Alter-Globo in Hong Kong

Iwas born in Hong Kong in 1956. My family had come from Guangdong in the early 1940s—my father was an artisan, making small ornaments and the like. He came from the city of Foshan, which was known over centuries for its porcelain. In Hong Kong, he did several brief spells in factories, but couldn’t endure factory discipline; he loved his freedom as a craftsman. My mother worked alongside him in their workshop at our house. They didn’t earn much: my three brothers and I sometimes had to walk the streets with my father selling souvenirs he had made. We lived in Kowloon, but I went to a Catholic secondary school—though I’m not a religious person—on Hong Kong island.

People were divided in their attitudes towards China—though not the Hong Kong bourgeoisie, who of course loathed the ccp. But in the labour movement, there was a deep split between Communist-led unions and those run by the kmt, which lasted up until the early 70s. The hostility between the two peaked in 1956, when the kmt trade unions physically attacked ccp unionists. The ccp had extensive influence among workers: the ‘Socialist Fatherland’ was seen as a counterweight to colonial rule. But then in 1967 the Maoist pro-ccp union called a general strike that no workers supported, and then in the wake of its failure launched an ‘urban warfare’ campaign. This was a bitter disappointment to many workers who had been dedicated to the cause, and who paid a high price for the ccp-led unions’ desire to emulate the Gang of Four. The popular saying at the time was that they wanted a big strike, Da bagong, but instead it was Dahua bagong, a big exaggeration.

I was a schoolboy during this period, but two things in particular made a strong impression on me. I remember seeing long queues at the post office in the early 1960s: people were sending rice, clothes, daily necessities back to their relatives in China because of the famine. And in 1967 and 68 there were stories of people beaten to death during the Cultural Revolution, and their bodies floating into Hong Kong harbour from the Pearl River.

British rule in the postwar era can be divided into two periods either side of 1971. In the earlier period, there was a form of spatial apartheid—the Tai Ping Shan area was restricted to Westerners—and conditions were much more oppressive: working hours were long, wages low and strike activity ruthlessly suppressed by the colonial government. National oppression took a very visible form: nearly all high-ranking posts were occupied by Brits, and English was the only official language; at school, we would be refused permission to go to the bathroom if we didn’t ask in English.