Non fiction

As a Child

As a child I lived in an estate made up of ten tall blocks of Bauhaus-style buildings---though it seems strange to attach such a high-sounding label to the public housing estate where I spent my first twenty formative years. In Hong Kong, public housing estates are government-owned residential areas for low-income families. My five family members were crammed into a three hundred square-foot flat. With only one bedroom which once in a while my parents stayed in, all five members of the family slept on the living room floor well until I turned twenty years of age. My sister was bolder to request for a change: when she was sixteen she wanted to have a bedroom of her own. My father transformed part of the originally rather spacious kitchen into a bedroom. This extra bedroom was of course no more than the size of a bed and a tiny wardrobe. After the transformation, the living room floor where the rest of us slept became less crowded at night. From the outside, we occupied one of those square boxes in the picture.

‘Public Housing Estate’ – at what point did I start feeling ashamed of this phrase, and need to take a deep breath before speaking of my roots? It must have been the materialistic culture of Hong Kong. Where you lived and where you grew up are signs of your upbringing and background. Parents nowadays still move to upper middle class residential areas in order that their children are accepted into certain branded school in the same area. It might sound strange, but a person’s character and education are so much tied up to where they live. 

I remember very clearly something my aunt said many years ago, a saying that became printed on my mind in the same way that hot metal burns marks onto your hands. “The children from public housing estates are all so vulgar,” she said, “What they desperately need is a decent education and exposure to culture.” Over-generalized and unsupported, her claim was hardly worth arguing with. Under normal circumstances, a child would never remember such a statement. I too would probably not have given this nonsense a second thought if it hadn’t been for my mother, who fretted about the desultory insult for days and hence gave it a significance for me that it otherwise would have lacked.  Still, almost 70% of my classmates lived in this same place. I don’t recall feeling any pressure or shame growing up on a government estate.

It was a different matter when I entered High School. I’m not saying that my schoolmates there were all rich. But in my third year I developed a friendship with a girl whose family had done very well from the cardboard box business. I only visited her house (or should I call it a mansion) once, but the ‘wow’ effect it had on me has lasted ever since. The place was ten times bigger than my flat in the housing estate; so big, in fact, that it needed two full-time Filipino maids to look after it. Now that I think about it, it was probably no bigger than a decent-sized British house. But I am talking about Hong Kong, a characteristic of which is ‘scarcity of land’. I put this in quotation because it’s a standard phrase with which we learned to characterize our land in one of our general education classes.

It wasn’t reading that first made me realise the existence of alternative and perhaps better worlds, for I started reading at a very late stage; it was seeing my friend’s majestic house. But did I complain to my parents about our tiny little flat? Oh no. My friend’s house made me feel lost, I was uncomfortable with the overly-hospitable maids, and I dreaded the etiquette of eating in such lofty company. After the visit, I was very happy to go back to the tiny little flat I called ‘home’.

Living opposite us was ‘the blind lady’, an old woman who suffered from an eye disease. We knew her well: one advantage of living in a public housing estate is that relationships between neighbours can be very close. Everyone knows each other and there is no risk in leaving one’s front door wide open for better ventilation. Now, many flats and apartments in Hong Kong have double safety defences: a metal gate and then a solid front door. In my childhood, people seemed to be less private and would leave their doors open so passers-by could see into their home. One major reason was that there was little of value for thieves to steal.

I still remember my primary school anthem, and how I joined in with the other school kids to sing the first lines at the top of our voices: “We all live in Wong Chuk Hang, / a fine estate in a blessed land. / Full of people with vigour and might; / Full of people who love what’s right….” Without this ‘blessed’ housing estate, I wouldn’t be studying abroad writing a doctoral thesis on John Ruskin.

Marjorie Cheung