Vignettes
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A Chinese street is crowded, colourful and noisy. Shops are
open fronted. Boards are pat up over the front late at night,
and taken down early in the morning - the Chinese never
seem to sleep! Outside the shops are hanging banners and signs
inscribed with elegant Chinese characters. From the upper floors,
washing hangs out to dry on long poles.
On the pavement, women in black jackets and trousers sit on stools
sewing. A scribe sits at a table on the pavement writing a letter
for someone, using a brush and Chinese ink to make the
beautiful characters.
Pedlars squat on the pavement with their baskets, selling fruit,
vegetables, sweetmeats. Men with portable kitchens sell rice
dishes or soup to passersby - delicious smell of hot food.
Coolies jog along with poles across their shoulders; at each end
are suspended large baskets filled with goods. On their heads are
large round straw hats with pointed tops, to keep off the sun
or the rain. Women with babies tied to their backs in wide
blue cloths; the babies go on sleeping whatever the mothers
are doing.
Whiffs of Chinese cooking coming from interiors, pungent aroma
of guavas and other southern fruit, fragrance of jasmine, smell
of burning joss sticks. Everyone talking loudly, pedlars calling
their wares, someone shouting. The rickshaw coolies and the pedlars shout "Wei" as they
run along, clearing a way through the crowd. Clatter of wooden
clogs when it rains. Little Chinese boys and girls in jackets
and calf length trousers, girls with pigtails, boys with shaven heads.
In the summer men roll up their trousers, some wear shorts
and white topees. Sitting on stools outside their shops, men with
singlets rolled up fan their bare stomachs.
At night Chinese music comes from a tea house or restaurant,
sounds of loud voices. Mah Jong tiles being slapped down,
smell of cooking. Gay Chinese lanterns hanging outside, decorated
with Chinese characters and lit by electricity.
Rickshaw coolies sit on the edge of the pavement waiting for
customers - "Shaw?" they cry as we approach. There is nothing
so smooth or enjoyable as riding in a rickshaw to Sincere's,
the big Chinese department store, or to Wing On's just beyond.
We travel at a leisurely pace, watching the world go by. When it
rains, the rickshaw coolie stops, unpacks a tarpaulin from the back
of the rickshaw, and hooks it up in front of his passenger;
who can peep over while keeping dry. But the tarpaulin
has a horrid smell! The rickshaw man dons a huge straw cloak
and hat, and off we go!
At the bottom of Battery Path chair coolies wait to carry people
past St. John's Cathedral and up Garden Road to the Peak
tram. The motion of a sedan chair, with its two long poles
balanced on the shoulders of a man front and back, feels a little
uncomfortable at first, but the coolies soon get into step, and then
the jogging rhythm becomes pleasant and soothing.
Outside the Cathedral, groups of elderly Chinese men squat under
the trees talking, each man with his pet bird in a cage beside
him on the ground. We too have a caged bird, a canary that
sings incessantly. All our friends keep canaries to brighten their
homes.
Coolies sleep on low narrow walls over nullahs - how is it that
they never fall off? When it rains, the coolies working on the
roads put on straw capes and their large hard straw hats,
pointed on top.
When we lived in Kennedy Road we went to school by tram,
past the Royal Naval Dockyard with a sailor standing sentry at
the Gate, past Wanchai, a Chinese section with its seething masses
of noisy people, along the harbour shore where sampans were
anchored and one could see the sampan families living on board
the junks and sampans. Beyond them theever fascinating harbour
full of ships; merchant ships, Naval vessels, ferries, steam launches,
junks and sampans. Sounds of ships' sirens and whistles. Hong
Kong was named after its Fragrant Harbour. Beyond the Harbour,
Kowloon backed by a line of hills - Kau Lung, the Nine Dragons.
On our right the Peak and the Hong Kong hills towering above us.
You could never get away from the beauty and enchantment of
Hong Kong!
We alighted from the tram at Causeway Bay and walked to
the Convent past Chinese shops that sold all kinds of strange
foods. We used to buy chan pi moi (salty-sweet dried plums),
fa sang (peanuts) and kwa chi (melon seeds), poured out of large
containers by the man, and sold to us in little paper cones,
and crisp water chestnuts, and ginger.
The tram went on past the junk and sampan typhoon shelter,
the Polo ground, where the polo players rode on China ponies,
and Taikoo Dockyard to Shaukiwan, a Chinese quarter near
Lyemun Pass, the eastern entrance to the harbour. Going home,
we got off the tram at Garden Road and walked up to Kennedy
Road. The tram continued past Murray Parade Ground, where Army
regiments marched to the stirring music of military bands; past
the Cricket Club, and through Victoria, the City of Hong Kong, where the European shops, hotels, offices and banks were, all the way to West Point, the Chinese district with its exciting Chinese restaurants and noise and life, and on to Kennedy Town, the western tram terminus.
in Central
When we were very young it was a great treat to go to the
cinema at the Coronet Theatre. We were allowed to go alone;
what a thrill it was to buy our tickets at the box office, and
enter the long hall packed with rows of seats, the orchestra in
the pit playing stirring marches while waiting for the show to
begin. We were impatient for the lights to go out. The films
were silent in those days, captions would appear on the screen,
and the orchestra played appropriate music throughout. We ate
potato chips from the Bluebird Cafe, or sweets, out of paper
bags, while watching our favourite film stars: Mary Pickford,
Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd; or Pearl White in
an episode of "The Lightning Raider". In later years, grander
cinema theatres were built, and other film stars appeared:
Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Navarro, Norma and Constance
Talmadge, Gloria Swanson, Mary Miles Minter, Monte Blue,
Wallace Reid. I used to write to the film stars, and receive in
return their signed photographs!
