When I look at this photo, I want to cry.
It’s not because I’m appalled by the living conditions or the monotonous architecture. Or the fact that many people have no choice but to live in these buildings. (In fact I’m not appalled by any of this. I love the architecture.)
When I say I want to cry, it’s because these public housing estates represent a miracle like no other.
In the early 1950s, Chinese refugees poured into British Hong Kong by foot, boat, or swimming across the Shenzhen River. Once safely in the British colony, the refugees built shanties constructed from corrugated metal and cardboard–not an ideal shelter anywhere, especially during the typhoon season.
Then on Christmas Eve in 1953, a devastating fire swept through Shep Kip Mei in Kowloon, leaving 53,000 refugees completely homeless. The fire blazed into the early hours of Christmas Day. (December 25th hasn’t exactly been an auspicious date in Hong Kong history. It was also the day, in 1941, when the Japanese invaded the territory, occupying it until the end of the war.)
But back to the Shek Kip Mei fire. The government, headed by Alexander Grantham, built public housing blocks in 1953 to resettle the displaced refugees. The government also spearheaded a drive to settle all shanty dwellers. The public housing boom started in the early 1960s, around the time my mom first visited Hong Kong.
When she arrived in Hong Kong in the summer of 1962, she said no one believed the government could actually resettle all those refugees. They kept pouring in. As things in China fell apart with programs like The Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Hong Kong seemed like the Promised Land.
So as the public housing estates sprouted up across the territory, like the one in this photo, the refugees settled into fire- and flood-protected structures, even if they were tiny (some only 300 square feet for five people). Anything had to be better than those shanties.
I spent a lot of time in the ground floor businesses of public housing estates, shopping and eating. Many estates housed Chinese fast food restaurants like Cafe de Coral, Maxim’s, or Fairwood. The public housing estates in many ways were like small satellite towns, with a post office, hardware store, noodle and rice shops, clothing shops, and wet markets. When the weather grew oppressively hot and humid, or damp and cool during Hong Kong’s three weeks of winter, nothing mattered more than convenience.
Still, as I rode the bus from my home in the New Territories to the old Kai Tak airport, I always gasped after leaving Tate’s Cairn Tunnel. When we rounded a corner near Lok Fu in Kowloon, shanties covered a nearby hill like shingles on a roof. This was more than 40 years after the Shek Kip Mei fire. I’ve heard those structures are now gone and the people in them have been resettled. Housing is still in a shortage and many conditions are less than stellar.
But without the public housing estates, Hong Kong never would have come of age in the 60s, marking a place for itself in international commerce and tourism.
In the mid 1960s, me and my older brother used to fly kites off of these similar estates in Sham Shui Po. I don’t remember ever living in these places as our parents built a pigeon farm in Lam Tei, Tuenmun, in around 1962. I was 4 years old. Anytime a typhoon approaches in the Territories, I, being the youngest, would always get bussed out to the safety of the city, my Grandma’s tiny apartment in Sham Shui Po. I would be like roaming around these estate buildings sometimes alone(!) just to watch older kids fly kites. Yes, I was only 6-7 years old! I now live in Toronto.
Thanks for the great memories!
Thank you for posting this article, I stumbled across it because I was looking for a photo exactly like this, and yes I wanted to cry too because I grew up in one of these estates in the early 80s. Fond memories, great photo, I’m using it for my desktop wallpaper.
i don’t remember, but there were several of these estates built beyond boundary street. the parents of an american girl from my class were missionaries and they held sunday school on top of one of these blocks (no lifts). her little sister, a blondie, didn’t like being touched on the head like a lucky charm – who could blame her? the block that has been preserved as a hostel and museum is in shek kip mei, lot 41 (not wong tai sin) – i wonder how far along the project has got 🙂
http://www.housingauthority.gov.hk/hdw/en/aboutus/events/community/heritage/about.html
They probably heard the airplanes fly overhead during Sunday school. That would be quite an experience, I’m sure! I’d love to see the Shek Kip Mei museum. It makes sense that it would be there, since the whole public housing initiative started with Shek Kip Mei. I never really spent much time in Shek Kip Mei, although I did ride the bus past there sometimes. People still talked about the 1953 fire, so that’s how I always remembered SKM.
I remember these first resettlement blocks so well, painted in all the colours of the rainbow. they deteriorated quite fast and some were replaced, within a 20 year span, with other taller but better equipped buildings. i read somewhere that one last standing block in wong tai sin is to be turned into a museum of sorts. wah fu estate was the first mega complex to be built, we had a 5 min infomertial on tv extolling its virtues after inauguration – 68/69. housing has always been a major issue in hong kong – you pay so much for so little. no wonder so many people i know who stayed in hong kong moved out to sai kung, kam tin or discovery bay, a few extra square feet for your investment 🙂
Was that rainbow estate at Choi Hung? My roommate at CU lived in Wah Fu with three generations. I ate at their flat once. It’s really amazing that kids could study in such loud, cramped conditions. No wonder Kai Tak became a favorite place to study–at night when few flights were scheduled.
Sounds as if those in charge of resettlement in Haiti might want to rip a page from this bit of Hong Kong history, Susan. The Chinese can often be quite efficient about solving a problem.
Thanks! Poor Haiti. A friend just came back from there and it looks like nothing has been repaired. Their corruption is killing them. Chicago has had a disastrous history of public housing. You’d think it wouldn’t be so difficult!