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> Editorial
> What's the Story?
> Mrs. Fixit
> Desperately Seeking Ingredients...
> Passionate about Mill Road
> Caribbean Masterchef
> Everything is Possible!
> A Sanctuary on Mill Road
> Boat People
> Going Green with Al-Amin
> The Akashi Project
> Open All Hours
> Mesmerised by Meze
> Come Together
> The Girl from Arapau
> Still Sweet and Spicy
> A Real Neighourhood
> Lei Si Fan Mei?
> Flight from Baghdad
> Streets of Revolution
> Stepping up the Ladder
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Boat People
Sharon Chang’s family owns The Rice House Chinese takeaway on Mill Road. Twenty five years ago, as a nine year old girl, Sharon was one of the thousands of boat people crowding into small boats and taking to the treacherous waters of the South China Sea to flee Vietnam. How did she make it to Mill Road? |
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‘My family is ethnic Chinese but we lived in North Vietnam quite near the Chinese border. It was a town about the size of Cambridge. I remember the sea in front of the house and a lake and a river and mountains behind. We had a massive garden with the kitchen and the toilets built separately in the gardens. We kept chickens and a couple of pigs, and my mum grew our vegetables. My dad was a builder and he did pretty well. There were six of us children, two boys and four girls. We’d spend our time swimming and fishing. In the 70s there was no danger, as a kid you were free to go where you wanted. I remember my mum was really hardworking. She’d get up at about two some mornings to go over the river to China to buy things we couldn’t get in Vietnam, Chinese foods like dried squid. She‘d come back with all this stuff strapped to her! If the border police caught her, Mum would have to bribe them or they’d confiscate all her stuff. It could get expensive. Once she brought back live fish, I don’t know how she managed it!
I suppose growing up I knew that our family was different, but it wasn’t a big deal. We spoke Cantonese at home and learned Vietnamese at school, but
I’ve completely forgotten that language. At school there were about 10 other Chinese in a class of 40. Ethnic Chinese people like us stood out in Vietnam because our skin is lighter. Where you live is home for a child, so when war suddenly broke out between Vietnam and China in 1979 and people started calling us ‘bloody Chinese’, it was weird. They started saying ‘Go back to your country!’ But for me Vietnam was my country. I think people were jealous ofus ethnic Chinese because we’re really hardworking and so usually richer. The local police got really unpleasant too, there was nothing like human rights or anything. I remember my dad telling us all we had to run away. Suddenly we didn’t belong.
| "Usually, I try not to remember all this. If you hadn’t asked me I wouldn’t choose to remember it. In fact, in our big family we never talk about it. It’s all in the past, we look to the future." |
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My 18-year-old brother and I were sent over the border into China to my uncle’s so we could arrange a place for all the family to join us. After a few weeks they fled Vietnam too. The government was throwing all Chinese out; it was getting dangerous to stay. We left everything, our house, all our possessions. I remember my dad had saved a case of Vietnamese bank notes that were supposed to last us a while. But they devalued the currency. Overnight all our savings notes became worthless! All we had was a few clothes and our passports.
I was devastated about leaving my friends. Our next door neighbours were Vietnamese but they were always nice to us. I think they would have liked to escape the communist government too.
Once we’d fled to the Chinese side, one of my uncles bought this boat and said we should all leave in it and go to Hong Kong. It was still British in those days and they would take us in. That’s if we made the long trip in the South China Sea. I heard the adults talking about storms and shark infested waters and pirate raids.
I was shocked when I saw the boat; it was only about 20 foot long. It was designed for 5 people but my uncle took other people for a fare. In the end we set off with 64 of us squashed into it! It had a sail and an engine. My dad had worked as a fisherman and he was going to be captain.
The first thing to do was get enough food on board to last the journey. My dad bought a lot of belly of pork and us kids salted it so it wouldn’t go off. Salted pork, salted fish and dry biscuits was all we had to eat on the journey. Horrible. We cooked with a gas bottle at one end of the boat where all the food was stored. You can imagine how cramped it was! Of course people got on each other’s nerves. There was nowhere to lie down, we all had to sit on benches, at night we curled up on them against each other. I’ll never forget, there was this seven month pregnant woman beside me. I hated her! She was sea sick and kept throwing up all over me! She took up a lot of room and made my life hell. She was actually a single mother which people looked down on in China in those days.
My mum was so worried about my little one and a half year old sister. My elder brother was really good, he helped my dad out and our family sat together and held hands a lot. When it rained we pulled a tarpaulin over us and sat there miserable waiting for it to stop.
