My life: Ou Xiufang

I was born in Hong Kong in 1925 but I don't remember much about growing up here, except that we lived at Bowrington Bridge (an area in Causeway Bay) and I went to school at St Paul's Co-educational College. I was my father's favourite and he took me to dim sum with him every day. We'd eat dishes like char siu bao and siu mai, and the leftovers we'd take home.

My father had three wives and I was the daughter of his second wife. I had a brother two years younger than me and two older brothers from the first wife. Only much later did I learn I had siblings from the third wife.

A few months after the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, I was 17 years old. My father had a small factory in Mui Wo making soya-bean products and I worked there for a year, scooping up the pulp that was used to make tofu skin. The factory went bankrupt because of the occupation, as people didn't have much money. Eventually we decided to leave because we were running out of food to eat, unless you waited in line for a bowl of congee from the houses of the rich. My brother went to Guangzhou because an uncle agreed to take him because he's a boy. But not me, a girl.

I ended up going with my godmother to her hometown in Jiangxi province because, she told me, there would be food there. We walked from her home in Yau Ma Tei to Sha Tin, which took a day, then to Zhenlong (in Guangdong). Then three to four days to Huizhou and from there we took a bus to Jiangxi. No one in my immediate family knew where I had gone.

At first I had a home, food and a job. But one day, after I had settled in, my godmother told me she had sold me off for 2,450 fabi (Republican-era currency). That was a lot of money; what could I do? How could I ask why she had sold me?

I was 18 and sold off to a 50-year-old man surnamed Zhen, who already had a wife, a married son and a daughter. I worked like a slave, tilling the fields, cooking, cleaning and minding their grocery store. I also had to walk four hours each way to sell as many vegetables as I could carry. I pretty much sold everything and then walked back. There were a few times when I was robbed, along with other farmers. One time a robber had one of those guns for shooting birds and he was firing it near us. We handed over all the money we had earned that day. They always waited until the end of the day to rob you.

Whatever I earned I gave to the first wife. I also bore three sons for them. I had no emotional attachment to the children, let alone the man. After the (Communist) revolution, I was allowed to divorce him, and I did, seven years after we were married. We had three sons and one daughter.