French teacher’s 50 years in Hong Kong, at St Clare’s and St Paul’s, and her harrowing memories of 1967 riots and Viet refugee crisis
Nicole Sicard, a teacher in Hong Kong for 50 years, recalls her encounters with refugees from Vietnam, Cultural Revolution horrors, an audience with the Dalai Lama and joining a kindergarten class aged 29 to learn Chinese
I knew I wanted to be a teacher from a very young age. When I was two years old and saw my sister go to school I cried because I wanted to go, too. I was born and raised in Nantes, in Brittany (in France). My parents worked as printers and I have two sisters and one brother. After school I went to Toulouse and did a degree in biology and then a diploma of research – the equivalent of a PhD – in plants.
In Toulouse, I met a sister at the Foreign Missions of Paris, a Catholic missionary organisation. I told them I wanted to dedicate my life to education and teach Chinese people and they accepted me. I came to Hong Kong in 1964 – I didn’t come as a missionary, I was independent, but I stayed with the mission at first.
As soon as I arrived in Hong Kong I felt at home. I couldn’t speak English or Chinese so I joined a local kindergarten class to learn Chinese. There are nine tones in Chinese and the children were not shy about correcting me if I got it wrong. I was 29 years old and the other students were only four or five, but they liked me and I’m still in touch with some of them. I also learned how to write Chinese.
After about 18 months I left the class and continued studying by myself. I got a job teaching biology at St Clare’s Girls’ School, on Mount Davis Road.
The riots in 1967 were terrible. When we walked past the leftists on the street they looked at us with hatred in their eyes. Later, the bodies of people who were killed during the Cultural Revolution floated down the Pearl River and into Hong Kong harbour. When Hong Kong people saw that, things started to calm down here.