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Katie Lau

As a pathologist, Feng Chi-shun would appreciate Nietzsche's adage: that which does not kill us makes us stronger. The notion perhaps informs how he escaped a hardscrabble existence in Diamond Hill, where he grew up during the 1950s and 60s.
It was a rough neighbourhood, but Feng, 63, cherishes his formative years in one of the city's most backward squatter areas at a time when manufacturing had yet to take off in Hong Kong.
'During those 10 years I grew from a boy into a man and they made me what I am today. I wouldn't trade it in for anything,' he says.
Feng chronicles his experiences in Diamond Hill: Memories of growing up in a Hong Kong squatter village. Launched this week by independent publisher Blacksmith Books, it's a rare account of life from inside the slums.
Yet Feng came from affluence, although his recollections of his early years are hazy. When his family fled Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, before the communist takeover, they kept some of their wealth and lived in a two-storey town house on Humphreys Avenue when he was a toddler.
But it all changed after his grandfather lost a fortune speculating in gold. The family was forced to relocate and his father had to work as a teacher. Soon after, his mother died of meningitis. 
He was so young, it was all 'a bit of a blur'. When Feng was about seven his father remarried and they moved with his three older sisters to a two-bedroom house in a Diamond Hill squatter area. Space was tight but the family was far better off than most of their neighbours.
'We were middle-class in a poor neighbourhood filled with shacks and small huts built in narrow spaces between  houses,' Feng says.
The sprawling community of Diamond Hill stretched from Sheung Yuen Ling in the north to Tai Hom Village in the west, and buzzed with businesses ranging from gambling dens and dai pai dong to small workshops that often operated next to vegetable gardens. Also within walking distance were sprawling country parks and the Shaw Brothers' Tai Koon film studio.
'There was no better place to spend your childhood, with so many different places to explore every day, and it was all free,' Feng says. 'Being poor doesn't mean you can't have fun.' 
A keen amateur writer, Feng says he had a sudden urge two years ago to recount his coming of age, but as more than an exercise in nostalgia. He hopes his anecdotes will also convey history from the perspective of ordinary people.
'While I described what I went through, I also wrote about how people lived back then and I hope these stories will strike a chord with them,' Feng says. 
He recalls key events such as  the Shek Kip Mei Fire of 1953 - 'We watched it happening on the other side and had to evacuate in the middle of the night' - and water rationing in 1963. The shortage  was so serious, housewives only bought food items that required little water for preparation and some people travelled to Macau just to have a shower.
'Writing has long been a hobby of mine and I find this kind of writing very relaxing compared with the scientific reports I have to do for work,' Feng says.
He completed his first draft in three months, but spent another year polishing the manuscript. 
'It was as if it happened just yesterday. The roads I walked, the adventures I had and the people I met and got to know,' he says.
As a boy, Feng helped his sisters supplement the family income by assembling plastic flowers. 
Feng was no model teenager, though. In an area where drunks and gangsters hung out on street corners, he soon learned to swear, gamble and smoke. Another friend - his partner in crime - introduced him to sleazy joints in Kowloon's Walled City. 
'We were not as sheltered and protected as kids today,' he says with a laugh. 'My parents weren't strict with me. How could they be when there were bad influences everywhere once you walked out  the door?'  
He and other boys patrolled the streets, got into fights and sneaked into unguarded studio lots to gaze at the stars and turned discarded items into playthings. 
'We played with bottle caps and turned my father's discarded razors into toy weapons,' he says.
But Feng never got into real trouble. 'I was not gutsy enough,' he says. 'And I was streetwise enough to stay out of trouble. 
'My three sisters couldn't go out because they were girls. They couldn't do the things that I did, and I feel girls must have had missed out on a lot of things.' 
He was an indifferent scholar until the arrival of a pretty new form teacher transformed him into a high-achiever. 'I became very motivated because I wanted to impress her,' he says.
There was another driving force. 'Some didn't care about the future, but I did. I wanted to escape poverty. Back then study was not about the pursuit of knowledge, but about getting out of the slums,' he says. 
With a constant cacophony from the streets, odd odours occasionally wafting from a distillery and a sewage tank, it was hard to concentrate. 
'I would get some sleep right after school so I could to stay up until three in the morning to study in the quiet,' he recalls. 
'The community spirit was not strong, although I wasn't aware of it then,' he says. 'For most people, it was just a temporary home, a stepping stone until something better came along.' 
Feng left the squatter village at 19, when he was admitted to study medicine at the University of Hong Kong, which also gave him a place in a dormitory. He went on to train in pathology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, married and had three children. 
Feng returned to Hong Kong in 1986 after his marriage failed and served in the Health Department for more than a decade before carving out a successful career in private practice. 'Life has been good to me,' Feng says, adding that he owes much to his experiences in Diamond Hill. 'The most important thing I learned from those years was to work hard. It's made me what I am today.'
Even so, Feng says he didn't get too sentimental when the last squatter huts in Diamond Hill were demolished in 2000. Everyone he knew had left and it had changed beyond recognition when he returned from the US.
'I don't romanticise life there because the living conditions were indeed horrible. Not all old things are worth keeping,' he says. 'Although it's not there any more, it will live forever in our memory, in our hearts.'



Diamond in the rough