Wat Wai Chun

Several generations of Wat Wai Chun's family had all been Cheung Chau residents. Her grandmother was married in 16 and was widowed in 18. Wat Wai Chun's father was a posthumous child. The Wats lived in a self-owned, 2-storey apartment in Hok Loo Lane near Hing Lung Back Street. The ground floor was on lease and the Wats lived on the upper floor, which accommodated two rooms and a living room. The parents occupied one room. Wat Wai Chun liked sleeping on the bed in the living room with her grandmother. The apartment now had been heightened and modified. The Wats used to have 9 children, but only 4 managed to survive from early death. Wat Wai Chun came second in 1923. She had an elder brother, a younger brother and a younger sister, who was born in late 1936.

Her father was 2nd Commander of a Kuomingtang Army in Guangzhou when Chen Zhi Tang governed Guangdong Province. Her mother was in the trade of mountain weeds, which her family ordered from the peasants on Lautau Island. Mountain weeds were grown by season in saline water and used for burning. The peasants made timely deliveries of the mountain weeds to Cheung Chau by boat. The Wats stored the mountain weeds they bought in their ancestral house. Other boatmen turned to them in Cheung Chau by boat to buy the weeds. On the 1st and 15th day of the lunar calendar, when the tides were high, the boatmen fixed their boats on shallow waters with thick ropes. When the tides were gone, the boats were stranded on the beach. Then the boatmen lifted the boats with wooden blocks for cleaning, and dried the bulks of the boats by burning mountain weeds. Tree oil was applied on the bulks to prevent the bulks from being attached by mussels and from being damaged by water fleas. When still a child, Wat Wai Chun went to school together with her elder and younger brothers. Her younger sister was looked after by her grandmother and maid. Her mother and a worker took care of the weeds business. After Guangzhou had fallen, her father was exempted from going to war thanks to his status as an only son, and he returned to Cheung Chau to unite with the family and take care of the business.          

Before the Japanese army landed Hong Kong in 1941, Wat Wai Chun went to a middle school in Argyle Street in Mongkok to further her studies as there was no middle school in Cheung Chau, and boarded at her cousin's home in Cheung Sha Wan Road in Sham Shui Po. She would return home whenever she heard an alarm on the way to school. Her cousin's husband worked as a fireman on Hong Kong Island. After the fall of Kowloon, he had his teammates picked up her cousin, nephew and the maid and moved them to Hong Kong Island. Wat Wai Chun went living with them too. When the four of them walked to Tsim Sha Tsui to cross the harbour by boat, they were intercepted by the Japanese soldiers, who came from the Kowloon-Canton Railway and stabbed young British soldiers but left the Chinese unharmed. The four of them were so scared that they threw all their luggage away and lay prone on the ground. They then moved on to Peking Road and took shelter at a barber shop with a broken door over the night. The next day, they followed the teammates of her cousin's husband to the dwelling place of her cousin's husband located on Hong Kong Island. They ran into many Japanese soldiers on the way and had to nod at them. Lots of shying and dodging were done to get to the place of her cousin's husband.

Not too long, her father hired a fishing boat and went to Hong Kong Island, and located Wat Wai Chun and her cousin's family. Afte that, the fishing boat located and picked up her elder brother, who was studying at King's College, together with one or two of his classmates who also lived in Cheung Chau. Wat Wai Chun's mother was terrified and worried then. She often pursued news about her children from others. She sufferred mental disorders after hearing that only 20% of the Hong Kong population had survived the Japanese massacre. She at last died from liver failure. WC Chun's father later joined the guerilla, and his four children parted again. Her elder brother went to the mainland while she and her younger brother and sister stayed with their maternal grandmother in Cheung Chau. During the Japanese rule, together with the bigger girls in her neighbourhood, Wat Wai Chun often took a fishing boat to Canal Road Flyover in Wan Chai, where they bought rice and stowed it in a flour bag to be stealthed to Cheung Chau for sale.

During the Japanese rule, Wat Wai Chun and her younger sister worked at Mui Wo School upon their uncle's referral. The principal and teachers had left the school for long, and Wat Wai Chun was the only teacher then. Her younger sister helped care about the kids. The campus was small. The front part of the campus was the classroom while the rear part was the dormitory for Wat Wai Chun and her sister. It came with a kitchen. About 20 students studied there then. Compound education was implemented, with 3 or 4 different classes having their lessons in the same classroom at the same time. The school paid them with mildewing dried little fish.

