Wong Wan Pui

Wong Wan Pui was born to a family whose ancestral native place is Sanshui, Guangdong. His grandfather came to Hong Kong to work at the age of 12 or 13 when poor harvest after a flood made it difficult to earn a living as farmers in Sanshui. In Hong Kong, his grandfather stayed with his married sister and her family. At first, he worked as a boy in an opium shop. Later on, he joined a shipping company and became a seaman. His duty was to shovel coal into fire with an iron spade. In the journey, he learned how to fix electrical equpipment from the electricians on the ship. When he had accumulated ample knowledge about the trading of electrical appliances, he planned to open his own electrical appliances shop.

In 1922, he opened the Sheung Kwong Electric Company on No. 367, Shanghai Street. At first, the shop was managed by his brothers while he continued to work as a seaman. Later on, he quitted the job and ran the shop full time. Sheung Kwong Electric Company sold goods such as control switches, fluorescent tubes, light bulbs and wires. Services such as lighting installation and repair were also provided, sometimes his grandfather would take his employees to work on field. In the early years, goods mainly came from Britain and the USA but most goods were from the USA. Of them, the Eagle was a famous brand of switches. His grandfather sourced through the hongs (trading firms). It took several months for the goods to ship from their places of origin to Hong Kong. In those days, no electrical appliances were manufactured in Hong Kong. Before the Second World War, light bulbs were essential daily necessities and fluorescent tubes were high-end products. In the 1950s, a starter of fluorescent tube cost 15 dollars. After the war, the local electrical appliance practitioners learned the UK and US technology and small manufacturers of fluorescent tube case, ceiling fans, transformers and motors began to emerge in Hong Kong. Local brands such as the Shell ceiling fans were marketed globally.

Wong Wan Pui’s father was born in Hong Kong in the early 1920s and completed secondary education in Diocesan Boys’ School. At 18, he married a 16-year-old girl in the native place under father’s arrangements. Two year later, his wife came to Hong Kong for a reunion. On 1 January 1942, Wong Wan Pui was born in the family’s shop on No. 367, Shanghai Street. Because it was wartime, he got his birth certificate after the war. During the Japanese Occupation, he went to his native place with his family and returned to Hong Kong for settlement and studies in 1946/1947. Wong Wan Pui described how he ‘evaded the ghost’ at schools. In the early post-war period, very few schools operated in Hong Kong but children who needed education were great in numbers. It was common that the schools took more students than allowed. When the Education Department people came for inspection, the teachers would take some of the students to somewhere else. This was known as ‘evading the ghost’.

Wong Wan Pui studied Primary 1 in Tao Nan School on Tung Fong Street. The school was run in a 3- or 4-storey independent building and used modern textbooks . They learned subjects such as English language, Music and Physical Training. He transferred to Chiu Yin School on Kwong Wa Street and studied Primary 2. The school was popular because the principal was strict in teaching and the students could continue with their studies in a good school. Upon completion of Primary 4 in Chiu Yin School, Wong Wan Pui transferred to Methodist Primary School on Gascoigne Road. It was a newly established school run by a Christian church and he was enrolled upon referral of a priest. Upon completion of Primary 6, Wong Wan Pui was not given a place in a subsidized secondary school because he did not do well in the Secondary School Entrance Examination. Through business, the Wong family knew a lot of people in the church and Wong Wan Pui was thus admitted into the Anglican Diocesan Boys’ School (DBS). In this school, English was the main teaching medium. Wong Wan Pui had difficulty adapting to the new school because he was not proficient in English. Lessons were taught in Chinese in the Methodist Primary School. For this reason, he repeated Primary 5 and Primary 6 in the primary section of DBS. When Wong Wan Pui graduated in 1960, he planned to further his studies in the USA but his family objected to this idea. One year later, he prepared for further studies in Australia but eventually gave up because of tuberculosis, he had to stay in Hong Kong for medical treatment. Having met two failures, he gave up his study plan and decided to attend the family’s electric appliance business, which he committed to until to date. The first thing he did was to learn the English words used in the trade. He learned it from the shop employees and by studying the old invoices. This was necessary when he inherited the business from the older generation.

