'I didn't dare go to sleep with all those ghosts wandering about'

I was the sixth of eight children, so there wasn't much money, which meant I didn't go to school until I was eight, in 1957, and then I could only go at night. That cost $2, whereas regular morning school cost $10 which we couldn't afford. But I didn't mind. We lived in Tsim Sha Tsui which was a very exciting place, full of so many different nationalities, including lots of White Russians, who had fled the revolution. It meant the place was full of sights, sounds and colours. What more could a kid want?

Night school was very strange, two rooms with the principal, her husband and baby living in the back room. The supervisor was the only other member of staff and she was the principal's sister.

We studied three subjects, history, maths and civics. History was the filial pieties, full of historical heroes. Teachers told their tales animatedly. We were also told stories about how children used their wits to get out of difficult situations, such as rescuing someone from a pot of boiling water or weighing an elephant by putting it on a boat and seeing how far it went before it sunk.

My mother had taught me penmanship from English and Chinese copybooks. It was the 10,000 words approach used long ago by an emperor who gave a prime minister a test - write a 3,000 word essay but use each word only once.

I wasn't keen to go to school, but teachers at night school were nice and let us jump from chair to chair. I was always a daredevil. Every day, I was brought a raw egg by a classmate and swallowed it in front of everyone. As we were only in school for two hours every evening, the rest of the time we would hang out in front of the Peninsula Hotel. Everyone was in the street. It was a very neighbourly era.

Those were very harsh days but there was always someone to turn to. And poverty is nothing to a child until they get to 10 or so.

I got into a well known Catholic school in Chatham Road, the Holy Angels Canossian School. All of us four sisters applied, and we had subsidies for everything, including uniforms. But I didn't know anything, so I decided I didn't care about school. Until one day I figured out all you needed to do was memorise.