Chapter 55 Hong Kong has only been "rich" for 30 years?
It’s been a while since I arrived in Hong Kong. One day I chatted with a friend and talked about the rich people in Hong Kong. I remembered that I had a very cute and pitiful childhood 30 years ago, so I said: 1973 At that time, the mainland was still very poor. In the summer of that year, my mother gave me ten yuan, because I saw a lake blue shirt in Wangfujing Department Store. I liked it very much, so I put it on Ten yuan is in my hand, among which, I spent 10 cents on the car ride (Da 1 Road on Chang'an Avenue), and the lake blue Dacron shirt cost 9.8 yuan, and it was another 10 cents to take the car back after buying it. Home, the ten yuan in my hand has just been spent, just enough - in the Mood for Love, there are few evenings when my heart is so sunny, and for the whole summer after that, I only have such a good dress, except for critical moments. Willing to wear.
After listening to the "story", I thought that my Hong Kong friends would have opened their eyes wide, and would not believe that I am now a wealthy professional woman. How could I have had such an embarrassing experience in the past?Alone, all summer, only one favorite dress?Ten dollars can make a young girl so happy that she forgives the hardship and bitterness of life?However, my friend of the same age didn't say a word for a long time after hearing my experience, and there was no "surprise" on his face.After a while he told me: To tell you the truth, I was just like you when I was young, and my family was very poor. I remember that I was already in high school, and my parents managed to squeeze out a little spare money to buy me I bought a pair of white sneakers. I liked them very much at the time. I was reluctant to put them on on weekdays. One night I had to walk a long way home. I was afraid that the shoes would be worn out, so I took them off quietly and leaned against the wall with bare feet. on the road--
"Really?" Now it's my turn to be bull-eyed: "When you were a child, your family life was not rich? In Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s, no, in my impression, Hong Kong people were richer than mainlanders a long time ago." , Isn’t this the case all the time, isn’t it…”
"Of course not," my friend cut off the conversation: "Hong Kong people were poor 30 years ago. Every household, I'm not just talking about ordinary people. The real prosperity of Hong Kong society was only 30 years ago. Don't you know ? Li Ka-shing, Pao Yu-gang, even these bigwigs, 'made their fortunes' after the 1970s."
After the 1970s?
Hong Kong has only been rich for 30 years?
Thirty years ago, or simply starting from the beginning, the British occupied Hong Kong since 1841. At that time, Hong Kong was still a sea, and there were only more than 200 small islands on the sea.Until the fall of Shanghai in 1937, many rich people rushed their children to Hong Kong. At that time, Shanghainese came to Hong Kong only for asylum. Nine out of ten were unwilling to come. Why?Hong Kong was so poor that it was far worse than Shanghai at that time!
After I arrived in Hong Kong in 2004, I borrowed two picture albums from a local scholar, and I still want to "renege on the debt" and don't want to return them.These two albums are Hong Kong's "People's Livelihood, Suffering and Joy" and "Society Glimpse" published by the Commercial Press in 1997. They include more than 200 photos of "Hong Kong's past" captured and collected by the photographer Mr. Zhong Wenlue since the 1960s. An old photo from history.In a pure "black and white" world, I met many "businessmen" in the streets and alleys, such as "ghostwriting", "fortune telling", "shoe mending", "laundry", "paper cutting", "barge" , "packed food", "rickshaw", "casual coolie" and so on, all kinds of people waited all day long in the poor and backward streets of Hong Kong in the early years.These photos make people have to believe that Hong Kong was like every city in old China decades ago, suffering has always been the main theme of people's lives.For example, Causeway Bay is such a famous business district in Hong Kong today, it forms four major shopping areas with Central, Tsim Sha Tsui, and Mong Kok, and it is overcrowded no matter what time of day it is.But who would believe it?The "Lide Decoration" in Causeway Bay, a busy city, was full of rows of small "wooden houses" built on the hills in the early 1960s. Noble residential area", among them, the famous "Shenghe Road" where we live, was a "Yellow Nichong" that gurgled yellow water from the mountain in the early years?
Today, "Wong Nai Chung" is still the name of a road, passing through "Happy Valley" from north to south, leading to the most prosperous place on Hong Kong Island...