Tracing the roots of Hong Kong's laundry business
Whether commercial or domestic, laundries have become ubiquitous in Hong Kong, writes Jason Wordie
Commercial laundries are a staple of Hong Kong’s backstreets and remain commonplace businesses throughout the world’s Chinatowns. From New York to Kuala Lumpur, Chinese-operated laundries are an essential part of the local scene.
The contemporary local popularity of commercial laundries is partly caused by the limited space in many Hong Kong apartments.
Few kitchens or bathrooms are large enough to accommodate a washing machine and, in older buildings, inadequate water pressure often means automatic models cannot function efficiently.
Economies of scale make it cheaper for families to use a commercial laundry on a regular basis than to try to find space to dry their clothes at home. This remains particularly true for large items, such as towels, blankets and bedsheets.
Not everyone can afford to send out their washing, however; Hong Kong’s public housing estates are internationally renowned for their thousands of bamboo laundry poles, all gaily festooned with garments, dozens of storeys above street level.
Before the widespread availability of reliable piped water transformed life across Hong Kong, commercial laundries depended on fast-flowing streams in accessible urban locations.
Old photographs show washing spread out to dry over fences lining Wan Chai’s Stone Nullah Lane and Bowrington Canal, in Causeway Bay (both waterways are now covered).
Sizeable middle-class homes, which generated plenty of laundry on a daily basis, usually employed a full-time laundress. Known in Pidgin English as a “wash amah”, this servant spent her entire working life either up to her elbows in water and suds, or (in the days before electricity) ironing items to a smooth gloss with a heavy, charcoal-heated iron. For many years, human labour was simply cheaper to obtain (and maintain) than machinery.
Soap powder is a relatively recent innovation. Traditional laundry soap was sold in large blocks, then hand-cut into smaller bars; clothes were either scrubbed to remove stubborn stains, or the soap was handgrated and dissolved in water for soaking purposes.
Trading on commonalities enabled newly arrived, unskilled workers to find a job and – with luck and application – learn a skill. Eventually, some even established an independent business of their own.
Accordingly, Hakkas often went into leather tanning and shoemaking, Hainanese became cooks and house servants, and Cantonese became carpenters, construction workers and laundrymen. In many overseas Chinese communities today, laundry work remains predominantly the preserve of Cantonese-speaking males.
Elsewhere in Asia, such as Singapore and Penang, commercial laundry work was generally undertaken by Bengalis. There they were known as “dhobi” shops, the word for laundry in several northern Indian languages.
Numerous early travel accounts from these places describe the loincloth-clad Indian washermen hard at work on a creek side, energetically breaking the stream-bed rocks with other people’s clothes.
For decades, the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy employed Chinese men from Hong Kong as their ships’ laundrymen. Many served with distinction in various overseas conflicts, most recently the 1982 Falklands war.
A moving memorial to Chinese seamen who lost their lives during both world wars can be seen at Stanley Military Cemetery; many of those named there died in the North Atlantic convoy raids in the early 1940s, when their ships were torpedoed by German submarines.
For more on Hong Kong history and heritage, go to scmp.com/topics/old-hong-kong
