In the old days, that rice would have been grown in our own fields. Did you know that before the British came, Happy Valley was a rice paddy? The British banned rice growing as a first order of business and forbade the people to cultivate it. By the time Yim-Fong came to Wong Nai Chung, the rice paddies were long gone, and horses ran in the valley, as they still do now. I’ll take you to the Jockey Club for dim sum next week if you are not too busy.

Marrying into Wong Nai Chung Village must have been quite a shock for Yim-Fong, who was a daughter of the little salt pan village Yim Tin Tsai. Her father had met Cheung and his father when he was selling salt, and the Cheungs—father and son—were doing quarry work up at North Point. Those were the days when the Public Works Department knocked down mountains with impunity and poured the rock into the sea, to take land from Tin Hau and make the new colony prosperous and strong. And also, bigger. There’s a land shortage in Hong Kong because it is so small and so mountainous. You know that because you flew in through Kai Tak Airport. Did the wings not shave the mountains? Did the belly not touch the rooftops? The Public Works Department had a few lorries and backhoes to help them with their work, but the main instruments of their work were human. That was the kind of work Cheung’s father did as a quarry worker. We used to call them coolies in those days. Any Chinese man who did physical labour was a coolie, though there were almost as many different kinds of labour as there were Chinese men. Anyway, Grandfather Ng was at North Point to sell a shipment of salt. He saw Cheung and his father on their way to work in the morning and thought they looked strong and lucky. He was probably actively on the lookout for a husband for his daughter by then. In those days marriages were arranged, and a lot of responsibility fell on parents to choose the right spouses for their children. When he was young, Cheung was so handsome! Like his son Tak-Wing in the next generation. Imagine Grandfather Ng checking him out. Ha ha, what I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall. Or the cliff, heh heh.