Had a chat with a very senior taxi driver. We talked about the old time of Shaukiwan and the devastating fire in Aldrich Bay (愛秩序灣, now called 愛蝶灣) in the early 70's. My grand ma's work place was gone as well as my cousin's houses burnt down. She sadly sighed to me "有水放水，無水散水" [Money for water (to fight against fire), no money then we disperse]. That's probably one of the few times I saw her crying and that ended her work from Aldrich Bay. What's more, my apt. was filled with more than 15 people (only 400 square feet) and lots of Japanese printed military dollar notes (軍票) (as those were exchanged for food during war time and some of my cousins still kept those in hope for a chance to turn them into money - and there were at least 5-6 big buckets of such notes.).
Anyway, the chat got me some names which actually I forgot, just like 淺水碼頭村 (where should be left outside of the below photo). When I checked on this photo, I tried to come up with the name of this village. Bingo, it's 斧頭窟村! So happy finally I could caught back this name. Then right outside of this photo is 南安坊村 and the most famous one is 聖十字徑村 on the hillside of Sai Wan Ho. So much memory of all these hillside village. That's Shaukiwan and Sai Wan Ho. Now this place is replaced by many Government houses.
Well, on the front right it's a manufacturing company called Tai Chung 大中. Then front left is the 康元製罐廠.
Another remarkable news was that a plane crashed into the upper part of this hill. That plane carried gold. A guy went to the scene and picked up much gold and got rich. There he dumped his wife. So his wife got insane and wandered in the street with her 20 feet long hair and dirty body. Her name is 筲箕灣皇后. I saw her quite many times and of course ran away. Later on she got caught up and forced to clean up. Due to her skin being unexposed to fresh air, she got a serious skin infection and died. Such a sad ending but good for her to rest in peace after all those years of being despised.
7 comments:
just notice my link from another of your post disappeared. Here is an interesting photostream of someone taking photos of Hong Kong now and post it next to the then Hong Kong. The photographer taking the time trying to match the perspective as well.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/old-hk/
Quite sad stories from here, the burnt down, your grandma crying, and the insane deserted wife....
Thanks Pixmation. I went checking that one, but like most other photo albums, it seems the Eastern part of HK were neglected. Those were for the central parts and the more crowded areas. Some hundred days later when this part of history was found, a break line of a flooding of photos showed up in this century, thanks to the digitization and low cost powerful cameras.
Stella, my grand ma asked for some basic living stuff. She hated people for wasting food and sighing for no-pain sickness. If I left one tiny rice in the bowl, I would have been beaten up. Now some of my friends often wonder "har.. don't you need to be that saving up? Or the other way round, this is kind of a mission to cook well to make my family empty their bowls.
Hi SEA,
You shall be thankful to have such a grandma who has prepared you to be good in many things, plus all the survival skills too. She was a great woman in her time.
Not sure but good out of the bad and vice versa. Anyway, she did have a tough time that later on I only learned it from my aunt. She didn't speak those to us. So that means she is a "pick it up and take it down" person. Nothing worrying in the past and be contented with something simple.
We have something to learn from your grandma.
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