Profile | Hong Kong chief executive candidate, Ip Man movie publisher, kung fu master – the rags-to-riches story of Checkley Sin
- Checkley Sin was born in Sai Ying Pun in the 1950s and grew up in poverty, sleeping seven to a bunk bed in an 80 square foot living space
- A naughty boy at school, he settled down and worked his way to becoming a bank manager, and was recently a candidate in the city’s 2022 Chief Executive race
I grew up in Sai Ying Pun in a very poor family. My father had two children with his first wife and after she died, he remarried and had five children with his second wife – I’m the youngest of the kids and was born in 1957.
My father was 60 and already retired when I was born, and my mother was 44. She supported the family as a hawker selling T-shirts and towels on First Street. Sometimes I helped her, I was a good sales boy.
We lived in a very small room, no bigger than 80 sq ft, all of us sleeping on one bunk bed – my brother and I with my parents on the bottom bunk and my three sisters on the top. In those days many families in Sai Ying Pun lived in subdivided flats. Our flat was divided into five rooms and we shared the kitchen and toilet with four families. We understood we were the poor guys and tried to live amicably.
When I was five, my parents rented a second room for my sisters, who had started working and contributing. My father taught me kung fu when I was seven. I did street fighting because that’s what street kids did.
My mother favoured me and gave me HK$1.50 each week to watch an English movie to help me improve my English – that was a lot of money for a poor family – but I always watched Chinese kung fu movies.