Lo Pok-Huen: A Remembrance

Ted Hsieh

He was a good man who died young. He was a good friend of whom the memory grew in sadness and in gratitude as the years go by.

News of his death came early in 1965. That was the time when most of us were at the beginning part of our adult life. Spouses, children and jobs were in our future and in our dreams. But for Pok-Huen, future never came. And most of his dreams, as they were, would not be fulfilled. 

I felt a great sense of sadness as I thought of his early passing. His future was so full of promises. And he had so many dreams, dreams for himself, dreams for all of us and dreams for his country. 

He loved China. More than once, tears dropped on his ruggedly handsome face as he talked about her cruel fate and sufferings. He dreamed one day that China would live up to her ideals. He always thought that "Justice and Fair Share for all under Heaven" was a reachable national goal.

He was a true son of Pui Ching and of class of 1959. He was loyal, involved and dedicated. I don't think he had ever refused an opportunity or a request to serve or to represent the school and the Lighters. He was involved in every sporting event. He sang tenor in school choir and in a male double quartet. He also played trumpet in the Pui Ching band, an instrument he learned while living with the Kowloon Salvation Army. In a rather hysterical manner, he was once involved in a pushing match against some Pui Kiu boys outside a theater at North Point. It was hysterical because, in spite of his masculine body, Pok-Huen actually fought like an old lady.

Pok-Huen lost both of his parents early in his life. Although he was not blessed with a complete family or material wealth, he was full of optimism toward life. He always counted himself blessed and was determined to dedicate his life to serve and to care for the fatherless and the poor. He had chosen elementary school teaching as a vehicle to carry out his dedication. When he started teaching after graduating from Grantham College of Education, it was the fulfillment of a dream in his life. I am sure his impact on this world will live on through the lives he had touched in spite of his untimely death.

Pok-Huen and I were forever linked together through a passion we shared. He and I were encouraged by our Chinese Literature teacher Lau Mao Wah to submit some of our writings to various newspapers for publication. At that time, most newspapers in Hong Kong had special sections reserved for student writers and offered modest sum of money for published work based on number of words. So he and I worked like addicts in secret, using various pen names and fudging useless and unnecessary words to create long articles without much substance. Later, there was one paper called China Students Weekly that offered the highest rate of pay and became our favorite target of submission. Just about every Friday afternoon after school, we would take the number seven bus to go to the China Students Weekly office on Lower Nathan to collect pay and joined others who had their articles published that week for a tea party with "western" pastries from Red Cotton Cafe or ABC Restaurants. 

We definitely enjoyed the fruits of our substanceless labor and laughed our hysterical laughs in those young writers parties. There were several romances with love false or true and many infatuations with the fairer sex real or imagined. 

I really hate to write about this because Pok-Huen is not here to defend himself. Although he fought like an old lady, he could write more piercingly than a communist propaganda writer when he intended to trash someone he did not like. He was involved in more than one bitterly fought "pen battles" through the years (and got paid for doing them). In one of those "battles" with a great fudger of words called "Wild Horse" who was going to a school high above the Happy Valley, Pok-Huen created a Dream Beauty in the hearts of many male Lighters. Supposedly, Pok-Huen was defending this Dream Beauty from attack by the Wild Horse. (In all actuality, both he and the Wild Horse were after those Friday afternoon pay envelopes.) Anyway, the story about the Lighters' Dream Beauty requires a complete telling at another time. What can be said with complete certainty now is that "Xiao Jing," as she has been known with such term of endearment by the male Lighters all these years, was Pok-Huen's lasting contribution to our class. Thanks, buddy.

On a hot and humid August morning in 1959 at Kai Tak, Pok-Huen came to say good-bye as I was boarding a Flying Tiger cargo plane to come to America. He waited until the last moment to shake my hand. I told him that I would wait for him in America. He said his place was in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was his land and his city. Hong Kong was where he would fulfill his promises and where he would live out his dreams. For himself. For all of us. For the country he loved. But early in 1965, came the news of his death, the untimely end of a life so promising and of dreams so realizable.