Wong Wing Man

Wong Wing Man was born in Xiamen, Fujian Province in 1934 and completed his primary education in Gulangyu. In 1948 or 1949, he moved to Hong Kong. Wong Wing Man’s father was a construction worker and often carried out building works for then Amoy chairman Huang Du Xiu and his family. In addition to being the boss of Amoy, Huang Du Xiu was a fellow townsmen of Wong Wing Man’s family. After World War II, Huang Du Xiu asked Wong Wing Man’s father to come to Hong Kong to carry out building works for Amoy. In those days, many of the company’s mainland Chinese staff returned to their hometowns in Fujian during their annual one-month leaves. It was during one of these trips that Wong Wing Man’s father asked Amoy’s financial executive to bring his son to Hong Kong when he returned from his leave. While only just 14 to 15 years old when he boarded the boat to Hong Kong, Wong Wing Man had already ceased schooling. Upon his arrival in the Territory, he immediately met up with his father at the Amoy Industrial Estate. Years later, Wong Wing Man recalled that life had been very miserable when he first came to Hong Kong. He found it very difficult to communicate with others because he did not speak Cantonese. During these early days, Wong Wing Man lived with his father in the staff dormitory at the Amoy Industrial Estate. Soon, Amoy’s building department took him on as a casual handyman for various cement works. While his daily wage of $0.20 ($1.2 for six days) was supposed to be paid weekly, he had to wait 30 days or so before receiving his first wage packet. Around 3 or 4months later, Wong Wing Man became a permanent employee.

Back then, Amoy’s building department employed around two to three technicians. The department also took on casual handymen to handle non-specific assignments. Whenever there was a shortage of workers in other Amoy departments, these handymen would be sent to help out. The building department was responsible for the company’s small scale building works and repair and maintenance jobs. Their specific responsibilities covered everything from painting and the repair of broken items to building dormitories and constructing concrete drying pools. Back then, Amoy used to sun-dry its soy sauce in vats before switching to concrete pools. As Amoy Industrial Estate had lots of space near an adjoining hill, many square concrete pools were built for sun-drying soy sauce.

Wong Wing Man’s monthly salary for his first month as a permanent employee with Amoy’s building department was $32. After working there for a year, he was transferred to the engine room to learn can making. Amoy produced canned food and bought steel materials to make its own cans. Wong Wing Man learned how to operate can machines from his technician colleagues in the engine room. As this area was also home to lathes and technicians, Wong Wing Man was also taught how to maintain machinery. He subsequently began to repair machines and electrical appliances such as air-conditioners and motors.

The iron used to make Amoy’s cans was ordered and imported from overseas with vessels divided into half-pound, one-pound and five-pound variants. The cut iron plates were fed into the machines to undergo processes known as flanging, lidding and pressure leak testing. Afterwards, empty cans were stored in warehouses. While half-pound and one-pound cans were manufactured by fully automated machines, the five-pound cans had to be processed manually. Amoy was the first company in Hong Kong to produce canned dace with salted black beans. Wong Wing Man thought that Amoy’s canned dace with salted black beans tasted delicious and gave off a mouthwatering aroma when deep-fried with lard and Amoy’s salted black beans.

After relocating its plant from Ngau Tau Kok to Tsuen Wan, Amoy began buying cans from Singapore rather than making the containers itself. As a result, the company eventually ceased production of cans for dace with salted black beans. From the 1950s to the 1960s, Amoy produced a wide variety of canned foods including pigs’ trotters with ginger, shark’s fin, minced fish, longans, lychees, pickled shallots, bamboo shoots, mixed vegetables, dace with salted black beans, salted black beans, miso and pickled cucumbers. The white cucumbers used to make this last delicacy were imported from China before being preserved by male and female casual staff working overtime shifts. Different kinds of food were either canned manually or by machines in the pickle room and then sent to another department for vacuum sterilisation and capping by machines. Female workers in the pickle room canned the food while their male colleagues transported the goods. Amoy’s canned food was not only sold locally but also exported overseas.

Amoy’s preserved gingers were very expensive and so tended to be exported. Preserved gingers were made of ginger cubes which were divided into wet and dry piles and graded according to size. All gingers used were imported from China. After the raw gingers were peeled manually by the female workers, they were preserved in a big pool with salt. Technicians had their own secret recipe for making preserved gingers, often testing the temperature of the sugar being heated with their bare hands before adding the ginger cubes.

