Once an icon of low-cost living, Wah Fu Estate is finally getting the redevelopment residents hoped for
Built in the 1960s, Wah Fu Estate was the first of its kind, marking a significant upturn in the Hong Kong public's standard of living. Now, as redevelopment approaches, Fanny Fung meets some residents of the beloved but dilapidated project
''Rocky beaches with hardly a soul on them. Boulders lapped by rippling water. Acres of hillsides shrub-bedecked and inviting. Spectacular sunsets behind islands dotted in myriads of gold and purple over the South China Sea."
You would be forgiven for thinking that is from an advertisement for a holiday resort or luxury villa, but those were the words chosen by the South China Morning Post in 1973 to describe Wah Fu Estate, a public-housing development built for low-income families between Pok Fu Lam and Aberdeen, on the west of Hong Kong Island.
Referencing the " fu" in its name, which means "wealthy", Wah Fu Estate offered facilities and an environment that were deemed relatively luxurious at a time when many in Hong Kong still lived in resettlement buildings and squatter camps. But the shine has long since faded and Wah Fu's dilapidated buildings are part of an image the now much more affluent city is striving to shed. After years of patching over the cracks and uncertainty with regard to how long they might be able stay in their homes, Wah Fu's residents learned their fate in January, when Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying announced in his policy address that the estate would be redeveloped.
"Before moving here, I lived in a resettlement area in Wong Tai Sin," recalls Chan Kar-chun, 72, who moved into a 300-plus sq ft home in the estate's Wah Kee House, where he still lives, in 1969. "There were eight of us, my parents-in-law, my mother, my wife, our three eldest children and myself. My wife was pregnant with our fourth child when we moved in and, later, we had our youngest kid. All of our five children grew up in Wah Fu.
"I was very excited. Before moving here we did not even have our own kitchen or bathroom. When my wife took a shower in the public bathroom [in Wong Tai Sin], I would have to stand outside as her 'watchman'."
In 1954, Hong Kong's first public-housing estate was built for the victims of the Christmas Day 1953 Shek Kip Mei squatter fire and, in 1957, the Housing Authority threw open the doors on its first purpose-built low-cost housing estate, North Point. But Wah Fu, which was ready for its first residents in late 1967, was something else altogether. A government-produced television advertisement declared that, "Every flat here is spacious, equipped with an independent kitchen, a living room and a shower room. What an enjoyment in life to take a shower at home after work every day!"