Cha Guo Stories, Part II: A Great-Grandmother’s Quietly Remarkable Life

This is the second in a series of stories looking at the protagonists in Cha Guo, an upcoming documentary by Daphné Mandel and Guy Bertrand that focuses on the people of Kwu Tung North. Read the first story here.

Po Po’s eyesight is not what it was. But with her door open onto the alleyway, she can hear the sounds of the village: the rattle of a trolley as it trundles by, the greeting of a neighbour with an errand to run, one of the volunteering ladies at the Lutheran church who comes proffering homegrown vegetables, pausing to sit for tea and a chat. And mixed in with that is the sweet aroma of the blossoms on the fence nearby, along with the occasional waft of a slightly sour smell of vinegar from the soya sauce manufacturer around the corner, its big brown earthenware jars lying in the yard.

Well into her 90s, everyone calls her Po Po (po4 po4 婆婆) — Cantonese for grannie — but it says Lai Wan-chun on her ID card.  She likes a bit of company as the fan on the wall gently turns in the humid summer heat. Another day in the village of Kwu Tung. Po Po’s home is just one storey, as are the others down this alleyway. She has lived here for decades; what was once makeshift construction and metal sheeting has been made more permanent. These days, her Indonesian helper, Anna Daru, helps to keep her active and entertained.

Lai is animated today – she has guests who have come from outside the village. “You all have a drink? You must eat. Here, have some,” she says, offering snacks. Once everyone is settled, she begins to speak about her life. It gradually becomes apparent what a desperately hard life it has been – that of a Hakka woman trying not to starve in the Guangdong countryside, or later in the 1960s, hauling rocks on the building sites of Hong Kong. Now that she is in her twilight years, sitting on her sofa, smiling as she encourages us all to partake of her plate of snacks, it is possible that despite the challenges that come with age, the past decade or two have been the most comfortable years she’s ever had.

Lai’s ID card was issued in 1957. Her birth date states simply the year – 1931. Perhaps even that is a guess: she says she’s 96. There’s no birth date because she doesn’t know it. She was born into a poor family in Danshui, Huiyang, a rural area in Guangdong about 50 kilometres northeast of Kwu Tung.  They gleaned what they could from the land. At the age of three she was sold to another family.

“They were so poor, they were starving,” she says of her family. “There was so much turmoil at this time, and I was sold to a family called Wong. They treated me like a daughter. But I was the oldest and I got all the hardships.”

Behind Lai is an old framed black and white photograph of a woman. It’s her mother. Even though she was sold to another family, she would return to her original home for the Lunar New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival, remaining there for a few days before being sent back. “It was like going from here to Sheung Shui – the same distance,” she says. Just a few kilometres.

While the boys in her birth family were sent to school, the girls were sold.  In her adopted family there was still insufficient food and work from a young age was gruelling. “I carried buckets of rice, water, vegetables. My legs were permanently damaged by the weight,” she says of a childhood out in the fields.  By age 10 she was at the stove cooking for the family. “Fish, rice, pickled sour vegetables, everything. I grew the vegetables I cooked,” she says.  And while she learned these practical skills her lack of schooling rendered her illiterate.

She stops her life story momentarily to check on her guests.  Do we have tea? Is it time for us to try another piece of her cha guo – yellow glutinous strips made with rice flour and water and steamed? She passes the plate around. 

Lai’s story jumps to herself aged 30. Newly married, but an old bride for that era. Bride and groom knew one another before, both poor, a suggestion by the village matchmaker. Her mother told her: “This is a good boy because he is frugal.”

Tell us about the wedding, we ask. “I’ve forgotten,” she replies.

The groom had a sister who was making milk tea in a cha chaan teng in Hong Kong. The salary was low but for Lai it meant a possible escape from the ever-present threat of starvation and the harsh manual labour. Hong Kong might have prospects. “We walked to the mountains,” she recalls of the route to slip through the border. “We were in the mountains for two nights [before reaching the sea]. There were so many people, two large boats, with more than 50 people on each one. We were all helping each other. It cost 12 renminbi to make the crossing.”

In 1950s Hong Kong, squatter huts clung to hillsides, easily washed away in the summer typhoons or burned down in fires sparked by a kerosene lamp.  Lai and her husband headed to Cha Kwo Ling near Lei Yue Mun in East Kowloon, a historic Hakka village that pre-dates British colonial Hong Kong but these days is one of the last squatter settlements. Lai’s husband, Tsang Kam-sing, became a seaman when their first child, a son, was three years old.  She remembers standing at the dock to say goodbye to her husband one time. She recalls a large naval ship with many men in uniform on board.

Like generations of Hakka women before her, Lai had to rely on herself when her husband was overseas. She would work in a string of small factories and then with other Hakka women on the building sites, breaking rocks and carrying rubble in large baskets. They would sing together while they worked, and cry, she says, from pain and exhaustion in the evenings. The salary was a pittance and she needed to buy food and pay a woman to look after her growing family.

A stint in a small early public housing flat at Shek Kip Mei followed. Then she heard about the village of Kwu Tung, she says, from someone who had lived here a long time. She remembers thinking the houses were dilapidated when she first arrived. Very cheap, very small, made of corrugated metal. Plastic sheeting prevented the rain coming in. The metal would rust; the residents were poor. But she could grow her own vegetables. It promised self-sufficiency after the hardship she had endured most of her life. 

Lai worked on construction sites all over Hong Kong; she remembers working on a building site at the former Kai Tak Airport. She continued this kind of work well into her 60s when she stopped to help out with her grandchildren. She had two daughters and three sons. They all went to primary school but poverty precluded them from much further study. 

Despite the hardships, and with her husband away for years at a time, Kwu Tung became her stable community. “Everyone was poor,” she says, but years-long friendships were built.  Some of her neighbours had also come from her hometown. Nowadays, many of them have moved to Tin Shui Wai and Yuen Long, as have many of the younger residents. Her husband died when he was 86. Lai now has nine grandchildren and is a great-grandmother of four.

She falls silent.  In another corner of the room is a woven square basket, made, as it turns out, by her. “Talk about your weaving,” says her helper as she puts the large basket on Lai’s lap. The animation returns. “I learned how to do it myself when I was about 60 and made it out of old plastic waste,” Lai explains.  “Look, I put wire around here, it’s very sturdy, this one’s lasted 30 years. Four corners – it has very tight weaving so you can use it to carry anything. I gave my sister one and she used it to carry rice.”

The last time Lai went to her coastal hometown was when she was 92. She won’t go again.  There are dragon boats there, she says, just like in Sha Tin. These days, her hands are too tired for weaving.  She no longer kneels to honour her ancestors; instead she stands by the door to do it. 

At the Lutheran church in the village, community activities help offset loneliness for the remaining elderly residents of Kwu Tung. On Mondays, there are art classes, and on Wednesdays there are workout exercises with a HK$10 lunch. Lai takes part each week. 

Behind her on the shelf is a black and white photograph of a middle-aged woman, smart and serious for the studio session. It’s Lai at age 60. Beside the framed photograph are some vibrant felt-tip drawings. One is a colourful butterfly.  A gift from a relative? 

“No,” beams Lai. “That’s mine.”