Employees’ first step in making soy sauce was to soak soya beans in water during the day and then pick them up and leave them in the hall before clocking off and heading home. At around 5 to 6 a.m. the next morning, the beans would be steamed in an oven. The cooked beans were then placed on the floor to cool, ploughed loose, mixed with flour, fermented and then left to get mildewed. The male workers took charge of these steps while their female colleagues hard-pressed the remains of the beans to help them dehydrate. The technicians making soy sauce also had their secret techniques. To this end, they often sprayed the beans with fluid to reduce the temperature or turned up the oven to increase the heat according to the demands of the fermentation process.

Between the 1940s and the 1950s, Amoy’s boss was a native of Fujian. As a result most of the company’s male workforce was predominantly made up of Fujianese people mixed with a few locals or migrants from Chaozhou. Surprisingly, there were very few female workers from Fujian.

Wong Wing Man’s initial duties in the engineering department included can making and maintenance work. After producing a specific number of cans by using the can making machines, he would assist in maintenance work, repairing machines and water pipes for any department where his skills were needed. Later, Amoy acquired the Singaporean-owned Green Spot soft drinks factory and began producing sodas and pops. In 1960, Wong Wing Man was sent to British Oxygen Co. Ltd. (the present-day Hong Kong and China Gas Co. Ltd.) to learn the aluminum welding skills needed to repair soft drinks delivery lorries. Around this time, Amoy was sold to Sime Darby and Wong Wing Man was promoted to deputy head of the engineering department. In 1978, Sime Darby sold Amoy to Hang Lung.

In 1977, Amoy Industrial Estate began the first stage of its move to Tsuen Wan and hired a new manager to manage the Tsuen Wan plant. Half of the can making and maintenance staff and machinery from the Ngau Tze Wan plant were moved to Tsuen Wan at this time. The new manager relocated Wong Wing Man to Tsuen Wan and put him in charge of overall supervision of the engineering department’s can making and maintenance work there. While Amoy was based in Tsuen Wan, it acquired Royal Dragon Dim Sum. As a result, Wong Wing Man was also in charge of managing maintenance work for the dim sum machines at Tai Po. In 1987, the entire Amoy plant was relocated to Tai Po.

In 2000, Wong Wing Man reached the age of 66 and finally retired from his post in charge of the engineering department. In his half-century career with Amoy, he had served between seven and eight managers and had earned the wholehearted trust of each and every one. Though Amoy experienced a few ownership changes, Wong Wing Man retained his deep sense of loyalty to the company.

Amoy Industrial Estate had its own staff dormitory, nicknamed the “Bachelors’ Dormitory”, which was situated near its hillside area. The two-storey high facility had 13 to 15 rooms on each level with around four iron beds to each room. While workers did not have to pay rent, they were required to bring along their own bed sheets and mats. Amoy’s unmarried senior permanent employees were eligible for admission to the dormitory but had to move out after they got married.

In the early 1960s, Amoy built a welfare building where married senior permanent employees could apply for family flats. The welfare building was situated in the area now known as Amoy Garden Phase 4. Each small flat had an area of around 300 sq. ft. There were also larger flats which had their own store room available for a monthly rent of $10 more. When the welfare building was first completed, department heads and management grade staff were given first choice on which flats to occupy. At that time, Wong Wing Man was a deputy head and married with a child. He chose a small flat on the fifth floor facing east, later applying to move to a larger unit. After Hang Lung acquired Amoy, the welfare building was demolished and all residents received compensation. As the tenant of a larger flat, the compensation Wong Wing Man and his family received was $20,000 more than that given to residents of smaller units. The welfare building also once housed facilities such as a clinic, a nursery and a co-operative association.
 

The basketball team formed by Amoy’s employees participated in matches for the annual Factory Cup tournament. Organised by the Hong Kong Basketball Association, this challenge was open to all factories in Hong Kong. Later, Amoy’s management hired top local basketball stars to form a professional team and participate in open matches in Hong Kong and Singapore for promotional purposes. The professional team was coached by Shek Chun Tat and had famous players like Ng Yet Ang, Joachim H. L. Poon and Yung Pi Hock. When not playing in open matches, the pros played against teams of employees in order to allow the staff players to sharpen their skills. Called the Lucky Team, the Amoy employees’ team played in two or three open matches and was rated as being a dark horse by the press. The staff team was organised by Amoy’s senior accountant Wong Ching Hang. In those years, Radio Hong Kong visited factories and interviewed people there for broadcast every Saturday. Amoy was among the companies whose staff was interviewed. Wong Ching Hang composed the Amoy company song “The One Family of Amoy” and Radio Hong Kong recorded and broadcast it. Wong Wing Man still remembers a few lines of the song he and his colleagues would sing together during festival celebrations! Wong Ching Hang was later promoted as the manager of Amoy’s paper products factory.