Wong Wan Pui studied Primary 4 in Chiu Yin School in Yau Ma Tei. He was accompanied by a housemaid on the way between school and home along Shanghai Street, Pitt Street, Nathan Road, Waterloo Road and Kwong Wa Street. When he went to school at seven or eight in the morning, the street-side cooked food stalls on Shanghai Street had already started doing business. They supplied both Chinese and Western breakfasts such as plain porridge, deep-fried dough, coffee, sandwich, white and brown sugar sponge cakes. At the time, the Pitt Street section between Portland Street and Shanghai Street was the hub of funeral business. Many Taoist worshipping service providers and Taoist priests lived there. Several coffin shops operated there too. The coffin shop workers stored a corpse in a straw mat bag. Sometimes, they put the human skull, hand, leg and chest bones under the sun on the roadside. It was quite a scary scene. Several coffin shops also operated on the Waterloo Road section near Pitt Street. At the time, Hung Hom was not the hub of funeral service yet.

The Nathan Road section between Waterloo Road and Gascoigne Road was a residential area, with stores which sold Western goods and medical clinics operated on the ground floor of the residential buildings. In those days, the telephone company stood at the junction of Waterloo Road and Tung Fong Street (the site where Bell House now stands). The telephone company was a 2-storey building with large balls of telephone lines in the foreground. The building, which was enclosed by high walls, was mysterious to the children. The site of Yan On Building was the Steam Laundry Company Limited. It was a single-storey building with a gateway. In business hours, the gate was opened and the passers-by could see workers washing bedcovers and other laundry inside. Opposite the Wah Yan College, Kowloon was a flower nursery where flowers were grown for sale. Later on, the site was included in the land lot of Kwong Wah Hospital, which had a temple-like structure inside. The flower nursery and temple were his favourite hangouts. Today, most sections of the Kwong Wa Street have become part of Kwong Wah Hospital.

During holidays, Wong Wan Pui played on the streets nearby his father’s shop so he knew many people in the neighbourhood. The Wong family operated the Sheung Kwong Electric Company on No. 367, Shanghai Street. Its neighbours included Chung Yeung Barber, Lai Fat Barber and Poon Kee, a wadded quilt shop. They occupied Nos. 361, 363 and 365 of Shanghai Street respectively. The street children used to play under the balcony of Poon Kee because it was a space further away from the road traffic. They played hopscotch and games with soft drink bottle caps and pogs. Sheung Kwong Electric Company was operated in a rented shop of a 3-storey building. In the early post-war period, his grandfather purchased the whole block of the building at the price of HK$30,000. The ground floor was used as the shop and a store room at the back.  The 2nd floor was the residence of the owner’s family and the 3rd floor was staff dormitory, kitchen and warehouse where light bulbs and other small-sized goods were kept. In the early post-war period, Sheung Kwong employed around 10 workers. About 10 of them lived in the dormitory. In those days, it was the obligation of the shop owner to provide meals for his employees. Two tables were set for them every night and a chef was specially hired. The shop owner and his family had meals on the 2nd floor.

The rooftop of the old buildings in Shanghai Street was a pyramid design plastered in greyish black cement. Every year his grandfather hired  a company to provide service to get rid of termites so that the building would not be damaged by termites. The rooftops of old Chinese tenement houses were inter-connected but the children were not allowed to play on the rooftop because it was narrow, accidents would occur easily. The old buildings had a high ceiling made from wooden planks. The fluorescent lamp was not attached to the ceiling, but suspended midair. Wong Wan Pui was not permitted to play on the rooftop. It was not until he was 15 or 16 that he was permitted to fly a kite on the pyramidal roof.

The reservoir hill near his home was his popular playground during childhood. When Wong Wan Pui was a primary student, he had walked uphill along the staircase next to the Lutheran House on Waterloo Road. The water service reservoir was installed with motors and pumps. The hilltop of the reservoir hill was a flat land with short trees and flowers. It was the children’s favourite place for soccer, kites and fight. Although no recreational facilities were provided, it was the sitting-out area where the residents in the district loved to go. Wong Wan Pui grew up in an average family and his parents were very strict with him. In primary school, he was not permitted to leave the school for lunch and the housemaid would bring him food. He wanted to have lunch outside the school as his classmates did so that he could stroll the surrounding places. After repeated requests, his family eventually allowed him to have lunch with classmates at the street-side cooked food stalls on Ning Po Street.

When Wong Wan Pui studied in Methodist Primary School in Yau Ma Tei, he went to school on foot every day along the main streets such as Waterloo Road, Nathan Road and Gascoigne Road. The Magistrates’ Court stood next to Methodist Primary School. In the old days, it was known as the Chief Magistrates’ Court. To the children, it was the mysterious place where criminals were put on trial. Wong Wan Pui thought Nathan Road was in a great contrast to the eight streets in Yau Ma Tei. The former was a relatively quiet place with residential buildings, clothing shops and medical clinics. The eight streets in Yau Ma Tei was a busy business area with many short, narrow and noisy side streets. His family always told him not to go near Temple Street because it was the hangout of villains. Therefore he would take the main streets but never the side streets when he walked to school. In his eyes, Shanghai Street was gloomy because the balconies of the closely built buildings shielded off sunlight, not to mention the shabby shops. He felt uncomfortable walking along Shanghai Street.

