the boat. Elder Sister joined the communist party in the wartime and married a party member. She had lung problems but did not receive proper treatment. After the war, she returned to Hong Kong and lived in Wan Chai. Her husband joined her later. Elder Sister was diagnosed with acute pneumonia. When the communist party came to power in 1949, before going to Beijing, Elder Sister’s husband sent her to Ruttonjee Hospital (Elder Sister was one of the first batch of admitted patients) which was specialized of treating lung disease. Leung Yuk Jan took the responsibility of taking care of Elder Sister. Later Elder Sister’s mother-in-law wanted to have Elder Sister return to their home in Shanghai. Leung Yuk Jan took Elder Sister to Guangzhou so that  mother-in-law could take Elder Sister to Shanghai. Elder Sister’s mother-in-law arranged for the couple to adopt a boy and a girl.

Leung Yuk Jan’s husband and parents-in-law came to Hong Kong after Hong Kong was liberated from the Japanese Occupation. Husband’s family owned farmlands and received crops as rental from tenant farmers in Pao-an, Guangdong, their native place. For some time, Leung Yuk Jan was arranged to collect crop rentals. She left Pao-an and reunited with Husband in Hong Kong around November/December in 1945. They lived in No. 107 Queen’s Road Central. Before the World War II, Leung Yuk Jan’s father-in-law operated the She Wai Kee Oyster Sauce, which was mainly for export to the US like what Lee Kam Kee and Hop Shing Lung did. In those days, Lee Kam Kee already had retail outlets in Hong Kong.

Leung Yuk Jan briefly introduced the oyster sauce business of Husband’s family. Before the war, Father-in-law’s apartment of 1000-sq-ft was both for residence and the workshop. The areas in the front and behind the kitchen plus the balcony were used for oyster sauce production and storage. The living room served as the office and the middle portion of the house was retained for accommodation. The oysters were processed in two ways. 1. Sun-dried oysters - no cooking was needed and they were not processed into sauce. The flat oysters with nice shape were chosen for this purpose. The oysters were skewered on a bamboo stick and dried under the sun. They were sold at a higher price. 2. Cooked oysters - they were boiled, sun dried and dried over sulphur. The soup that left from the cooked oyster was further boiled into thick sauce. The more concentrated it was the higher price it could be sold for. If the oyster sauce was well cooked, it stayed fresh with preservatives. The oyster soup was bought from places abundant with oysters such as Dou-men of Guangdong, Jiu-jiang, Macao and Sha-jing. Sha-jing was the most famous of abundance in oysters. The oyster soup was processed into oyster sauce by adding flour, sugar, salt, seasoning powder, Ajinomoto, water, and preservatives.

After the war, Leung Yuk Jan helped Husband’s family with the oyster sauce production. They were mainly sold to the Chinese teahouses because they had no more connections for export to the US. The quantities of ingredients for oyster sauce production depended on the order received. They only produced when there were orders. The oyster sauce was cooked in a big wok with firewood as the fuel, constant stirring was needed. Part of the processed sauce was sent to the other workshops for canning. The canned products were then returned to their workshops for labels to be fixed on the bottles. Some sauce was filled manually into tailor-made glass bottles and sealed mechanically. All mothers-in-law (Father-in-law’s concubines and Husband’s mother) and the servant girls engaged in the production. Father-in-law supervised the boiling process. Leung Yuk Jan and Husband were the eldest of the second generation. Before the war, Father-in-law’s younger brother lived in Guangzhou and Father-in-law lived in Hong Kong. When Guangzhou was attacked, Father-in-law’s younger brother fled to Hong Kong. When Hong Kong was invaded, the brothers went back to the mainland together and divided the family assets and farmlands between them.

After the World War II, Husband’s natural mother came to Hong Kong with several domestic maids while the other two mothers-in-law stayed in the mainland. Father-in-law speculated on the Japanese Military Yen with gold ornaments and cash. After the war, the Japanese Military Yen lost their value. Because Father-in-law needed cash to meet the operational costs of She Wei Kee, he borrowed HK$5,000 from a clothing company using the property on Electric Road as the security of the loan. At that time, Husband managed a herbal shop in Shau Kei Wan. Leung Yuk Jan was responsible for getting orders directly from Dai Yat Lau in Central, the street-side cooked food stalls and restaurants in Sham Shui Po, Yau Ma Tei, Shanghai Street and Temple Street. They made reasonable profits.

Even in those days, Husband would take her to the high-class Dai Tong Restaurant in Central. Husband asked her to sell the oyster sauce in Kowloon so that she would not run into his acquaintances in Central and Wan Chai. To him, it was shameful to let his wife work for a living. In 1946, Father-in-law died before the business resumed its health. After he died, Husband took over the oyster sauce business and Mother-in-law managed the account books. She would not let family members work outside home. The business was an average one in the beginning but the sales volume declined as it was managed by non-family members. The family changed its strategy by seeking orders from trading agents and producing for export. Leung Yuk Jan recalled the process of redeeming the mortgaged property from the bank.

