Sham Hing Hei

Sham Hing Hei was born in 1949 in the Fujian town of Zhaoan, which is close to Shantou in Guangdong. He lived with his parents and two elder sisters while his father ran a shop selling imported goods in the town. Before 1949, Sham Hing Hei’s father often went to Shantou to procure goods for his shop. After the change of regime in 1949, the grocery store’s business began to fail. Sham High Hei’s father and eldest sister subsequently moved to Hong Kong in search of a better life. Sadly, Sham Hing Hei’s father lost touch with the family a few days after arriving Hong Kong. As a happier note, his eldest sister managed to settle down in the Territory with  the help of some friends. She later married to a man from Haifeng and made home in Kowloon City. In 1956, Sham Hing Hei and his mother and another sister joined the eldest sister in Hong Kong. With the sister’s help, the three of them lived in a rooftop hut on Nga Tsin Wai Road, just a few streets away from the sister’s. Sham Hing Hei recalled that he and his family arrived in the Territory at around the same time as the 1956 riots broke out on the Double Ten (October 10). To ensure her personal safety, Sham Hing Hei’s eldest sister had to hold out a Nationalist flag whenever she walked on the streets. In those days, Kowloon City was the first place for many newly arrived immigrants to settle down and so it had a high concentration of Chaozhou and Shantou natives. 

Sham Hing Hei studied Primary 1 in Lock Tao Primary School but he left the school a few months later because his family couldn’t afford the tuition fee. The Sham family lived in a rooftop hut. There was a neighbour who was a Chaozhou native and also a member of the Swatow Christian Church on Grampian Road. Encouraged by this neighbour, Sham Hing Hei’s mother began going to the church and was converted to Christian. Sham Hing Hei subsequently studied in Swatow Christian Church Primary School. Located on the rooftop of Block 10 in Lo Fu Ngam Resettlement Area, the school premise was in a rectangular-shaped structure of 7 levels with wire fencing around its roof. A concrete cover was built over the head of the stairway for use as both classrooms and office. There was also an open space for the pupils to play in. As there were only six classrooms, the school only ran classes from Primary 1 to Primary 6, with each class having around 20-30 pupils. There were a morning school and an afternoon school with 6 levels each. Sham Hing Hei was admitted to Primary 1 of the afternoon school.  The afternoon classes ran from 2 pm to 5 pm, with 5-6 lessons a day and 30-35-minute each. The tuition fee was around HK$3 per month. He left the school after completing Primary 3.

The headmaster of Swatow Christian Church Primary School was the church deacon and sometimes came to teach classes.  Some of the teachers were immigrants from the mainland. Pupils prayed and sang hymns on week days and participated in church activities on Sundays and at Christmas. They came from areas around Kowloon City, Lo Fu Ngam and Tung Tau Estate, living in tenement buildings, huts, cottages and Ho Ka Yuen (i.e. “Ho Family Garden”) stone houses. Living in a rooftop hut, Sham Hing Hei came from a relatively worse off background than most other pupils. One day, he accidentally kicked and broke a glass vacuum flask a classmate from a wealthier family brought to school. The classmate’s brother forced poor Sham Hing Hei to compensate for the loss of the flask. Happily, the matter was soon settled by the headmaster who spared the Sham family a financial loss they probably could not have afforded. The subjects taught in the school were Chinese, English, Mathematics, Social Studies and Civics. (Sham Hing Hei later learned Mandarin at Bethel Primary School.) Sham Hing Hei’s school results were average. He seldom did revision at home and usually dashed off his homework outside the family’s front door. . After school sometimes he hung around on the streets playing picture card games or marbles. Sometimes he went to work in the factories doing piece-rate jobs to help the family make ends meet.

In those years, Sham Hing Hei’s mother had worked in the factory. She had worked at the Ying Ah Metal and East Sun Textile factories as a daily waged worker. Introduced by classmates and neighbours, Sham Hing Hei also did casual work in the factories after school when he was still a primary student. As he went to the afternoon school, he went to work in the morning and after school. When he studied Primary 1 to Primary 2, Sham Hing Hei cut threads in a garment factory in Kowloon City earning HK$1-2 a day. Later, he had worked in a wooden squatter factory in Tung Tau Estate where he fixed filaments onto torch bulbs. As the work there easily caused painful hand burns, Sham Hing Hei could stand it only for a few days. During Primary 4, he painted toys at piece rate in a doll factory in Tung Tau Estate earning a few dollars for every 12 dozens of finished pieces. As he could make good income from this job, Sham Hing Hei worked until late night. Apart from going to school, he spent the whole day working for money. His other jobs during this period included assembling plastic flowers and stitching crosses.