When Wong Wan Pui was a child, he was curious about the eight streets in Yau Ma Tei. He always wanted to see them in person but was afraid of running into child abductors. In those days, there were many street-side cooked food stalls in the area between Kansu Street in the north and Jordan Road in the south but very few restaurants operated in a shop premise. He recounted that unlike today’s stalls which operate with chairs and tables occupying a large portion of the street, the stalls in the past operated with less than ten tables. In Methodist Primary School, when he went out for lunch with male classmates, they would frequent the street side stalls near Ning Po Street which offered food such as wonton noodles, barbecued meat rice, fried rice noodles with beef and sandwiches. After lunch, they would stroll along the streets nearby before they had to return to school. Because time was limited, Jordan Road was the furthest they could go. In those days, many bait shops operated on Battery Street selling shrimps or peanut worms. Many of them have ceased operation now.

When the land lease of Sheung Kwong Electric Company (No. 367 Shanghai Street) expired in the 1960s, his grandfather applied for renewal with the government. The government wanted to demolish the old wooden buildings because they were vulnerable to fire. The renewal was approved on condition that the Wong family redeveloped the roof cover according to the government’s requirements. The lease would be extended to 1997 and the cost shall be paid by installments in several decades. The building has a small site of 600 sq. meters. The Wong family cooperated with the owner of the adjacent building and redeveloped the building from 3-storey to 6-storey. The piling fees were about $10,000 and the construction fee for each storey was $8,000. Each storey of the new building would have a stairway and provided with a flushing toilet and bathroom. The ventilation would be improved too. The total redevelopment cost for the entire block was no more than $80,000 which shall be equally shared by the two property owners.

Later, the adjacent property owner sold all storeys of his building but retaining one with himself. The Wong family kept the whole block for their own use. Part of it was occupied by the electrical appliance shop while the remaining was the homes of the Wong family and their relatives. The Wong family hired an architect referred by the adjacent property owner. The architect designed the new building in accordance with the Buildings Ordinance. Wong Wan Pui had contributed his ideas. He had enhanced the stairway design. In the early years, the buildings on Shanghai Street were owned by different people. Generally, each block of building (one lot number) was owned by one person. The owners designed the layout when they redeveloped their buildings. An owner might even discuss with the owner of the adjacent building so all the new buildings had different styles. On the contrary, today’s buildings are redeveloped on a standard design set by the developers. To contribute his ideas to the redevelopment, Wong Wan Pui had studied the designs of the buildings nearby. Such extensive observation brought him some insights about balcony design. As a kind of promotion for the grandfather’s shop, Wong Wan Pui displayed the shop name on the external walls of each level of the block, to show off their economic capability.

Wong Wan Pui’s scope of movement in Yau Ma Tei expanded as he grew. He strolled northwards as far as Argyle Street and Prince Edward Road and southward to Tsim Sha Tsui along Nathan Road but he usually roamed about the southern streets and seldom explored Sham Shui Po. Looking back on the changes of Yau Ma Tei in the last decades, Wong Wan Pui deplored that human relation is poor now as new shops move in the new buildings which replace the demolished ones. He knows little about the new shop operators. They seldom communicate with each other so there is an unbridgeable gap between them.

Wong Wan Pui recalled that in the past, his grandfather always socialized with the neighbouring shop proprietors. He formed a society with the shop operators on Shanghai Street, Pitt Street and Portland Street. Each member paid a monthly fee which they spent on monthly feast gathering in a restaurant on Shanghai Street. The members included operators of coffin shops, restaurants and herbal tea houses.  In one occasion, the proprietor of Gong Sheung Fa Herbal Tea the society chairman fled with the monthly fees. To compensate for the members’ loss, his descendants sent free soups and sweet soups, such as round dumplings, red bean soup and snakehead fish soup with arrowroot, to the members’ shops from time to time. He commended businessmen in the old days had excellent credibility. The Wong family was well acquainted with the owners and staff of the shops on their left, right and opposite. On one side were the shops at Nos. 361, 363 and 365 (Editor’s note: the aforementioned Chung Yeung Barber, Fat Lai Barber and Poon Kee), on the other side were Bo Wo Tong Herbal Medicine and Sun Sun Dyehouse and two shops selling imported goods for daily necessity uses. On the opposite were Tak Yu Restaurant, Wai Yuen Tong and a paper offering shop. Sheung Kwong Electric Company is the oldest shop on Shanghai Street.

