“People were escaping China in 1944 during the Japanese occupation, including my parents. I was born along the journey, and my father died in a plane bombing before I was born. My mother was only 19 at the time, and a 19-year-old girl with a baby didn’t stand a chance. I was left behind in Guangxi to be raised by someone else, and my mother came to Hong Kong in 1945.
“I came to Hong Kong in 1980, and was already well-experienced in my work as a carpenter—right at a time when society was in need of such talents. In the 1980s, I started to do my own renovation business. I played the erhu while living in the mainland, but I gave it up because I moved to Hong Kong, had a family with three children, and started working in construction and renovation.”