One day in the second semester of Primary 3, Sham Hing Hei’s rain boots were washed away while he walked to school under a heavy downpour. The footwear was later discovered at a stone factory in Ho Kar Yuen and his family had to pay HK$5 to claim them back! After the incident, Sham Hing Hei’s mother began worrying about her son’s safety on this long journey to the school in Lo Fu Ngam. Luckily, at the end of the  second semester, Bethel Bible Seminary opened a primary school on Grampian Road. Sham Hing Hei went to study Primary 4 in the afternoon school of Bethel. The school charged HK$4 per month in the first year. The tuition fee was increased to HK$8 later. The school hours were from 4 pm to 7 or 8 pm. It offered both regular primary and secondary schools in the day school. In those days, a pair of trousers cost HK$8 to HK$10. Sham Hing Hei later recalled that his family was so poor that they could not afford to buy the white shirt and white trousers as required for attending the Bethel Primary School’s graduation ceremony. In the end, he borrowed a pair of white trousers so that he could attend the ceremony.

At 10 years old, Sham Hing Hei studied Primary 4 in the afternoon school of Bethel Bible Seminary. He had lessons there from 4 pm to 7 or 8 pm. It was a partially free school. In the first term, he paid $4 per month. At Primary 6, the tuition fee was raised to $8. Sham Hing Hei thought that the facilities, teachers’ qualification and curriculum at Bethel were all better than those at Swatow Christian Church Primary School. The new school was located on Grampian Road, just one street away from Sham’s home on Nga Tsin Wai Road. The Bethel’s campus was also visibly larger with a seminary covering about a quarter of the area while the primary and secondary school premises occupied the remaining three quarters of the area. The school was composed of several teaching buildings. Near to Inverness Road was an indoor games hall where school gatherings and competitions were held.  Bethel was a private school and its primary and secondary schools were whole day schools from 8 am to 3 pm. Day school students at Bethel came from better-off families. Before afternoon school started, the students had to wait outside the school until the day school students left the school. During this waiting time, many students went to play at the nearby “reservoir hill” (now the Kowloon Tsai Park) behind the school. At that time, excavation work was being carried out at the “reservoir hill” for the expansion of Kai Tak Airport. As a result, Nga Tsin Wai Road was closed for the passage of dump trucks. One day, pieces of wood were placed on the hill and Sham Hing Hei accidentally fell and injured his chin while running and jumping over them for fun. Despite the fact that one of his front teeth had fallen out, he bravely shrugged off his injury and went to school without seeking medical treatment.

Bethel taught a far more comprehensive range of subjects that it did in the rooftop school Sham Hing Hei had attended. In addition to Chinese, English and Mathematics, there were also Letter Writing, Mandarin, Civics, Bible studies and Physical Education. Everyday there were six lessons. Several teachers came from the mainland but most classes were conducted in Cantonese. Among them, the teacher who taught Mandarin and Letter Writing was dubbed an “old spinster” who liked to wear cheongsam and her hair in a bun. The teacher was very strict to the students and her classes were extremely difficult. The students always played tricks on her and made grimaces behind her back! The other teachers were locals from the day schools. The students in the afternoon school also had to wear school uniforms with a badge, with boys in white shirts and blue trousers and girls in blue dresses. The school held weekly assemblies in which the headmaster and   teachers lectured the students and led them singing hymns and saying prayers. Sham Hing Hei grew up in an intensely religious environment. His mother became a member of the Swatow Christian Church under a neighbour’s influence. Sham Hing Hei was baptised at 12 or 13 years old and went to the Sunday school at Swatow Christian Church.

Bethel Primary had slightly more female students than male students. That said, as Sham Hing Hei went to the factory after school, he had little time to socialize with the classmates. There were class clubs organised by class teachers for students of Primary 4 and above. Each student paid less than a dollar every month so that they could organize a picnic every year. While studying at Bethel, Sham Hing Hei had picnics in the “Little Hawaii” (the streams and low hills in Tseng Lan Shue), the Lion Rock and Kiu Tsui. In Primary 6, the whole school went to Kiu Tsui for picnic. Publishing the class album was another duty of the class club of Primary 6. Sham Hing Hei thought that the relationship between pupils and teachers at Bethel was very happy and harmonious. Sadly, he and his classmates rarely met each other after graduation as everyone was too busy working for a means of living. Sham Hing Hei once lost his primary school graduation certificate in a typhoon and later got a replacement from the school. As the Sham family could not afford Sham Hing Hei to continue studies in secondary school, he joined the local job market after graduating from Primary 6 in 1964.

