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These commercial projects will totally transform Shek Kip Mei
Housing Estate.
The old Mark I blocks are not giving in without a fight.
Though built hurriedly, they were built solidly too and their skeletons
of concrete are laced with sinews of steel bars and veins of steel rods
which withstand blow after blow of the hi-ball until the concrete shreds
away and the steel framework surrenders reluctantly and sags like
lattice-work on the dusty rubble.
Section by section, the hi-ball shears away the six-storey
blocks, and rooms where families grew up and children reached adulthood
are suddenly exposed for the first time to the glare of the sun, tattered
joss signs still pasted over doorways and small fung shui mirrors still
nailed on walls.
What stories these walls could tell if they could speak
Of families rising above such humble living conditions to gain
fortune in commerce through hard work; of children who learnt their first
lessons in the rooftop schools above their blocks and learnt those lessons
well enough to now occupy good jobs in the Government, leading commercial
houses or big factories; of other children who migrated to the United
States, Canada, Britain or Europe and conséquent prosperity, steeled in
their determination to succeed by the experience of growing up in a
resettlement estate; of marriages and births, festivals and anniversaries,
joy and sadness.
life
The families these blocks housed all strived for a better
and now these old blocks are going so that other families can
enjoy a better life in the new Shek Kip Mei Estate.
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