- Newly minted Hong Kong author Sonia Leung recalls life in a Diamond Hill slum, a devastating rape and how she finally fulfilled a dream by becoming a writer
In 1917, during the Warlord Era in China, my great-grandfather fled to Indonesia and worked as a labourer. He went on to make his fortune in the rubber plantations. My grandfather was born in Indonesia.
When my great-grandfather heard that the Communist government was going to build a new China, he sent money home. He returned to China in about 1940 and built a big family home, the Leung Mansion, and a school and hospital in his hometown of Nan’an, in Fujian province.
My father trained as a doctor and had an arranged marriage to my mother, a primary-school teacher. The government appointed them to work in Datian, in the north of Fujian province.
Unrequited love
I was born in 1974, in the hospital where my father was the resident doctor. I was the third of four children. We lived in a room in the staff quarters at the hospital until I was five, and then in the staff quarters at the school where my mother taught.
My father had fallen in love with my mother at first sight, but the love wasn’t reciprocated. He was a lonely and controlling man, everything had to be his way.
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Heaven and hell
They couldn’t take all four of us, so they took my older sister and brother. My younger sister and I were left in the care of my grandmother and our uncles at the Leung Mansion in Nan’an. It was awful – I wasn’t familiar with my grandmother and one of the uncles was a troubled man and bullied and hit us.
Home was hell, but school was heaven. My teacher really liked my writing and would read it out to the class.
Silly mainland girl
When I was 12, my sister and I moved to Hong Kong. My parents’ qualifications weren’t recognised in the city, so they worked in a factory 10 hours a day, six days a week, to support us.
The six of us lived in a room in a Diamond Hill slum. There were two bunk beds; my parents and two sisters shared a double bunk bed, and my elder brother and I had the other bunk bed.
We couldn’t get into the normal morning school, so we went to classes in the afternoon. It was a difficult adjustment. I couldn’t speak Cantonese – we spoke Fukien at home – let alone English.
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Because I was bullied, I spent a lot of time alone. I stumbled across a book corner in the school and devoured children’s books such as The Secret Garden and Grimms’ Fairy Tales. I found an English to Chinese dictionary and looked up words. I was hiding in books and enriching myself so that I wouldn’t drown in sorrow.
I studied hard and after a year I was in the top five of the class.
In control
My parents always came home late and tired, so they didn’t know what I was doing. None of us talked at home.
There was a concrete table tennis table in the slum. I worked up the courage to ask a group of boys if I could play with them. Once I had a table tennis bat in my hand, I felt in control. It was the same satisfaction I get from holding a pen.
After a few months, one of the boys told me about a youth centre near my school where they had a better table tennis table. I went there the next day and joined a group. About 10 of us got really good. We formed a team and the centre’s manager found a coach for us.
He said he could do a comprehensive test, and then he raped me. Afterwards, he didn’t look at meSonia Leung
I trusted him
The coach was in his 30s. He had sorrowful eyes like my dad, and I saw him as a father figure. He gave me a lot of attention and said I would do the team proud because I played the best.
For almost two years, he trained me and drove me to interschool competitions. He told me I could qualify for the Hong Kong junior table tennis team and should apply to the recently opened sports school, Jockey Club Ti-l College. If I was accepted, I’d live in a dormitory and could lessen the burden on my parents.
I was so excited at the prospect of doing my parents proud. He told me before I could apply to the school, I needed to have a medical check-up and that he could help me do the preliminary test.
I was 14 and trusted him. He drove me to his flat. When we got to his flat, he locked the door and asked me if I liked karaoke and told me to relax.
He told me to stand up and stretch out my arms, then he came behind me and put his hands on my breasts. He said, “You are 14, but you haven’t grown yet.” I froze.
He said he could do a comprehensive test, and then he raped me. Afterwards, he didn’t look at me.
He drove me home, but I don’t remember anything about that. I never went back to the youth centre, I never saw him again. I didn’t tell anyone what had happened.