Introduced by a neighbour who worked in Tsim Sha Tsui, Sham Hing Hei became a general labourer in a squatter-style garment factory on Peking Road. There he was responsible for sewing, ironing and cutting threads for a monthly salary of HK$30. On weekdays, Sham Hing Hei worked from 8 am till 8 pm, with meals provided by the factory owner. Six months later, his uncle arrived in Hong Kong and referred Sham Hing Hei to Wah Tung Travel Service Limited on Connaught Road West, Sheung Wan. Sham Hing Hei was as an office assistant and was assigned a wide range of duties including serving as a tour guide, typing, delivering tickets and even matters of shipping. At night, he slept in the office.

As Sham Hing Hei had to use English at work, he continued his studies at Wellington English Evening School. There, he studied Form 1 at a fee of 8-10 dollars per month. When the school was closed for good a year later, Sham Hing Hei went to study in St. Mary's Church English Evening School in Causeway Bay. The tuition fee for Form 2 there was around 8-10 dollars. The travel agency moved elsewhere a few months later. As Sham Hing Hei had to go back home in Kowloon City, he went to St. Benedict’s English Evening School on Prince Edward Road to continue his studies in Form 2. While there, he used the English names “William” and then “Walter”. When St. Benedict's was closed a few months later, Sham Hing Hei continued his studies in Form 2 in St. Margaret’s English Evening School on Grampian Road.

After a few months of study in St. Margaret’s, Sham Hing Hei enrolled in Unity English Evening College across the street. As he regularly looked into the newspaper’s “employment” column , Sham Hing Hei noticed that a secondary school certificate was required for government posts . Therefore he was determined to enroll in a regular evening secondary school so that he could sit for the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examinations(HKCEE). Unity English Evening College was a regular evening secondary  school offering subjects such as Chinese, English and Mathematics so that students were able to sit for the HKCEE. After completing Form 2 in Unity, Sham Hing Hei changed to the Matteo Ricci Evening School on Hillwood Road in Tsim Sha Tsui. He did so because the travel agency required him to work overtime frequently resulting that he would have to miss classes in Kowloon City. As he worried that he could not catch up with the studies, he repeated Form 2 in Matteo Ricci’s . After completing Form 2 six months later, he went to study in Delia Memorial Evening School on Ashley Road, where he felt greatly inspired by a enthusisastic, Filipino teacher. After this teacher left the school at the end of the school term, Sham Hing Hei went to Wah Yan Evening School to complete his studies in Form Four. This school was established by the past students of Wah Yan College who had studied at the University of Hong Kong. Because of this, the official name of the school was Catholic University Alumni Association Evening Secondary School. This was a regular school, charging $200 per month. Students had to wear a school tie and follow the strict rules. It shared the same campus with the day school. On the first day, the school had an opening mass. Sham Hing Hei studied seven subjects: Chinese, English, Mathematics, Chinese History, Chemistry, Physics and Accounting.

In early 1969, Sham Hing Hei had studied Form 4 for half a year. Sadly his grandmother at the native home place was badly ill. Under his mother’s request, Sham Hing Hei got married, an attempt to bring good luck to his sick grandmother. After marriage, he dropped out of school and focused on earning a living. At that time, Sham Hing Hei was no longer worked in the travel agency. He had tried decoration, mason and security. In December 1969, introduced by a former classmate, he joined the civil service and became a worker in the slaughterhouse under the Urban Council. Life was tough at the slaughterhouse, his wife was pregnant and his mother  was unemployed and sick . Everyday he went to work with only fifty cents in his pocket. Thinking that a Form Five certificate would be useful to find better jobs, Sham Hing Hei was determined to go back to Wah Yan College Evening School to finish the second half of Form 4 . He finally completed Form 5 and sat for the HKCEE in 1971. He got 5 passes and at the age of 22 he obtained the secondary school certificate. Most of his classmates at the time were of the same age.