Leung Yuk Jan recalled that they had little money to sustain She Wei Kee’s operation because the family had spent a lot to cure Husband’s younger brother who was very sick. She briefly described the educational backgrounds of Husband and his younger brother.  

She Wei Kee was still in operation when the US imposed an embargo on Mainland China in 1950. The business continued but the family sustained a living by selling family assets and they were not able to complete some orders. They changed the mode of operation and bought oysters from local sources such as Lau Fau Shan and Sham Tseng. Lau Fau Shan had two yields of oysters annually. The yield towards the year end was better in quality because of the wind from the norther, on the other hand, the yield in the rainy spring was poorer in quality. The oyster farmers in Lau Fau Shan could freely sell their oysters to other oyster farmers but not to non-oyster farmers. To get early payment, some sold their yields to their peer farmers in the form of futures (in advance of harvest) or illegally to non-farmers. Leung Yuk Jan bought the oyster futures from the oyster farmers. She first paid a deposit and the balance was settled when the oysters were delivered.

There was fierce competition for oyster futures. Husband’s family was not successful to get the futures in each attempt. Besides, some oyster farmers could not deliver the oysters prescribed in the agreement and so Leung and Husband lost the money. At the time, their apartment at No. 107 Queen’s Road Central had to be demolished. With the removal compensation, they moved to Caine Road and ran the workshop at this place. Later on, they moved to Kwun Tong as they could not afford the rent for the apartment on Caine Road.

Oyster farmers owned the oyster fields. Sometimes, they had to hire casual workers to harvest oysters. The large oysters were sold the whole piece. The small oysters were kept by the workers. Leung Yuk Jan built a hut near Sham Tseng and bought the small oysters from the workers. They were all immediate transactions. During the period of embargo, the Agricultural and Fisheries Department had a role to monitor the origin of oysters. In fact they were not able to prove the actual origin. What they could do was to collect the name of the farmers supplied by the buyers and issue the certificate of origin accordingly. With a growing market demand for oysters, the prices were on the rise. Leung Yuk Jan shifted to buy and sell oyster futures. She succeeded in the first few attempts. When she failed later on, she bought oysters smuggled from the mainland. Due to a shortage of capital, their oyster business was not sustainable. In face of low turnover and the government’s ban on home workshop for oyster sauce production, they eventually put an end of the business in 1965.

Several months after the She Wei Kee’s workshop on Caine Road was closed in 1965, the family moved to Kwun Tong where they rented a flat. ”Through some friend’s network, Leung Yuk Jan taught the Japanese how to produce oyster sauce at the native place of Bungo Takada in Kyushu, Japan. She stayed in Japan with a tourist visa on a one-year contract for a monthly wage of $2,000. At the time, Husband still produced oyster sauce at home without a proper licence. Bungo Takada withdrew from the army after Japan was defeated in the Pacific War. He opened a factory in his native place and ran the side business of shrimps with the assistance of an old couple from Taiwan. In Japan, people put the oyster sauce in old kerosene containers. Leung Yuk Jan traveled to Japan also to seek lawful abortion. It was her ninth pregnancy. When the abortion failed, she returned to Hong Kong in breach of the contract.  

Leung Yuk Jan has 9 children – three sons and six daughters. Her eldest child was born in 1946 and the youngest one was born in February 1966. She returned to Hong Kong from Japan in January 1966. Mother-in-law took care of all her children. After the family moved to Kwun Tong, her eldest daughter worked in the factory while Husband, mother-in-law and other children continued to produce oyster sauce and sold them to Chinese restaurants. The Dai Yat Lau was still their major customer.

Leung Yuk Jan’s husband died in 1970. She re-married in 1972. Her second husband was a neighbour who practiced traditional Chinese medicine. She married him in order to provide for the four younger children’s education and to help out in the marriage of her stepson. Leung Yuk Jan continued to work after marriage. She lived near to her former mother-in-law so that Mother-in-law could take care of her children when she was at work. She had quarrels with Mother-in-law because she objected her re-marriage. To support the family, Mother-in-law continued to produce oyster sauce and mainly sold them to wanton noodle shops. The production was eventually stopped when Mother-in-law was prosecuted. Since then, the family was supported by Leung Yuk Jan’s daughters. Mother-in-law died in 1999 and was buried in Junk Bay.

Leung Yuk Jan had worked as a garment quality control worker in Union Shirt and Crocodile Garment. Later on, she went to a factory in Kwun Tong which produced parts and components for hair dryers. It was the longest job she had ever worked for. She had also worked the night shift in a large cotton mill in Castle Peak Road, Cheung Sha Wan.  

Leung Yuk Jan described herself an optimistic character, things came her way from birth to adolescence. She admitted that life had some pain but a life with ups and downs was exciting. Some of her acquaintances considered her life was not rough because she was not a poor person. But she felt she had a hard life after the Second World War until 1970. In her late husband’s family, she had worked hard in the oyster sauce business. After that she worked at tough jobs in factories such as operating the die-cutting machine. Her disfigured hands were a good proof to it. The second marriage allowed her to live a more stable life. She said she was optimistic so she saw joy in pain. She believed that pain allowed her to lead a rich life with more knowledge.