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SCMP Reporter

From walkathons to world record attempts, tearful memories to healing laughter, mothers rule the day

Hongkongers honoured their mothers with colourful celebrations yesterday, with tears and cheers, sweat and laughter.

The Mother's Day celebrations kicked off with an early charity walkathon.

Participants, including Legislative Council president Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai,  climbed to The Peak at 9.30am with 4.5-litre water bottles on their backs. Proceeds from the event will go to Lotus Light Charity Society (Hong Kong) to help free mothers in drought-stricken northwest China from carrying water.

Collective efforts in sending mothers messages of love didn't stop there. Despite the amber rain warning, more than 1,000 children and parents, dressed in red wind-cheaters, formed a 40-metre by  60-metre heart on open ground near the Olympic MTR station. Event organisers have applied for a Guinness World Record.

Elsewhere, in a department store in Causeway bay, two mothers, one with twin daughters and the other with triplet daughters, walked a proud catwalk with gifts from their children.

The girls picked up clothes and hand bags in the allotted three minutes and broke their piggybanks to pay for the goods. Apparently they love their mother so much that they all picked out expensive gifts, leaving their fathers to make up $1,000 each.

As most families marked Mother's Day with shopping, flowers, family photos and eating out, some chose to celebrate with touching tales and shedding tears.

Four mothers and one grandmother, all with handicapped children or suffering lifelong diseases themselves, told hundreds of people in Maritime Square, Tsing Yi, how the love of their mother helped the family sail through troubled waters over the years.

The moment when Li Ng Po-yau saw her daughter pulled from a car accident 11 years ago, she decided the rest of her life would be spent helping Cherry Li Wing-yin return to living a normal life.

'Her hair was all gone and her eyes were closed. She had this terrible colour on her face and I thought she was dead,' Mrs Li recalled with tears.

She quit her job the next day and spent all her time with her unconscious daughter, talking to her and playing her favourite songs.

It took six months before Cherry woke up from the vegetative state, and another six months before she recognised her mother and said 'mummy'.

That was the beginning of a hard journey. Cherry, then eight, could not speak clearly and was in a wheelchair, probably for the rest of her life.

Mrs Li pleaded for a mainstream school near her home at Tai Hang to admit Cherry so she could look after her closely - taking her to and from school, sending lunch and helping however she could.

'Sometimes I felt like I couldn't go on any more,' said Mrs Li. 'But I didn't dare show my emotions in front of Cherry. I needed to be strong. For her.'

Now a Form Six pupil at St Paul's Convent School, Cherry has striven hard to overcome her handicaps.

She has excelled at her studies and always keeps a cheerful smile on her face. She said her biggest wish was to recover quickly and ease her mother's burden.

'No words could express my joy seeing my daughter happy and healthy,' said Mrs Li. 'I am so proud of her, not because of her good studies, but because of her courage and persistence.'

Legislator 'Long Hair' Leung Kwok-hung also had a busy day. The early afternoon saw him dispatching carnations, greeting cards and flyers at Yiu Tung Estate in Shau Kei Wan. He then hurried to Mongkok to support Tiananmen Mothers before moving to Sai Yeung Choi Street for a petition to reverse the verdict on June 4.



Hong Kong pulls out all the stops to celebrate mums' love