With the secondary school certificate, Sham Hing Hei was promoted to a Level 2 Foreman in the Urban Council. Leaving the job of a slaughterhouse worker, he worked at the job of higher rank earning a monthly salary of around HK$600. In 1972, Sham Hing Hei studied Form 6 at Hong Kong Buddhist College in Sham Shui Po, hoping to gain matriculation and post-secondary qualifications which would allow him to find better opportunity in the job market.  He completed Form 6 in one year and studied the second year of matriculation himself preparing to sit for the General Certificate of Education (GCE). He relied on examination guides such as “tips” and “intensive notes” to prepare for the examination. Having passed five subjects at GCE level, Sham Hing Hei intended to continue his studies in the Chinese University of Hong Kong but he failed  the entrance examination. In the same year, he signed up for the TOEFL and LCC bookkeeping certificate examinations. With the GCE certificate and introduced by a foreman friend, he was successfully enrolled in the Shue Yan College’s evening school. He was admitted in the Law and Business Department with student number 737116.

Shue Yan charged HK$160 per month. Sham Hing Hei had to borrow money from this foreman friend to pay the first tuition fee. It was a four-year programme at Shue Yan, where Sham Hing Hei studied both law and business. He had great interest in law but business would be useful for employment prospects. The Shue Yan campus was located on Sing Woo Road in Happy Valley and classes ran from 6 pm to 10 pm daily with three or four lessons per day. During the recesses between classes, scholars would deliver talks to the students. Back then, the many famous legal and business professionals who taught at Shue Yan included Denis Chang Khen Lee, Sima Changfeng, Huang Jinxiong and Rafael Hui Si Yan. The relationship between the teachers and the students was very close. During the recesses, some students liked to play table tennis on the rooftop but Dr. Chung Chi Yung and Dr. Henry H. L. Hu came in person to invite the students to go to the the talks. While the government recognised Shue Yan as a post-secondary institution in 1977, the college wished to adhere to its four-year system and refused to change to the three-year mode of study advocated by the government. As a result, the college was not funded by public money. Shum Hing Hei considers that this posed Shue Yan to a more difficult situation when it applied to change to a university title than what it was like for Lingnan and Baptist.

Sham Hing Hei completed his post-secondary studies at Shue Yan in 1977. At that time, he had already been promoted to Acting Foreman 1 and Acting Overseer in the Urban Council. In this new post, his monthly salary had grown to about HK$1,000. With the higher education qualification, he became more confident to achieve better careers. Sham Hing Hei had applied for different jobs in both the government and private sectors. On the eve of the opening of the MTR in 1977, he applied for the post of Station Manager. The recruitment process was fine but he didn’t get the job due to problems in medical insurance. In early 1978, he changed to be Housing Assistant in charge of one or two housing estates on a monthly salary of around HK$2,000. His duties included collecting rents, taking household surveys and dealing with residents’ matters . In August that year, Sham Hing Hei returned to Urban Council to work as an Amenity Officer overseeing recreational and plantation services.

Looking back at the many twists and turns he encountered in schooling, Sham Hing Hei believes that education had a far-reaching impact on one’s career. He concludes that one had to go step-by-step  and finish one’s target phase by phase, in order to obtain higher qualifications and better jobs. While studying for matriculation and tertiary education, Sham Hing Hei faced a very difficult life as he had to take care of not only his wife and young children, but also his aging mother. In 1974, the Sham family moved into Oi Man Estate while the HK$364 monthly rental was a heavy burden to him. To make ends meet, his wife took sewing jobs outsourced from local garment factories. They had to pawn gold ornaments to pay tuition fees. Although he faced severe obstacles during schooling, Sham Hing Hei was single-minded and eventually reached his goal. After graduating from Shue Yan College, he had studied for a MBA and LLM degrees at the University of Hong Kong.

Sham Hing Hei came to Hong Kong with his mother and elder sister in 1956, staying with his eldest sister who had settled down in Kowloon City. At that time, his brother-in-law worked for the property owner of No. 146 Nga Tsin Wai Road. With the brother-in-law’s referral, the property owner agreed to let the Sham family build a hut on the rooftop and live there rent-free. No. 146 was a three-storey tenement house with a rooftop jointly owned by No. 144 and No. 146. As this area was near the then Kai Tak Airport, one could see aircraft landings and takeoffs from the rooftop. On the rooftop, there were eight families living in the seven huts  and the cockloft at the top of the stairway. Altogether there were 40 inhabitants and half of them were children. Most of the households living there were relatives of the owner, natives of Haifeng and Lufeng.

