My Childhood

As a child, I attended public Elementary School P.S. 200, -- (Benson Avenue and Bay 25th Street), Junior High School 128, -- (21st Avenue and 84th Street), and New Utrecht High School, -- (New Utrecht Avenue and 79th Street), in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York. It was during my junior year at New Utrecht High that I took a leave of absence from school to visit my aging paternal grandmother (at that time she was in her early eighties) in mainland China.

I traveled by ship on the now defunct American President Line, on the U.S.S. Grant -- a passenger steamship line via the ports of San Francisco, California, Honolulu in Hawaii and Manila in the Philippines. For a large passenger steamship, the Pacific Ocean journey was very calm and comfortable except for the few days of roughish seas near the Philippines -- causing unpleasant sea-sickness for few of the passengers. The traveling speed of over 20 knots was considered fast in that era of steamship travel.

It took over twenty-plus days by ship to reach the final port-of-call in Victoria Harbour in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong (now the Special Administrative District of Hong Kong in The Peoples Republic of China). Upon arrival in Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong -- the connecting journey into the southern delta region of mainland China was made by a much smaller sailing vessel that could navigate through the shallow river tributaries. My final destination was to travel to Toishan City, to the district of Tai Hung See, -- finally, my paternal grandmother's rural village called Sai Lung Lee Village.

The cluster of less than twenty, one-story brick homes is called the Sai Lung Lee Village. All of the brick homes are constucted in the oriental design and motif with slanted ceramic roof tiles, -- each home designed and arranged to be in clusters of four identical rows, -- each row consisting of four to five homes. My paternal grandmother's home sits on the first plot of land situated in the second row of homes as one enters the village from the stone path running up-to the main dirt road. I surmise from the way the stones appear to look -- it may be made of granite?

I stayed for about a year and attended the elementary school in my ancestral village and subsequently got married at the tender age of seventeen. My grandmother was excited and happy for her grandson's blissful occasion!