Childhood memories in Sheung Shui

There was a time when Hong Kong was considered China’s window to the world.  In Chinese, it is said that Hong Kong faces the world with China at its back.  If we consider the geography, geopolitics, economy and cultures of Hong Kong, what really provides the window to the world is Hong Kong Island; what has the back of China is Sheung Shui.

Although the border district of Sheung Shui would not be commonly associated with the collective memory of Hong Kong, it is a very important part of my childhood memory.   My early life was inexplicably intertwined with this part of Hong Kong.

Sheung Shui as it is now has had a sea change since my childhood.  Over the years, a closer relationship with mainland China has given it the face of a bustling town with high rise buildings and big shopping malls, transforming its former identity as the provincial back country.  Yet there are still traces of the past, with people rushing in and out of the border carrying luggage.  The scene of legal and illegal traders buying goods is reminiscent of the old market that once prided this neighborhood.

My aunt used to live in a three storied apartment building on No. 1, San Cheung Street.  My own family was city dwellers and we lived in Kowloon, but our extended family lived in the New Territories.  Back then, it was still much of a countryside.  Whenever school holiday came my mother would take me to my aunt’s place to stay for weeks.

When I was young, I had the typical arrogance of city dwellers and I looked down on my home in the New Territories.  Although I loved my family, I was annoyed by everything in that old apartment on San Cheung Street.  The toilet did not flush properly, the shower was a mere trickle of water, and there was always this strange smell in the apartment.  The mosquitoes were endless.  Yet this memory of an old countryside apartment stayed vividly in my memory, because only in this kind of place could children be playing in an eerily spacious apartment at night, after the adults had been asleep, and calling it an “expedition.”

In pitch dark we tiptoed into the living room, passing a long corridor, then to the kitchen.  We went in a single file, with flash in our hands.  The rule was no slippers.  Our bare feet might feel the crawling-by of huge cockroaches or geckos.  My cousin would suddenly turn and whisper, “there’s a mouse!”

In the mornings we rose and my uncle would take us to the street stalls to have rice porridge or noodles as breakfast.  In the afternoon, we might get a treat of shaved ice with red beans at a deli.  Summer after summer, we lived our days worry-free on San Cheung Street.

In 2007, I visited my aunt’s old address for the first time after fifteen years of being away.  I walked around Shek Wu Hui, Sheung Shui’s town center, trying to probe my memory for where the apartment was.  When I saw the casket shop on San Cheung Street, right below my aunt’s old apartment, I knew I found it.  That was the only shop on the street that I could still recognize.

As I approached, I realized that the smell that I did not like in the apartment came from the pungency of the wood used in carving the caskets, along with the traditional incense that was always burning at these types of businesses.  I saw the shop owner at the table chatting with his family, just like yesterday.  I was pulled immediately back to the memory that I thought was long-forgotten.  The smell recalled tears in my eyes.

I slowly walked back to the bus stop to go home, on my way passing by three big shopping malls.  I sighed, seeing that this drive to remake Sheung Shui as the corridor between Hong Kong and Shenzhen will one day bulldoze the very last remnant of my memory.