Snail without a shell
I was accepted into a band one government school (the highest level). I kept to myself. I brought a carton of milk and a loaf of sweet bread to school and ate two slices in the morning and five in the afternoon, so I didn’t need to leave the classroom.
I felt vulnerable, like a snail without a shell. My teacher noticed that something was wrong and referred me to a social worker. The social worker was very busy and I only saw her a few times. I could tell she was upper class and, because I lived in a slum, I was very aware of the class difference.
I didn’t tell her what had happened, I didn’t feel she’d understand. I started to self-harm – the pain would stop the screaming in my head. I knew I had to do something because if I’d stayed on, I’d have jumped off the roof of the school.
I read Outside the Window, by the Taiwanese writer Chiung Yao, and it changed my life. I identified with the protagonist and wanted to go to Taiwan. Around the same time, I heard a popular Taiwanese song, “The Olive Tree”, about a wandering soul speaking out. That convinced me to go to Taiwan.
That summer, after my first year at secondary school, I worked at McDonald’s and saved up HK$3,000.
After two years, I walked into a police station and reported myself for overstaying my visaSonia Leung
Wandering soul
On September 1, 1990, I got a one-way ticket to Taipei. I didn’t know anyone there. Luckily, because it was the start of the academic term, National Taiwan University had a counter in the airport. The vice-president of the Malaysian Student Union was there helping foreign students.
I told him I wanted to find a job and continue school. He took me to the student office in Taipei and I stayed in a dorm there. He bought a phone card and asked me to call home. I called my neighbour and asked her to tell my parents I was OK, but when she asked where I was, I hung up.
I ended up spending two years in Taiwan. I moved around the island, staying in student dormitories on campus, and got part-time jobs. I couldn’t get into secondary school, so I sat in on Chinese literature and comparative literature classes at university because I love literature so much.
Deported to Hong Kong
After two years, I walked into a police station and reported myself for overstaying my visa. They checked that I didn’t have a criminal record and deported me to Hong Kong.
We got together that night, but he was from a good family and I felt I didn’t deserve him, so I didn’t take his calls and refused to see him. Two months later, I found out I was pregnant.
I went to the Family Planning Association in Wan Chai and had my one and only abortion. It still affects me because I think about the daughter I might have had.
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B+ = breakdown
I moved around sales jobs and ended up specialising in fine foods, import and distribution. I went to night school and did a BSc in communications; it was a joint programme between Baptist University and Ohio University, in the United States.
After three and a half years of night school, I finished the programme in 2000, with a semester in Ohio. I pushed myself hard to get straight As.
I felt I had to prove to myself that I wasn’t bad, I was a good girl. So, when I got a B+ one time, I had a breakdown. I saw a psychologist at the student centre and for the first time I told someone about the rape. I had counselling and started to process what had happened.
Against the odds
While I was at university, I met a Japanese student. After a five-year long-distance relationship, we got married, and I moved to Japan. Initially, we lived with his parents and I became fluent in Japanese, but the relationship didn’t last. He was very traditional in his view of how women should be subservient to men.
In 2008, we divorced, and I came back to Hong Kong. Although I had a good job, I didn’t feel happy, because I was suppressing my dream to become a writer. So, in 2014, when I turned 40, I joined City University of Hong Kong’s master of fine arts in creative writing programme and started to write my memoir.
Finally, after 10 years, it is being published by Blacksmith Books – The Girl Who Dreamed: A Hong Kong Memoir of Triumph Against the Odds.
Authentic voice
Understanding your own story is building a bridge to others. When you reflect on those things, you feel more in control. Everything becomes manageable, otherwise it would be a jumble of noises in your head.
I’m working on a collection of short stories, a book of poetry and some essays. Many Chinese women’s stories are told by overseas Chinese. I want to give my authentic voice to tell their stories and get my voice heard globally.
By shedding light on Chinese women’s lives, I’ll also illuminate the lives of girls and women worldwide because sisterhood and solidarity matter.
The Girl Who Dreamed: A Hong Kong Memoir of Triumph Against the Odds, published by Blacksmith Books, will be on sale at Bookazine and other Hong Kong bookstores from today.
