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Lee Lai
Lee Lai
Owner of a writing stall
Sex: Male Birthyear: 1928 Age at Interview: 83 Education: Primary Occupation: Letter Writer Theme: Community Yunnan Lane is situated next to the Yau Ma Tei Post Office. It used to be the hub of letter stalls of Hong Kong in the period between 1950s and 1960s. There were more than 30 of them at the peak. As many letter writers retired, only 12 to 13 stalls are left today. Letter writing is a written record of the customer’s verbal description. Because Lee Lai speaks no northern dialect, Chaozhou dialect or Hakka dialect, he only served Cantonese speaking customers. The customers included residents outside the Yau Ma Tei district. They came from all corners of Hong Kong. In the period between 1950s and 1960s, many mainlanders left their families and came to Hong Kong for settlement. A letter was the way to let both parties to know each other’s conditions. A home letter was usually sent from the children to parents, the wife to the husband or children, or the husband to the wife and children. Most of his customers were females. Lee Lai also wrote letters to mainland authorities. They were mainly application for a one-way permit.
Title Letter stalls wrote home letter for mainland immigrants to Hong Kong Date 25/05/2011 Subject Community Duration 4m45s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. YMT-LL-HLT-001 In the 1960s, Lee Lai ran a letter stalls at Yunnan Lane offering form filling and tax return services. 1.) Filling out forms: Many customers were boat people from the Yau Ma Tei typhoon shelter and dwellers in various squatter areas in Hong Kong and Kowloon. They came to fill out an application form for the 7-storey resettlement building. Some customers came all the way from the New Territories and Tiu Keng Leng. He also filled out forms for the hawkers and small shop owners who applied to the Business Registration Office for a business registration certificate. The annual fee for the certificate was $160 then. 2.) Tax return: Most of the customers were hawkers and small shop owners who held a business registration certificate, such as truck drivers, taxi drivers, jade and fruit hawkers. They all operated as an unlimited company. The large firms or factories which operated as a limited companies had to file their tax returns through a designated accountant. A street-side stall was not eligible for such service.
Title Service from letter stalls at Yunnan Lane: Forms filling and tax return Date 25/05/2011 Subject Community Duration 3m24s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. YMT-LL-HLT-002 Lee Lai’s letter stalls were set on the footpath of Yunnan Lane close to the Yau Ma Tei Post Office on Waterloo Road. The specification was 4 feet in width, 3 feet in depth and 8 feet in height. The owner built his own stall with tin-sheets and timber. The stalls operated from 8 am to 6 pm every day. Some of them operated until 8 or 9 pm in the summer. The letter writers could take the cool on the street while working. At night, the stalls were illuminated with a kerosene lamp. The letter stalls started to emerge on Yunnan Lane in the early 1950s. At the beginning, there were only a few unnamed roofless stalls. It was a simple composition formed by a plank on a tripod table and two chairs. On rainy days, the owner covered the stall with a canvas, but it had to be closed on stormy days. On the opposite side of the letter stalls were small shops of various businesses such as ironware, plumber and hardware. They were all opened on the ground floor of post-war Chinese tenements, the tallest of them boasted 9 storeys. The letter stalls were close to the footpath near Shanghai Street. At the back was the Yau Ma Tei Post Office. Most residents of the Yunnan Lane were salary-earners. Many of them worked in the wholesale fruit market. Because one side of the narrow Yunnan Lane was occupied by the letter stalls, the passersby had to detour to avoid the cars.
Title Yunnan Lane was packed with letter stalls Date 25/05/2011 Subject Community Duration 3m29s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. YMT-LL-HLT-003 Lee Lai’s letter stall has been removed twice over the years. In 1964 when he first joined the trade, he set a stall on Yunnan Lane. Later, he moved to the site of the current Yau Ma Tei Carpark Building because street development was carried out on Yunnan Lane. At the time, it was a lot vacated from demolition of the Chinese tenements. The stall allocation was decided by drawing lots. Lee Lai was allocated stall no. 17. Before he moved, he left a removal notice at the old site on Yunnan Street to notify his customers of the new address. But, he still lost some of the customers. It took him 1 to 2 years to rebuild ties with all the old customers again. About 7 years after operating at the said site, Lee Lai moved to the jade market (current site beneath the Canton Road flyover) with other letter stalls. He was allocated stall no. 8. The market had no jade stalls when they first moved in. After a year or two, the jade stalls moved in and became the letter stalls’neighbor.
Title Removal of letter stalls from Yunnan Lane to jade market Date 25/05/2011 Subject Community Duration 1m52s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. YMT-LL-HLT-004