Murray MacLehose was my hero: retired Hong Kong civil servant Libby Wong on her part in city’s rise

Left at the orphanage I was born in Shanghai, in 1937. When I was eight, my parents decided to come to Hong Kong. They didn’t want to bring us kids with them, so they parked my younger brother and sister and I in an orphan­age in Hunan run by my auntie. The husband of my auntie had been a Kuomintang general. He died during the war. As the couple hadn’t had any children, my auntie adopted my brother. We suffered at the orphanage because during this period, after the war, there was very little food.

After 2½ years at the orphanage, my sister and I joined our parents in Hong Kong. My father was working as a teacher at St Stephen’s College (for boys) in Stanley. The headmaster, Canon Martin, took my sister and I under his wing. We were very thin and had head lice. Canon Martin took us to the clinic and had us tidied up, deloused. He taught me my first sentence in English: “This is a flower.” Later, he arranged with the headmistress of Diocesan Girls’ School that I sit the admissions exam. I passed and was accepted. I did well at school and won a scholarship to Hong Kong University to study English literature.

Honest Eddie I met the man who became my husband – Edwin Wong – at a Christmas party. He’s a third-generation New Zealander. He studied architecture and after grad­uating from Auckland University worked in England before applying to the Hong Kong government for a job. When I met him, he was building Queen Elizabeth Hospital. After our first meeting, he asked to see me again, but I told him I couldn’t as I was sitting my final exams. He sent me flowers and a poem every Monday. I have a weakness for poems, however bad.

After my final exam, I contacted him and said, “We can meet now.” On our third meeting, on the beach at Shek O, he proposed. I said, “Don’t propose to me, ask my father.” Which he did. My father asked what made him suitable to be my husband. He said he didn’t come from a good back­ground, but he was educated and could work and provide for me. My father later said to me, “That Eddie is a good chap because he didn’t bluff, he was honest about his background.” It all happened at lightning speed, in 1959. We got engaged in May and married in August.

In the family way I joined the Hong Kong Productivity Council as a public relations person. It wasn’t long before I got pregnant with our second child (in 1969). I said to my boss, “I’m in the family way.” He replied, “Well, this is not the kind of productivity we expected.” So, I said that I’d better quit. I saw an ad in the newspaper that the government was recruiting admin officers. I asked my husband what an admin officer did, and he said, “They are the blue-eyed people, they get promoted jolly fast.” So I applied.