Weekend Reading – Diamond Hill – Growing Up in a Hong Kong Squatter Village

The excellent small Hong Kong publisher Blacksmith Books has published an interesting small volume of memoir by Feng Chi-shun – Diamond Hill: Memories of Growing Up in a Hong Kong Squatter Village. Diamond Hill, up by Kowloon Tong, was one of Hong Kong’s poorest squatter villages and Feng spent a decade there from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s. As usual no review but it is a useful memoir particularly given the success of Martin Booth’s 2004 memoir Gweilo, which, though enjoyable, seemed to me a bit suspect given the apparently amazingly detailed recollections of a very young boy.

Publishers blurb below but given my current interest in all things criminal in China before the war I was interested in one story Feng tells that I hadn’t heard before. In the 1950s there was still a fear of kidnapping in Hong Kong, a crime that had been a major scourge of pre-war Shanghai and elsewhere across China. Apparently kidnappers would offer a kidnapped child a whole chicken to eat and then watch which part of the chicken the child reached for: if the neck then a large ransom would be asked for; if the breast then a smaller one; and if the leg first then the child was probably from a poor family and might as well be got rid of. So remember if you’re ever kidnapped in China and then given a chicken always eat the neck if you want your kidnappers to bother keeping  you alive.

“This memoir of a native son of a Kowloon-side squatter village – the first book ever on Diamond Hill, in either Chinese or English – presents the early days of a life shaped by a now-extinct community. Penned by a high-achieving Hong Kong professional, Feng Chi-shun’s sharp recollections of his humble upbringing contain warmth, humour, and an abundance of insights into a low-income Hong Kong neighbourhood that no longer exists – but remains close to the hearts of many who lived there.”