Sampan – Hong Kong
Hong Kong in 1970 was a British colony. It is not today. More than 3,700,000 people lived there at that time. Although most people were Chinese, English was the official language. I went shopping there and had a dress made and sent to the United States. I got to pick out the fabric and the design. I was measured and when it arrived, it fit perfectly. The textile industry at that time was a major industry in Hong Kong.
Education was neither free nor required. The schools which I visited were of three types: Chinese, English, and Anglo-Chinese.
We visited the Chinese University and Hay Ling Chau Leprosarium. The first was interesting; the second was super scary. The Hong Kong Standard newspaper had several articles about the arrival of the World Campus Afloat University.
This is an apartment building in Hong Kong. THREE families were housed in EACH ROOM!!! We were only in Hong Kong for 2 days. Most of the kids did their shopping there because of the cheap prices. Schools and stores were on the first level.
We went into the New Territories to see Red China and we saw the native burial grounds. They bury people and then 7 years later, they dig up the bones and the bones are put in an urn with the skull on top. The urn is placed on a stone on the mountain. Twice a year the relatives go up there with flowers and have a picnic lunch - sort of a dinner with the ancestors. Only the natives or original farmers are allowed to do that!!! They don’t know what they’re going to do with all of the people. Almost half of Hong Kong and the New Territories’ population (in 1970) was under 15 years old. On the main street of Hong Kong, I saw a tank going down the street!!! That was the first time in my life I had ever seen a real one moving! It was a shock!!!!
Across a barbed wire fence were the communal farms of Red China.
SOMETIMES, you say Yes!!! And ought to rethink. A few of us on a small tour bus were offered the opportunity to go into Red China. Of course, we said YES!!! This is a picture of a communal farm in Red China where we were very quickly approached by armed guards. They wanted our cameras, but they (thankfully) did not take them. They escorted us OUT OF RED CHINA!!! That’s as close to Red China as I ever got!!!
I didn’t ride in a rickshaw. The drivers were really nice, but it would have bothered me to watch that poor man run and he’s skinny and we’re fat.
We left Hong Kong on March 5, 1970 at 1700 hours
Arrival March 3, 1970 at 1400 hours.
Hong Kong, on its south shore, is the floating home of thousands of Tanka and Hok Lo – Chinese water people who live their entire lives in junks and sampans. Thousands of these junks, sampans, and miniature house-boat-type craft are huddled together in slum-like squalor. You can walk for great distances, crossing deck after deck littered with cooking utensils, and all of the things necessary for life’s maintenance. Hong Kong itself is a free port. Therefore, all of the products from all over the world can be purchased here more cheaply than in their native countries. It’s a shopping paradise of the world, BUT…we had to remember that articles made in Communist China could not be brought into the United States.