The rooftop huts were built along the roof’s edge, leaving an open space in the middle where the kids played hopscotch, rope skipping and table tennis. The hut where the Sham family lived in was the smallest among all on the rooftop, built by the eldest brother-in-law within two days. The top was covered by bitumen papers, the walls were made of wooden boards and the 4 pillars were plastered with cement to prevent water from seeping in.  When Typhoon Wanda hit the Territory in 1962, the entire top-cover was ripped away and the Sham family’s house was badly destroyed, the oil lamp was damaged and the furnitures were socked with water. Sham Hing Hei was hurt by debris and the family had to take shelter from the rain in the stairway. Fortunately the neighbours gave them their helping hands. As typhoons or rains brought serious leaks that caused the rooftop huts to tilt, residents would tie oval basins filled with water to their hut’s walls as a form of counter-balance. After Typhoon Wanda, Sham Hing Hei’s eldest brother-in-law asked someone to rebuild the hut with a top cover made of zinc sheets and the space under it expanded. When Sham Hing Hei got married in 1969, he added a room in it with a wardrobe and double bed. Sadly for the Shams, since the Squatter Control Unit carried out regular inspection, it was impossible to expand their rooftop hut beyond this point. By the time when the Sham family moved from the rooftop in 1974, they had installed an electric fan, an electric rice cooker and a 12-inch black and white TV.

As the top cover was made of zinc sheets, the room temperature could reach an insufferable 40° C in the day during summer. Sham Hing Hei and his family would stay outside the hut or go to the street during the day to get cool. At night, they slept on canvas beds outside the hut.There was no standard toilet on the rooftop - just a small shack where residents could pee into a ditch. If they wanted to pass solids, the adults had to go to the public toilets in Hau Wong Temple and Lung Kong Road Post Office, both of which were about 10-minute walk away. Children used a spittoon to empty their bowels. As the wooden wallboards of their homes were easily flammable, most households cooked outside the hut. After Typhoon Wanda, the Sham family built a kerosene stove cooking station and ate in the open air on a makeshift table. After years of waiting, the Shams were finally allocated a public housing unit in Oi Man Estate in 1974. But the monthly rents of HK$346 was a burden to the family. After considering the size of his family and the need to improve  their living condition, Sham Hing Hei reluctantly decided to move into a new 260-square-feet unit. Having lived in the rooftop hut for so many years, the Sham family had deep affection with this home place. But the living condition was so bad and life in there was so harsh that they were determined to move out.

Sham Hing Hei and his mother had applied for government housing as early as in the 1960s. The assessment criteria was based on the applicant’s family income. The  waiting for housing allocation proved to be a long one and they were given a unit in Oi Man Estate five years after Sham Hing Hei’s marriage and 10 years on the waiting list. When British Princess visited Hong Kong in 1974 and was arranged to visit Oi Man Estate, there were still many empty units in the estate. The housing authority urgently arranged more applicants to move into the vacant units. To improve the living condition of the family, Sham Hing Hei decided to move into Oi Man Estate. As they had very few belongings, the Shams only needed a 1.5-ton truck to carry all their property and family members to their new home. In the new unit, they had only a bunk bed, a black and white TV, and a carton box in which they put all their belongings. As the rental at Oi Man was high, he found it hard to make ends meet and always hoped the end of a month would come early so that he could use the salary to stock up on milk powder and food. In those days, Sham Hing Hei was as an Urban Council foreman of the pests and rats section. Sometimes when the family had not enough rice for food, they ate the rice to be used to trap rats. Since the location of Oi Man Estate was fairly remote from downtown, Sham Hing Hei sent his daughter to go to a kindergarten in Kowloon City while he went to work in Wong Tai Sin. Sham Hing Hei intended to let his father-in-law who lived near KowloonCity take care of his daughter when she finished school at noon. However his daughter was not happy staying with her grandfather.  Sham Hing Hei had no choice but went  to pick her up and take her back home during lunch time everyday.

