Saturday 22nd September
John Lewis Community Hub
Grand Central shopping centre – above New St train station
Birmingham
Cost: £5/head (children under 16 free)
Refreshments extra
More details to follow.
This is about a very special home in Hong Kong called, “The Home of Loving Faithfulness”. Two Ladies Valarie Conibear and Wendy Blackmun originally met and worked at Shatin Children’s Home before they opened up the Home of loving faithfulness for the disabled children .
Long Version. https://youtu.be/U0_VQTIe0TM
Short Version. https://youtu.be/odK_u8kjLb4
The UK Hong Kong Adoptee Network gathered again on Saturday, 28thApril, 2018 in the Bishop Ho Ming Wah Association & Community Centre in the Church of St Martin-in-the Fields at Trafalgar Square.
Claire kindly ‘volunteered’ to do the write up for the website. We are very grateful for her enthusiastic contribution. The edited highlights are below:
With 14 of us, it was a quieter affair than previous network meetings in London. Of course, we were delighted as ever to see Julia Feast join us for the first part. We had four newcomers, so the smaller group may have been a good thing as it seems to me there’s something quite introverted about many of us. Kate had created a loose plan to give some structure to the meeting. Everyone was asked to introduce herself (no men on this occasion), and state one thing they would like to do or talk about. Those topics formed the ‘agenda’ for the second part of the meeting. During the introductions, we discovered that the four new members had come across the network in a variety of ways – through personal contact, signposting and googling. They had a variety of experiences mirroring those we’re already familiar with: happy family relationships; confused identity especially at school; lack of sense of belonging; desire to search for records; desire to find birth family.
As regards things people wanted to talk about: root tracing was high on the list and it was a joy to hear an account of how one member had found her biological sibling. She went back to Po Leung Kuk and asked to see her records. To her amazement, there was reference to a brother. After a hesitant start with emails and
Skype contact, the two met face to face. His adoptive family was Chinese American so he had managed to learn (or retain) Cantonese. We have been told that boys were often sent to America because it was felt the prospects were better; it was more common for girls to be sent to England and other Commonwealth countries. In America, there was a higher number of Chinese families, and they were prepared to adopt.
I gave feedback on my experience with DNA Mysteries– the last chance saloon for abandoned babies registered with Long Lost Family, the ITV series. It has been two years for me with no results. With their resources, if they cannot help me, who can? It turns out that the researchers like a challenge and have a particular passion for those of us who were abandoned. Wall to Wall, the Long Lost Familyproduction company is planning a ninety-minute one-off special featuring foundlings whose birth families have been traced using DNA. Last month they organised a Genealogist Gathering and filmed about thirty of us in the hope that enough of us would have success and that we could feature in the programme. The vast majority were white British but there were a couple women of who had been abandoned in Nigeria and, crucially, four of us Hong Kongers. Who knows if the DNA thing will result in anything. We hope but we’re not holding our breath.
Every network reunion ends with a group meal. This time we enjoyed a Thai meal at The Lemon Tree pub nearby. Often this is where the real bonding happens and other friends and relatives join in. This is the time when the grizzly details of our personal challenges are exchanged with mutual understanding and a good dollop of humour. Meeting one of the new members at the DNA Mysteries event made me realise that there are some of us still out there on our own bobbing around without support or comradeship. We had no Mother’s Bridge of Love (MBL) or Children Adopted from China (CASH). However much we hope that the likes of Wall to Wall may find our families, we know that their priority is making a TV programme and our level of complexity may mean we don’t fit conveniently in their production schedule. It may be that our only success will be through our own efforts. By far the majority of us will never find relatives but we continue to cherish discovering each other, Sisters in Spirit across the globe.
Claire Ling Chi Martin
27thMay 2018
Chinese Community Centre opens at 12:45pm. There will be a setting up period of 30 minutes – the meeting will therefore begin at 1:15pm.
https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org
2018 ~ Dates for your diary
(1) Saturday 28th April
Bishop Ho Ming Wah Community Association
Lower Crypt
St Martins in the Fields church
Trafalgar Square
London
(2) Saturday 22nd September
John Lewis Community Hub
Grand Central shopping centre – above New St train station
Birmingham
Cost: £5/head (children under 16 free)
Refreshments extra
More details to follow.
Written by Yvonne Gee
Jemma Fong, visiting London from Canada where she now lives, was on the same original flight over from Hong Kong to the UK as me, some fifty-two years ago. There is a black and white photo of four of us arriving at London Airport, (which in those days was at Croydon.) Jemma happened to post these pics on f/b, and I recognised myself in them, having had no previous knowledge that we’d been on the same flight. (I should also mention, though in f/b contact, I had not previously met Jemma.)
