Spirit of Hong Kong: a master craftsman passes on his carpentry skills
After decades of making furniture, 83-year-old Lung Man-cheun is keen to preserve tradition while passing on his skills to a new generation
Lung Man-cheun grins as he crosses the road to greet us, bends down to unlock the corrugated metal door and pulls it up. He presses down on two wall switches, and the lightbulbs hanging down on cords come on and the two ceiling fans begin to turn and whirr.
The workshop is on a small street in To Kwa Wan filled with metal and car maintenance workshops. Lung has rented this space with two friends for the past eight months and uses it to preserve the old ways of carpentry, where wood is joined by skill and measurement, not nails.
The left wall is lined with a variety of saws, hammers and tools used to plane wood, among others. Slabs of wood are neatly stacked, ready to be turned into furniture. On the floor are wooden stools, made at the workshop, where pieces of wood are fitted to join others and smoothed off. Lung, a pack of Winston cigarettes in his top pocket, invites us to sit down.
"I would think, I'm one of the only people these days carrying on with this style of carpentry," says Lung, 83.
When I put a piece of furniture together, I do the whole thing
"I think it's important to pass the skills on to the next generation, and so I have a Facebook page and regularly have students here. Usually they just get to work, and I'm here if they have any questions."
Lung was a bit surprised by the positive response he received after starting the workshops. He's also carried out courses at Polytechnic University in recent years, he says, as well as a secondary school in Wan Chai, providing hands-on skills in a school environment that is often very academic.