Kidnapped in 1942, Chan Yuk-kwong returns to city to find his brothers
Chan Yuk-kwong was abducted from occupied Hong Kong and sold to a Red Army guard
PUBLISHED : Friday, 22 November, 2013, 5:23am
UPDATED : Friday, 22 November, 2013, 5:23am
Shirley Zhao [email protected]
Chan Yuk-kwong, 82, was smuggled into Guangdong by a kidnapping syndicate. Photo: David Wong
More than seven decades after he was abducted as a child from Hong Kong, Chan Yuk-kwong came back to the city yesterday to search for his long-lost brothers.
Tung Man Street, his old neighbourhood in Central where he lived with his father, uncle and two younger brothers, was demolished in the 1990s to make way for skyscrapers, including The Center.
"Hong Kong has changed," said Chan, born in 1932 and now using a wheelchair after a fall at his home in Jiangxi province. "I've found the place, but the people I knew are all gone."
After his mother died at the end of the 1930s, Chan's jobless father took the three children from Jubilee Street to live with the children's uncle, who sold opium and noodles. Chan recalled playing with his two brothers, Chan Yuk-fai, born in 1936, and Chan Yuk-bing, born in 1938, around Central Market, and having fights with the son of a fruit-stall owner he referred to as "the fat guy".
At the age of 10, with the city under Japanese occupation, Chan was already working as a part-time delivery boy for a boat factory near Bing Tau Fa Yuen - now the site of the Zoological and Botanical Gardens - for 50 cents and some crackers a day.
Later in 1942, Chan encountered a strange boy while playing alone on Li Yuen Street East in Central. The boy invited Chan to his home in Sai Ying Pun. He went, and never returned.
The boy's family belonged to a kidnapping syndicate and kept Chan for two days at their home, together with another four boys and three middle-aged women. They were then forced onto a boat, which took them from Sham Shui Po into mountainous northern Guangdong. There, Chan was sold to a Red Army supplies guard who had only a daughter and wanted a son.
Taking the surname of the man who bought him, Chan was renamed Zheng Zhougan. His new family soon moved to neighbouring Jiangxi when the civil war resumed in 1946.
With a heavy Cantonese accent, Chan was constantly bullied by locals. He left in his twenties and after years in Guangdong ended up working on a rubber farm in Hainan. Eventually he moved back to Jiangxi.
Yesterday, Chan and his son, Zheng Xinjian, arrived in Hong Kong to ask the public for help in the search for his brothers.
Lawmaker Dr Kenneth Chan Ka-lok is helping people with stories like Chan Yuk-kwong's, and asked anyone with any clues to call him on 2521 6292.
"They are part of my family," Chan Yuk-kwong said of his brothers. "As long as I can find them, there is hope."
