By Kan Man Fai (66)
05 February, 2003

Dear 66ers,

It gives me goose pimples to realize that I am actually addressing (if you care to read my writing at all) a group of people who breathed the same air, walked under the same sun, suffered through the same typhoon and drought in the sixties.

We are a trickle in the flood. We are a small group who are lucky enough to be united by the good effort of a few devoted souls after all these years to share our common moments. We should be thankful that it is actually happening. To me, it is more like a dream.

No dream of the sixties is complete without the memories of the great drought of Form 2 and Form 3.

Water, Water, Everywhere

I think it was the end of Form 2, the beginning of the hot summer. The water supply was so low, the government decided cut the water supply to 4 hours every 4 days.

You will remember that most of the English composition we did began with "Hong Kong is an island surrounded by water." No matter what the given title of the composition, be it "Chinese New Year", "A Picnic in Sha Tin", or "Higher Education in Hong Kong", we felt obliged to begin our masterpiece with the mention of the geographical setting of Hong Kong. And probably we felt the naked sentence "Hong Kong is an island" was too short, we were tempted to add the qualifying phrase "surrounded by water." To this day, I still notice this use of unneeded adjectives in the language. Maybe we can blame it on the often-specified requirement of the length of the essays. We wanted to beef up the things we wrote to meet the requirement.

Anyway, Hong Kong was indeed surrounded by water, and in the early summer of 1963, water reserve was so low that supply was limited to 4 hours every 4 days. It brought changes even to our school life. I don't know if it was official or not, but we were allowed to wear colour clothing to school instead of our all white summer uniform. And that practice lingered on even after the crisis.

I try to remember how we lived through that period. I think that 4x4 water thing did not end until almost a year later, all through Form 3. In 4 hours, we had to store enough water for the whole family for 4 days. From drinking, cooking, washing, bathing, to flushing the toilet. That was incredible.

I try in vain to remember any bitterness. The need to limit water supply was simply accepted. Instead of complaining, people just learned to cope. All I remember was that the whole family chipped in to help with holding up these huge plastic bags to be filled with water. Remember those plastic bags? The bathtub and everything in the house that could be used were appropriated to store water. And since large water tanks were scarce in the market, Hong Kong came up with these huge plastic bags that could be made to stand up by 3 or 4 ropes.

No, there was no bitterness. Everybody accepted the water shortage and did what could be done to make do with what was there. Life went on. There was no outbreak of any epidemic deceases because of contamination due to water shortage. I still wonder how restaurants continued to operate. If this happens today, I am sure there will be protest marches against the government, and the newspaper would be filled with horror stories about people dying of poison water and food.

It was an age of quiet acceptance. Submissiveness may not be a bad thing after all. I remember there was not much discussion among us about the shortage. Instead, there might have been a few jokes. A buddy and I wrote a mock diary recording the days of water shortage. I think we started by describing the events after we played a football game at the dried out Tai Tam Reservoir.

And it was about that time we changed our uniform blazer from navy blue to black. The water shortage might have helped So Chak Kwong (Jack) to convince Brother Felix to make the change. (Some of you reminded me of the person involved in the change after I mentioned it.) It was also about that time when jeans were tolerated in school.