Back then, the Sham family lived in Tak Man House, Oi Man Estate, which had a twin-tower layout with two square blocks interlocked together. Each block had its own light wells. Along the corridor outside the apartment units were a low-level iron handrail, unhappy people sometimes committed suicide by jumping from higher levels to death. In the 32-storey Tak Man House, there were sixteen large and small units on each floor, each with a kitchen and toilet inside. After moving into Oi Man Estate, the Shams no longer suffered from the cruel hits of wind and rain. Most families who lived in the estates in those days were residents from older housing blocks. Some were already residents from other low-cost housing estates. They moved to Oi Man Estate for a better environment. Hong Kong's economy experienced rapid development between the 1970s and 1980s. Workers enjoyed rising incomes and their children grew up under better economic conditions.

Local industries prospered during those years. Many garment factories delivered cut fabrics into the estate and distributed leaflets to the residents asking them to do outsourced jobs. Residents used their sewing machines at home to do the jobs and the factory came to collect the processed fabrics and delivered new orders the next day. The most common job was to sew edges on blue jeans. Out of the sixteen households on the same floor, six families had worked for outsourced industrial jobs at home to supplement family income. By the end of 1970s and early 1980s, outsourced jobs from local factories reached the peak. In the 1990s, the Sham family moved out from Oi Man Estates. By then many local factories had also moved into the mainland and no more outsourced jobs were available. The residents in Oi Man Estate generally got along well among each other. The Sham family was friendly with their neighbours. They helped each other in  childcare and doing outsourced jobs. Sham Hing Hei recalls that he once went to the wet market shopping groceries and lost his toddler son on the way. The little boy was found by a housewife who lived on the 7th floor and kept him in good care. The little boy finally arrived home safe because of this kind woman. At that time, Sham Hing Hei went to work in the day and went to school in the evening. He had very little time to spend with his children. As a result, when the errant boy returned home, he barely recognised his father.

Over the 16 years he lived there, Sham Hing Hei had witnessed many changes in Oi Man Estate. In the early days, residents could enjoy the fireworks over the Victoria Harbour from their home. Afterwards, the luxury flats and the hospital in King's Park blocked the scene making such little pleasure no longer possible. When the Shams moved to the estate, the Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong was the only community service organization there. Later on there came an elderly centre and  mutual aid committees. The latter body sometimes organised the sacrificial ceremonies to pacify unhappy souls of the estate-dwellers who had committed suicide. As law and order inside and around the estate turned bad, this committee also organized residents to go on patrols. Sham Hing Hei spent many nights on duty to patrol the area from 10-12 pm. Parks, shopping malls and dai pai dong (cooked-food stalls) were the most popular gathering places of the residents. As Oi Man was near Yau Ma Tei, Mong Kok and Hung Hom, the Sham family sometimes went shopping there or simply stroll around. By 1990, the family’s economic conditions had improved a lot. At that time, the government was implementing the Housing Subsidy Policy (HSP). Also known as the “rich-household policy”, the Housing Authority required better-off tenants in public housing to pay double rent while granting loans to families who wished to purchase their homes. As Sham Hing Hei wanted to further improve the living standard of the family, he decided to move out of Oi Man Estate. He applied and was granted a loan of HK$110,000 from the government to buy a flat in Tai Po.

Sham Hing Hei was very happy with every home in which he and his family had lived in since he came to Hong Kong. He thought that whether or not one was happy with his living quarters depended on the match of  housing environment and family finance. When living in Oi Man Estate, the three generations of the Shams living under one roof was warm and lively. In Tai Po, the apartment was the first home owned by the family. It was spacious and comfortable. As Sham Hing Hei was working in Tai Po, he was familiar with the local community and had a strong sense of belonging. It was the happiest home he had ever had. Now that Sham Hing Hei’s children are all married and have moved away, he and his wife are living in a Home Ownership apartment in Ma On Shan. Sham Hing Hei had been in Hong Kong for more than 50 years. He grew up, studied, worked here. Although not born in Hong Kong, Sham Hing Hei regards the Territory as his home and himself as a Hongkonger.

Nowadays, he has only very faint memories of his Fujian hometown and has almost no contact with the people there. Firmly rooted in Hong Kong, he will almost certainly spend the rest of his days here. Over the years, Sham Hing Hei witnessed the Territory’s post-war development and both good and bad times such as water rationing measures, financial crises and even the SARS pandemic. During the boom years of the 1970s to 1980s, Sham Hing Hei saw his livelihood improving along with the prosperity of the society at large. Today, he feels satisfied with his life . He heartily encourages young people to continue to honour Hong Kong’s “never say die” spirit. Only by relentlessly overcoming challenges, can the Territory and its people build themselves a better future, says Sham Hing Hei.