In the past, the boat people were customers of the family’s electrical appliance shop and they came for wires, lamps or control switch. Most of the lights on the vessels were installed in the ship factory, Sheung Kwong only did the repairs or alterations. Wong Wan Pui sighed that boat people had supported the living of many onshore residents when the typhoon shelter was at its prime. After the boat people left the typhoon shelter, the retailers which operated onshore lost much business.

When Wong Wan Pui was 15 or 16 years old, he always went fishing at the Jordan Road Ferry Pier. Sometimes he would catch the grouper. But he went fishing no more after Man Hin Building and Man Yuen Building were built. Before the cross harbor tunnel was opened in 1972, the only way for vehicles to go from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island was to take a vehicular ferry at the Jordan Road Ferry Pier. A large number of vehicles were always seen lined up for the ferry in the large open space in front of the pier. In those days, Wong Wan Pui would drive a car and deliver goods for the family shop. He recalled that he usually had to wait for the third ferry for his turn to board the ferry. It was hot to wait under the sun in summer.

When the Alhambra Theatre was redeveloped into the Alhambra Building, Sheung Kwong Electric Company provided the light installation service. It was long ago when their shop telephone number still started with the number ‘5’. Kwong Chee Theatre provided captioning for Western movies and subtitles were projected on the screen to help the non-English audience understand the plot as movies were shown with no subtitles in those days. Kwong Ming Theatre and First New Theatre have been redeveloped into the Henry G. Leong Yaumatei Community Centre.

When the government redeveloped the old buildings in Yau Ma Tei in the 1960s, some of the owners could not be located so the sites of their buildings were redeveloped into a park. Wong Wan Pui thought it was a good policy because the government chose not to sell the land for revenue and develop it into green environment for the benefit of the residents in the district.

The northern section and the southern section of Shanghai Street were totally different. The section from Jordan Road to Dundas Street was busier than the Mong Kok section. Wong Wan Pui recalled that in the early post-war period, the Yau Ma Tei section of Shanghai Street used to be a busy night market. Several nights before the Lunar New Year, the hawkers sold goods such as clothes, cloth shoes and household products on the street until midnight. They were frequented by the lower class. At the time, the shops generally operated until 9pm or 10pm. Sheung Kwong Electric Company would extend its business hours until 12am so that people could have a new light bulb for the altar at home as auspicious sign of the new year. The shops which closed at 6pm were mainly sellers of precious goods and they closed early to prevent robbery.

Shandong Street ended in the Mong Kok Ferry Pier where people took a ferry to the Central District. The section close to the pier had higher pedestrian flow. The street was aligned with shops selling all kinds of goods such as garments, second-hand clothes and herbal medicine. In the early post-war period, second-hand clothes shops were an important business because people lacked the money for new clothes. So they chose to buy second-hand traditional Chinese garments, jackets, shirts or double-breasted clothes which were available for both genders. Reclamation Street was the hub of hardware shops and family blacksmiths. Many cloth stores operated in the section near Ning Po Street. It was common that housewives who lived upstairs the shop worked with a sewing machine. In the area around Portland Street and Canton Road, a number of martial arts halls ran kung fu courses.

Curfew was imposed in 1957 when the rightist riots broke out. Wong Wan Pui was 15 years old at the time. He remembered seeing armed British soldiers keeping guard on Waterloo Road, he had also seen British soldiers cautioned passers-by in English. At the time, people were scared and nervous about being shot by the soldiers. During the period of curfew, there were no citizens  on the street and he would not go out.

The water rationing measure implemented in 1963 did not affect their electrical appliance shop much. It was because when redeveloping the building, they opened a well to supply fresh water supply for flushing toilets in the building. When the water rationing measures were implemented, they collected water with large buckets from the well. Miraculously, they got an endless supply but the well water was not good for drinking. They kept the water for washing. The whole block where Sheung Kwong was operated was inhabited with one whole family. Therefore it was easy for them to coordinate among themselves for each level to keep water. Wong Wan Pui even kept fishes in the well but it has silted up now.

Wong Wan Pui’s first son was born on 1 May 1967. He was one month old when the riot broke out. In early June, he treated his relatives a celebration feast in the Southern East Restaurant, which was the closest to his home. Because of the curfew, many relatives could not go home and they had to stay overnight at his place. One day, Wong Wan Pui looked out from the 2nd floor of his home and saw bomb disposal experts detonating a bomb planted beneath a fruit stall. During the riot, home-made bombs were heard planted everywhere. When he saw protests on Shanghai Street, he ran from it as quick as possible to avoid danger.