We lost the family fortune during Hong Kong’s 1967 riots: jewellery designer Lo Kai-yin

The house that grandpa built My grandfather, Lo Yuk-tong, came to Hong Kong in 1888 from a small village in southern China where he had been a farmer. Like many people, he came to seek his fortune. He was trading and must have done well because he built himself a huge house on Kennedy Road, with four levels of gardens that almost reached Queen’s Road East.

Many of the big houses used to be on Kennedy Road. It was the highest level at which the Chinese were allowed to live in those days. Beyond that, only the English and other foreigners were permitted to live. I was born and lived in the house with our big family, which included my father, his number two son by his main wife, as well as a number one son he’d had with another lady; my grandmother admitted him into the house. There was the friction and politics you’d expect of a big family.

I wasn’t in Hong Kong when this happened. In 1967, I was attending the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, a boarding school in Sussex, in a small town called Mayfield, which had just one street. I was the school’s first Chinese student and never took part in sports or got involved in anything that wasn’t related to my studies. My history teacher, who was a nun, was really nice to me and ended up influencing my degree choice. I sat my O-Levels and A-Levels in just one year. I worked so hard that I weighed just 85 pounds (39kg) when I left school. Then I spent a year in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Renaissance woman I read medieval English history at Girton College, Cambridge, for a year. I met so many people at Cambridge – Saudi Arabians became my best friends. I also met Indians and Persians. I made friends but I didn’t work that hard, regrettably. Because it was such an effort to get into university, I felt burned out.