EVERY AFTERNOON a lone figure in sunglasses can be seen playing the blues in a subway in Mongkok.
The crowds have no idea who he is or why he is there. Some see his sunken cheeks, assume he's a beggar and drop a few dollars into his metal mug.
He is not alone in the subway. Next to him is someone who looks down-and-out, a little further along is a greasy-haired man behaving strangely and at the far end an elderly blind beggar stands in darkness.
The musician's name is Danny Hui Shu-sun, 53, and he once was a member of a band formed by singer-songwriter and actor Sam Hui Koon-kit. The men share a surname, but their lives have panned out very differently. Unlike Sam Hui, who in his 1960s and 70s heyday saturated TV and filled concert halls, Danny Hui plays solo inside a dim Portland Street subway, watching the crowds pass by. He seems a lonely figure, musing over his memories. 'Sometimes while I am playing music, I think of why Sam Hui can be that high up and I am so low down,' he says.
His story is a cautionary one. Born to a poor family in a Shekkipmei squatter slum, he loved music from the time he was small, but music lessons and instruments were an unattainable dream. His family was unable to afford a piano, so he drew one with a pencil. Everyday after school he played on the 'paper piano'.
'Grandma loved me the most, and I often asked her, 'Grandma, can you buy me a guitar?', but she said we had no money.' Finally she bought him one. He grew up listening to Peter and Gordon, Tom Jones and the Beatles.