During traditional celebrations such as Chinese New Year and Mid Autumn Festival, Amoy either added more dishes to its usual menu or threw parties in the canteen so its employees could celebrate.

Staff who had worked with Amoy at Ngau Tze Wan plant found the atmosphere at the new Tai Po Industrial Estate plant to be a real change. Following the relocation, only a few employees with over 10 years’ seniority continued working at Tai Po. Newly-joined employees were understandably simply not as close as before. Without possessing particularly good skills, some new employees earned an average wage. As a result, they were not as committed to their work and had no sense of loyalty to Amoy. Such staff often left shortly after joining. Whether or not loyal employees would stay or leave ultimately depended on whether or not they could communicate and get along with the new management.

In the 1980s, Amoy was sold to several foreign-owned companies. As management and policies were different to those of the past, employees needed time to adapt. Happily, Wong Wing Man’s work was not seriously affected by these changes.

In the past, the Tai Po plant produced frozen dim sum. When machines broke down, raw ingredients would pile up and decay very quickly. As a result, speedy repair work was vital. Nowadays, all frozen dim sum such as prawn and shaomai dumplings are produced in a mainland plant equipped with advanced cold storage warehouse to keep the raw materials fresh. As a result, when machines break down, there is no longer any real urgency involved in repair work.

From starting out as a new arrival in Hong Kong who did not know how to speak Cantonese, Wong Wing Man worked with Amoy right through until his retirement. The company’s attractive remuneration and benefits meant he saw Amoy as his second home and gave him a strong sense of loyalty that sustained him for more than 50 years. Amoy’s employer-employee relations were very good, with both bosses and workers getting along very well. Wong Wing Man never encountered any problems in his half century with the company. Determined to take good care of its employees, Amoy offered excellent welfare benefits and was one of the first companies in Hong Kong to set up a provident fund and retirement pension scheme for its staff. Wong Wing Man is now close to 80 and is living on his provident fund and retirement scheme. He looks back on his career at Amoy with great fondness.

Wong Wing Man felt sad about Amoy’s sale to Sime Darby as the company had a long and distinguished history and the offspring of his old boss remained in constant contact with him. Though he has long retired, the former and current managers, old colleagues and past workers at Amoy continue to meet Wong Wing Man in teahouses to this day. Wong Wing Man enjoyed many happy moments when working at Amoy, learning several valuable lessons there. He played basketball after work and joined company picnics with fellow workers. In the past, Hung Mui Kuk in Sha Tin was the favourite destination for Amoy company outings. Workers brought along rattan cases filled with peanut butter sandwiches for lunch to these days out. They also went swimming. Every Sunday, Wong Wing Man took to the waters in Clear Water Bay with his fellow workers, colleagues and friends from various departments. Everyone’s happiest moment came in the last half hour of each year’s last working day (Lunar calendar) when Amoy’s general manager passed everyone their annual bonus. Amoy’s bonus came in the form of $10 bank notes, some of which Wong Wing Man still treasures nearly half a century on.

In the past, everyone at Amoy, from the boss to the workers, were like one big family. As a result, there was never any problem in maintaining good working relationships. During the 1967 riots in Hong Kong, some looters wanted to break into the Amoy plant but found employees there were so united that they took turns to guard and stop intruders at the factory gates! While some Amoy workers did join the canning workers’ union, there were never any labour disputes or industrial actions. Like Wong Wing Man, most Amoy employees treated the company as a second home.

When Amoy was acquired by Sime Darby, the outgoing boss rewarded employees with Sime Darby shares Amoy had asked for in the sale price. In subsequent sales by Sime Darby to Hang Lung, then onto French company Danone, and eventually to Japanese company Ajinomoto Co. Ltd., Amoy employees were never again granted such rewards. Wong Wing Man said that while different managers had different styles of dealing with things, he always missed his earliest bosses most.

Wong Wing Man wound up working for Amoy for over 50 years and chartered his course of life peacefully through different stages—getting married, raising a family and above all, living happily every day, both now and then.