Hong Kong Ballet's Paul Tam puts success down to love of art
The executive director of the Hong Kong Ballet tells Vanessa Yung about growing up on a Hong Kong public housing estate, a rude awakening in Canada, his dashed ambitions to be a concert pianist and how he channelled them into a career in arts administration.
I was a bit of a late bloomer. I didn't pick up the piano until I was 13. My sister was taking piano lessons and I thought it sounded pretty good, so I started to take lessons as well. I progressed quickly and, within three years, got myself through grade eight. After that, my family emigrated to Canada and there I continued to pursue my music and arts interests. There's not a lot of art DNA in my family: my dad was a businessman and my mom is not very artistic. For me to pursue art was a big surprise to my family.
My dad fled to Hong Kong from Foshan in the early '50s, before the borders were closed, with little more than the clothes on his back. My mom followed suit a few years later. I spent the first four years of my life living in So Uk Estate, a public housing estate in Cheung Sha Wan. People complain about the lack of living space now but, back then, my dad's and my uncle's families, as well as my grandma - 10 people altogether - had to live in the same unit of slightly more than 400 square feet. But life wasn't so bad; dad told me years later that Sam Hui (Koon-kit) lived a few units down from us and that many a time he had to tell the future Canto-pop superstar off for playing his guitar in the corridor too loudly. My dad's restaurant business took off. With the family fortunes turning for the better, we moved to Mei Foo Sun Chuen and much later on to the leafier Mid-Levels. For my primary education, I was sent to Methodist School, in Yau Ma Tei. Not a religious person to this day, my mind would drift away to faraway lands as I was made to listen to Bible teachings during morning assembly. Much to my delight, and that of my parents, my exam results were good enough to earn me a place at Queen Elizabeth School (in Mong Kok).
Transition was rough. Canada is vast and beautiful, and the people gentle and friendly, but my English, which I thought was excellent by the standard of any 17-year-old in Hong Kong, just wasn't good enough to get me going in an English-speaking country. To overcome my deficiency, I started to read carnivorously, overload on sitcoms to pick up the accent and slang, and practise English with myself when I was washing dishes or mopping the floor. (I was fortunate not to develop schizophrenia as a result!) The first year I was at York University, in Toronto, I took economics to please my dad. But the subject just didn't speak to me and I was lazy; I wanted to switch my major to a degree that wouldn't require a lot of reading and writing papers. So the second semester I applied for a transfer and got accepted to the music department, to play piano - but not without a huge fight with my dad; he thought I was going to starve myself to death by taking up music. He almost disowned me. Finally he caved in and I started four years of arts education.
