talk #375

After 40 days and 40 nights at the labor camp, Bobby and I came out to San Francisco. Bobby took the train to Chicago for schooling at the University of Illinois at Urbana. I went to the pier to meet Veg Worm ( Choi Yip-Kueng), arriving from HK on the Presidents Lines.

Veg Worm and I checked into the Grant Hotel, located at the corner of Grant and Pine near the entrance of Chinatown. In those days, the room rate was $1 for the two of us. We had a "sub-penthouse" room, i.e., one or half a floor below the "penthouse" where a night club was located. Every night around 11 PM the band started the theme song, signifying the beginning of Night Life. Needless to say, we could not sleep with loud music playing above us. The insulation was literally paper thin. We did not sleep, we talked all night, we never needed sleep. [Grant Hotel , now Grant View Hotel, is still there]

We stayed in bed until late morning and then went out for food. We talked and we walked all around within walking distance. Sometimes we took the bus.

One evening we came upon Wavery Street, a short and narrow alley, in Chinatown. There it was, a eatery named " Yuet Wah". We were astounded by the similarity between the name of this place and the name of one of our fellow Lighter. We went in to eat. It was a HK style western restaurant, but not the most economical place to eat ( for us). A HK style steak cost about $5, a hell of a lot of money, 5 nights' rent at The Grant, and 5 hours of hard labor at the camp. We did not go back to eat again, but we kind of liked the name of the
place.

After a week or so, we felt we should conserve our cash and looked for free food. Somehow we ended up in the apartment of Chan Pui-King ( elder sister of fellow Lighter Chan Man-tuen). For the life of me, I can't recall how we knew she lived there. Pui-King was a Pui-Tu ( not Pui-Ching) grad, perhaps, 5 to 6 years ahead of the Lighters. The Chan family has been closely associated with Pui-Tu and Pui-Ching for at least two generations.

Pui-King's apartment, on Larkin Street in San Francisco and 20-25 minutes on foot for us, was always full of people in the evening. They were either PT or PC people. She cooked for everyone who showed up for dinner. We got there and told her we were Pui-Ching grads (class of 59, fellow Lighters of Man-Tuen). We told her we wanted to join the group ( in actuality, we came for free food).

Pui-King looked at us, she did not know who we were were. Since we claimed we were PC people ( and, of course, we appeared to know what we were talking about) , that was good enough for her. She asked us in and we became part of group.

Pui-King was one of the most conscientious Christian we have known. If she was our Bible teacher, she would have been the best role model, and there would have been more Christian Lighters. She was kind and treated us as her own younger brothers. She was kind to everyone. In time, we met Chan Man-Chang ( Man-Tuen's older brother, PC grad, perhaps, older than Pui-King). We may even have met Pui-Yue (another older sister, also a PC grad), but I don't recall seeing Man-Tuen at the apartment. Veg Worm may remember more and may recall how we came to know where she lived, and how we became part of the group.

My dear fellow Lighters, Veg Worm and I were not the best-behaved lads in our younger days. We are still not well-behaved in our age. I assure you here that we were the nicest young men in the presence of Pui-King. We were cordial and tried to be helpful. We even stopped using "bad words". This is not because we feared her, or we wanted to be nice to get free food. We came to admire and respect her in time. Never in our experience that someone would take us in, let us share the food she prepared, cared about our well-being, just because we were PCers.

We stayed in San Francisco for another 10 days to two weeks and went south. I have not seen Pui-King since the summer of 1960. From time to time I think of the period in San Francisco with Veg Worm and the kindness Pui-King had bestowed on us. I wish I could be and have always wanted to be more like her.