Wat Wai Chun bought rice from Hong Kong Island and prepared porridge with sweet potatoes and grinded corns, which barely filled her stomach after all. In that period of time very few people remained in Mui Wo. Some Cheung Chau islanders remained where they were due to their old ages, while the young all left. Wat Wai Chun's elder brother and his classmates from Cheung Chau went to the mainland to save the country. Her uncle had a fish stall that supplied salt and food for the fishermen to go catching fish. The fishermen used the salt to preserve the fresh fish and handed the harvests to her uncle. They were then sold by maternal grandmother. As Wat Wai Chun was not paid for teaching at Mui Wo School, and because she was looking for a new environment, she had taught at that school for just couple of months. She then was admitted by Tung Wah Hospital as student nurse. Her younger sister returned to Cheung Chau to be taken care of by her nominal aunt and her father.

Wat Wai Chun applied for Tung Wah Hospital's student nurse in around 1944. The written exam comprised Chinese writing and Mathematics. Many girls applied, and 10 or so were admitted at last. Student nurses had to be trained in wards. They learned the basic knowledge in classes. Nurses taught about care and attention whereas doctors taught knowledge in medicine and surgery. The 4-year programme consisted of 3 years' as a student nurse and the last year in the Obstetrics. Internal exams were held by Tung Wah Hospital's Nursing School. Students might sit for public exams such as the Certificate of Education Examination, which Wat Wai Chun sat for in 1948.  The loving and caring uncles and aunts working at Tung Wah Hospital (i.e., the supportive staff at the Hospital) helped with the corpses as they knew that the student nurses were too young and timid to wrap the corpses.

During the Japanese Occupation, Tung Wah Hospital basically had enough nurses for working three shifts each day. After the war, Wat Wai Chun's work was light. She was assisted by assistant nurses upon her graduation and promotion. During the Japanese rule, Tung Wah Hospital had a deluge of patients. Many of them were men and some were children. Patients generally suffered from malnutrition, thinness and weakness, or pellagra（commonly known as rough-skin disease, a kind of malnutrition). Patients suffering from beriberi had swollen and rotten legs on which worms proliferated.  Tung Wah Hospital soaked their legs in dressing buckets with lysol, and then cleansed them and dressed them with medicines, and dressed the infected area with cotton cloths as the last step.

During the war, the hospital was short of dressing materials such as cotton and cloth. Tung Wah Hospital reused the materials after disinfection with boiling water. They treated nutrient deficient patients with liquid medicine. The patients were provided with a little meat and little salted fish by The Asia Provisions. Many patients died in that period, and the patients were reluctant to leave the hospital because they were not fully recovered and they enjoyed meal provisions in the hospital. Tung Wah Hospital first wrote down the foods needed and had them sent to the hospital from The Asia Provisions. Tung Wah Hospital settled the bill every month. The hospital offered 30 kg of rice to every nurse, who had to cook her own food. Wat Wai Chun's maternal grandmother sometimes delivered seafood to Wat Wai Chun for her to eat with cooked rice. The rice and food were kept in food cups, and were reheated with bamboo steamers in Tung Wah Hospital's kitchen during lunch hour, and were served in the canteen. Wat Wai Chun's salary was 30 dollars per month at that time, which provided for herself and her younger sister.

During the Japanese rule, Wat Wai Chun's younger sister had lived in Cheung Chau. On the day Hong Kong was attacked by the Japanese army, her father was selling vegetables on the road, and, right after he learned about the Japanese occupation, left everything behind and rushed home. In those days all the main doors were shut. Door were opened when it appeared to be more peaceful. Wat Wai Chun's younger sister later followed Wat Wai Chun to Mui Wo Primary School (Mui Mo School), where she helped with the chores and started to study and recite texts with the help of Wat Wai Chun. Mui Wo School was situated on top of a hill with a stream in the front. Besides, there were stone steps leading to the house of a friend of their mother’s brother at the seaside. Wat Wai Chun's younger sister spent lots of her leisure around there. After she got back to Cheung Chau, the Wats sold their old house and moved to a smaller self-purchased house located at Tai San Back Street, Wan Mei, Cheung Chau. As Wat Wai Chun's maternal grandmother and mother passed away, and because her father was often away from home, her younger sister had no one to count on. Some Japanese gave out porridge, corns or little red beans on the open ground near Cheung Chau Theatre every day. Her younger sister used to collect the food in a queue. She also went to her mother’s brother's house to spend time with her cousin who was about her age.

