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EUGENE COOPER
instilling old social forms with new revolutionary content, making them serve new purposes.
The current premises of the union are in an apartment block in Tokwawan in Kowloon. They occupy a flat decorated with Communist slogans and a picture of Chairman Mao Tse-tung flanked by two Chinese flags. The Federation of Trade Unions runs a small school for children of "patriotic" workers in the union headquarters, although the children are not generally those of art-carved furniture workers. The union premises are seldom used by the workers before the evening as they are all off working; thus the flat was made available to the Federation for the operation of the school. Curricular and extra-curricular activities are structured around revolutionary and pro-Peking themes with texts and reading materials published in Peking. Shortly before my departure from Hong Kong this school was discontinued and the teacher, a middle school graduate, went to work in a factory.
Other Federation affiliated unions have also used the union's premises for meetings and other activities such as preparing for the celebrations of October 1, the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. The premises are, however, under the control of the Woodwork Carvers' Union, and it is my impression that any such use of their premises by affiliated Federation unions must be agreed to by them.
The flat serves as a place where workers without means to afford a private apartment in Hong Kong's over-inflated real estate market, and without family in Hong Kong to take care of them, may sleep at night. However, one must be prepared to put up with the regulations, which include lights out and lock up at 11:00 p.m. One worker friend of mine, forced by circumstances to stay temporarily at the union, had a serious falling out with the union because of these regulations. Nevertheless, during the year that I was acquainted with the union, two or three workers made the union premises their more or less permanent dwelling place. There were no bunk beds in the Woodwork Carvers' Union premises, although I observed them built into the walls of other union halls I visited in Hong Kong. Workers just unrolled their bed-rolls across boards which had been laid across the students' desks.
Once every week or two these same desks were pulled together to form a long table and the officers and activists in the union