Serena, Sue, Kate, Joanne, Linda Fawcett and her son Matthew
met up with Jemma, her partner Sandy and Sandy’s nephew (also Canadian, now living in London.) I discovered that everyone else attending, had at points in the recent past met Jemma either at a Hong Kong Reunion or in the United States, so if you’ve been to any of the overseas Reunions, you may have met Jemma and her partner Sandy.
We met-up at New World Restaurant in Chinatown for a lunchtime Dim Sum, which is the Chinese equivalent of a Greek Mezze or the Spanish Tapas. Trolleys of Chinese delicacies (savoury and sweet) on little dishes that have been steamed or fried are pushed around the restaurant and diners choose as many or few as they fancy.
I first went to New World Restaurant, nearly forty years ago, and the dishes were pretty much as I recalled: varied and delicious! Jemma has some rudimentary Mandarin and was able to request certain dishes and provide some translation. This is truly a fabulous way to spend some time together and incredibly cheap, it worked out at £10.80 per head!
We then wandered around to Wardour Street to Bubblewrap for waffle cone ice cream. Bubble waffles, part of the street food scene in Hong Kong, originated as a way to use up broken eggs, which couldn’t be marketed, flour and milk was added to make a batter and these curiosities were born. They are a new trend on the London foodie scene.
Quite sizeable(!) waffles are made in specialist waffle irons, then shaped into a cone, which are then filled with ice cream from a selection of around six flavours with a variety of different toppings. Just as well lunch was light and cheap, as these dessert whoppers are huge and cost from £6.50- £8+ depending how much you indulge your sweet tooth and choose not to stint on your treat!!! We queued for around an hour, but chatting together, the time passed quickly and enjoyably. Since it’s street food, there’s no seating
so we stood in the street consuming these giant ice creams, taking nearly as long to eat them as to queue! (Okay, Kate, around 15-20minutes)
It was a lovely day out, I then headed home, but the others strolled through to Covent Garden and explored, before eventually heading to their respective homes.
What a really brilliant way to spend some time together, and refresh old friendshipsand make new ones! I’d definitely recommend Dim Sum, if you’ve never tried it.
Hi All
Please confirm your attendance. Thank you
As many people can’t make it to St Ives, we will be holding a Brum meet, so you can go to the ball!
Date: Saturday 25th November
Venue: Tba – will be in or close to city centre
Cost: £5 per head (children free)
It’s ages away yet; but, when we send final reminder, you do need to respond if you plan to attend so we can plan accordingly.
Do feel free to confirm now. Email Debbie at hkadoptees@btinternet.com
Chungwen came to the last London meeting in February to briefly explain her project and had a very good response from those who attended.
Here is an outline of the project:
In order to gain funding for the project Chungwen needs to get clearer idea of numbers interested.
If you are interested in participating or have any questions regarding the project, please contact Chungwen directly.
The project is to record personal journeys of a group of women who were brought over as children from Hong Kong via International Social Service UK in the 1960s and early 1970s to be adopted by families in the UK. Apart from the adoptees, the project also aims to explore the following:
1. the experiences of their adopted families, i.e. parents, siblings, etc.
2. background research on the children homes in HK, and the stories of Mildred Dibden and Lucy Clay, etc.
3. their journeys from Hong Kong to the UK (via BA)
Main outputs of the project:
1. individual stories
2. background research of this part of the history
3. community & volunteers’ participation
4. public awareness (format can be a documentary, exhibition, performance, etc., which is opened to discussion)
It is not a social research but an oral history project, samples can be viewed from the British Chinese Heritage Centre (http://www.britishchineseheritagecentre.org.uk/).
Chungwen Li
Dean
Ming-Ai (London) Institute
1 Cline Road
London N11 2LX
Tel: +44 (0)20 83617161
Email: c.w.li@ming-ai.org.uk
Website: www.ming-ai.org.uk
Debbie
Email: hkadoptees@btinternet.com
I would like to thank Jasmine, Sue and Kate for organising the London Reunion on the 18th February 2017. Also for Claire who printed out the signs and writing the blog.
Thank you to Chungwen who was our speaker for the day and Julia Feast (BAAF) who has been such such a big support to our group.
We were also delighted to have as a special guest Mrs Tan Yuen who worked at St Christophers Children Home in the early 60’s.
Thank you to the Chinese Community Centre, Church of St Martin-in-the Fields for letting us use there facilities for the day and for to the two wonderful ladies who cooked our tea.
Lastly I would like to thank all of you, who attended yet another very successful reunion and I look forward to seeing you again at the next. Please watch this space.
Debbie Cook
Founder of the UK HKAN