Later on, Wat Wai Chun's father sent her younger sister to stay with her nominal aunt. Her nominal aunt had strips for growing vegetables in Sai Wan and had a better living standard. Before Hong Kong's fall, her nominal aunt used to transport such vegetables as radish and peanuts by boat to the vegetables stalls in Cheung Chau for sale, and at the same time collect some stools from a few families as fertilisers for the vegetables she grew. She sent food to Wat Wai Chun's younger sister as well.  During the Japanese rule, Wat Wai Chun's younger sister was held responsible for protecting the crops belonging to her nominal aunt by doing the job of a scarecrow. She also did weeding, carrying buckets of water, disposing of urines, etc, leading a life that was by no means easy. Afterwards the Japanese soldiers took away her nominal aunt's crops and cattle, and even wounded her husband, causing her to suffer from mental disorders. Her husband passed away afterwards. Wat Wai Chun's nominal aunt was in discord with her adopted son. They even fought with each other. As a result, Wat Wai Chun's younger sister went back home.

At that time Wat's house at Tai San Back Street, Wan Mei, Cheung Chau was sub-leased to a Hoklo, who did fishing for a living. His wife made the hemp cords used for fishing. When Wat's younger sister was home again, the tenants' child was just born. Wat's younger sister helped with looking after their child and making hemp cords in exchange for food. Later when Wat's father returned home, he found this youngest child was in such poor conditions. He learned that she wore the same clothes all year round, so he took her to Hong Kong Island to find Wat.  Their father firstly took this youngest child to the barber, and then went to Tung Wah Hospital for Wat, and asked Wat to pick up her younger sister up at the barber shop. Wat's younger sister was arranged to live in a vacant unit near to a friend of Wat Wai Chun. The tenant of the unit had gone to the mainland. Wat lived in the nurse quarters of Tung Wah Hospital, and entrusted her friend to take care of her younger sister. At that time her younger sister was about 6 or 7 years old. Wat taught her sister to scrape corns and cook it into food.

During the Japanese rule, Wat Wai Chun's elder brother planned to mobilize a large number of people to participate in the defensive work in Changsha, Hunan. He once persuaded Wat Wai Chun to go with him. She did not follow him because her job at Tung Wah Hospital was stable. She had lost contact with her elder brother since he went to Changsha. In 1946, he returned to Hong Kong and nosed into news about his family, and eventually found Wat Wai Chun at Tung Wah Hospital. During the Japanese rule, Wat Wai Chun's fifth younger brother went to Chang Feng Middle School in Guangzhou while her younger sister had lived with her until peace was restored in Hong Kong. After peace was restored, her younger sister studied Grades 1 and 2 at Sheng Kung Hui St. Matthew's Primary School which was behind Tung Wah Hospital. She was around 10 or 11 years old then, a bit older than her classmates. In 1947 summer, her elder brother took her to Guangzhou and lived together at the place of their elder brother's wife and her wife. Younger sister studied writing sentences and essays and arithmetic from this sister-in-law at home. She was promoted to Primary Grade 4. Before the first semester ended, her brother's child was born, and she dropped out from school to look after the baby.

In October 1949, China's sovereignty changed. The fifth brother left home quietly and joined the army before the communist came into power. In 1950, elder brother's second daughter was born. The fifth brother came back and asked the younger sister to go to school as she was not young. She went to study the second semester of Grade 4 at a school near her home. She stopped going to school again due to home removal. Later elder brother's family moved back to Zhu Hai Bei Road, Guangzhou. Younger sister went on her study in Grades 5 and 6. She graduated from primary school in 1952, and had studied junior secondary levels at Zhi Xin Girls School (currently named Zhi Xin Secondary School) for 3 years from 1953 to 1955. She then went to Guangzhou Nursery Teachers’ Training School until graduation. In 1968, influenced by the Soviet thoughts and the education of the Chinese Communist Party in the early period, she decided to answer the Party's call and work in the strange Hainan Island, which was developed by researchers and professors of the country. She was assigned to work at a local kindergarten. Her life in Hainan Island was good. She founded her family there and worked there till retirement. Now her children (nephew and niece) still lived in Hainan Island.