“Wow, it’s like all these old memories are flooding back,” said Chan King Lai, who moved into Ming Wah Dai Ha in 1965 when she was in primary three. Before that, she was living with her parents, brother and grandmother in a tong lau on Mercury Street in North Point, occupying a subdivided flat that the two sisters describe as being no bigger than a shower room. “The small space was sandwiched between the kitchen on the left and the shower room on the right. It was like stepping into a pond every time I entered or left the room as I had to go through the shower room to get in and out.” With the same memories and mental images, the two sisters took turns describing the room as measuring only about 50 square feet, with “one sewing machine, a 3-foot cabinet, one table, and one bunk bed.” The first thing that came to their minds about their old home was the sewing machine, which was part of their mother’s stock-in-trade, and it remained an important production tool for the family even after their move into Ming Wah Dai Ha.

When their father was allotted a unit in Ming Wah Dai Ha, the six family members happily moved into Block C. “We were on the second floor, and the flat was a so-called ‘ground-dragging’ unit.” Ming Wah Dai Ha was built on a hillside, and the bottom of the building was shaped like a step. Although their home was on the second floor, there were no other units below the terrace, which was just above the stairs, and the residents called it “dragging the ground.” The unit was more than 100 square feet, much more spacious than the subdivided flat they had lived in before, and the corridor increased the amount of usable area even more. Outside the metal gates, they played with trading cards, marbles, and toy swords. They would also play hopscotch by drawing grids on the corridor floor with chalk taken from their teachers.

But it was not all fun and games even when school is finished and you have to return home. You got to “clock in” and make some dough. “Mom sewed clothes at home. She’d get two dozen pre-cut fabric strips from the tramways staff dormitory at a time and sew them into shirts.” There was only one sewing machine, but there were lots of other small tasks they could help with at home. The sisters would sit on the floor and make plastic flowers or paint plastic toys. Plastic toys like yellow rubber duckies? “No, but I remember an angel doll with wings!”