Opinion | For children in Hong Kong’s subdivided flats, small can be both wonderful and heartbreaking
- What is life like for the 37,000 children and teens who live in partitioned flats? There are real worries, like intergenerational poverty, but also wonder and love. A fuller understanding of life in Hong Kong’s many subdivided flats will inspire empathy and change
At a bookstore reading of my new illustrated book, I began by asking the children present: “Who among you has your own little desk? Who has your own little bookshelf? Who sleeps in your own bed?” Each question summoned a flutter of little hands, which gave a hint of the living standards of the middle-class families who would bring their children to bookstores during the holidays. Then I asked: “If there’s a kid who lives in a little box with his mum and dad, and each person’s share of the space is less than half a parking space, guess what his life is like?”
Children’s reactions are the most direct. One of them opened his arms in a gesture, asking: “How do you live like that?” He looked very, very troubled.
There’s the “monkey spirit” diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) who, in a windowless room big enough for a bunk bed, explores all possible angles for climbing and jumping. That little wind-like person makes me, sitting on the edge of the bed, feel dizzy. The mother says she takes the tyke to the park downstairs for eight hours a day to “discharge the battery”, and they wander around until late at night.
There’s the girl going to upper primary school who pulls out a long strip of paper, on which a whole row of black-and-white keys has been meticulously traced. This is how she usually practises the piano, her fingers playing a silent dance. “You must have ambition and motivation, so hard work will pay off!” she says, before laughing playfully. “My mum often says this like a chant.”