How rugby has given ‘at-risk’ youth a new life in Hong Kong housing estates
Operation Breakthrough run by current and former police officers continues to grow as it provides youngsters with a sense of life purpose through participation in sport
On Christmas Eve in 1953, massive fires swept through the shanty towns of Shek Kip Mei in the heart of Kowloon. Within 10 minutes, more than 50,000 people had lost their homes. Two people died.
For months through a brutal Hong Kong winter, people lived in the streets, surviving on handouts and the Red Cross.
This precipitated huge change. Temporary resettlement housing became public housing on a large scale. The first residents moved into 100-square-foot flats in 1954.
“There are three million people in Hong Kong and two million are refugees and they live in anthills, sampans and on the streets,” a pucker colonial police sergeant tells William Holden in the 1963 classic, The World of Suzy Wong.
Today, more than 3.4 million people live in housing estates, 46 per cent of Hong Kong’s population.