We were three months on that tiny boat. It was quite an experience… People say, ‘Oh you’re a boat person?’ But it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
My dad was a good sailor. He was always looking at the sky for storms. We sat there at night on our crowded benches holding hands and praying for no storms! We did actually have a storm and luckily for us, my dad put in to an island in time. I remember this boy got a snakebite on the island and I thought Oh, no, he’s going to die. But my dad found these plants to treat him with. My dad was captain, doctor, everything… He’s 74 now and is out cooking till midnight at the Rice House, he loves it. |
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Mr Chang steered the tiny boat carrying his family through thec trecherous waters from Vietnam to Hong Kong
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My other uncle, my mum’s brother, captained a larger ship with about 160 passengers, behind us. My uncle thought he could make it through the storm but his boat got caught in a whirlpool. The boat got smashed up and they were pulled under. Only three people survived: My uncle, his step-daughter and one other passenger. My uncle lost his wife, children, everyone. In Vietnam he’d been really wealthy selling jewellery, with two wives and a massive house with servants… Now he was left with nothing and no one.
Once, I remember we signalled to a big Chinese ship, waving and flashing lights. We begged them to tow us some of the way. Our money was useless, so they asked for gold. My mum and my aunty and everybody had to hand over their rings and earrings. Eventually we got towed to Hong Kong harbour where the harbour police put us on a really big ship.
Sharon’s sister-inlaw, Ann Chang, also fled Vietnam on boat. Now she runs the Rice House and the fish and chip shop in Cottenham.
“I went back a few years ago to our village in Vietnam. After 28 years, I couldn’t recognise it. They’ve built a block of flats where our house stood.
I haven’t told my children about the boat journey or about the refugee camp in Hong Kong. I’ve no time. Besides, they have their lives to live. One son is studying IT at Hull University, my daughter is studying fashion design in London and my youngest boy is at Parkside school.” |
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We were so relieved! I remember my dad saying there had been five boats behind us, but only two made it. I knew what had happened to those poor people. Storms, sharks, pirates. That could have been us…
I didn’t like the Hong Kong police much. I think they’d had droves of boat people constantly arriving and were sick of the sight of us! In Hong Kong they put us in a camp which was like a massive hangar for storing goods not people. Our family were in a room about 12 foot square, no bed or anything. We slept on the floor. Every morning we got only two slices of bread with sweetened condensed milk on it. Carnation, I remember the brand. Now I can’t touch condensed milk. Ugh! It reminds me too much.
At night there were these large rats running around, it was awful. My dad as the head of the family had to go and queue up for food, bring it back and share it out. It was never enough. My poor mum wasn’t producing any milk for my baby sister so we always saved her an extra piece of bread. I remember some people traded their gold rings for a pack of cigarettes!
After a couple of weeks we were moved to a more permanent camp. That was better because they gave us ID cards and we had to go and find jobs. My dad and older brother and sister got jobs, cleaning, working in factories, that sort of thing. I did all the shopping, aged nine, because my mum wasn’t very well. In the end I earned some money looking after people’s kids while they went out to work. In the camp there was no privacy, we all slept in rows and rows of bunk beds. That lasted a year! I was terrified as a kid having to share with all these people I didn’t know. Some girls got raped. I remember my dad used to stay awake at night to keep watch.
There was one guy who slept in the bunk opposite us. One night he was in a deep sleep because he’d been working so hard. These three Vietnamese boys turned up and stabbed him to death as he slept. My dad saw it all. He called the police but they didn’t do a thing. It had a real effect on me and my sister. I couldn’t sleep after that. I’ll never forget the blood dripping from the murdered boy’s top bunk onto the woman who was on the bunk below. Who knows why they murdered him, a row about a girl, they said. In fact a lot of people got killed in the camp. Can you believe people killing each other after fleeing their country and spending months at sea in crowded boats? |
Usually, I try not to remember all this. If you hadn’t asked me I wouldn’t choose to remember it. In fact, in our big family we never talk about it. It’s all in the past, we look to the future. Sometimes it’ll crop up, but more to remind the younger members that they should be grateful they’re alive and lucky enough to be living in Britain. They shouldn’t waste their lives or their money gambling, for example.
By the time we got asylum in England I was twelve. My dad chose England and not America because he said they have too many guns. In England people are nice and everyone rides around on bikes, he said, it’ll be lovely. That was before we ever thought about Cambridge. But as the plane touched down at Heathrow, to me England looked dark and miserable! We were taken to a reception centre in Watton near Norwich. All the way, I remember my mum looking miserably out the window of the minibus at the dark motorway. She’d heard they would feed us only potatoes.
When we got to the centre we were given our own little house and they’d cooked chicken and fish… and rice! I’ve never seen my mum’s face so relieved and happy!
I don’t go around thinking ‘I was a boat person’ but it does effect how I live. Sometimes I’ll catch myself looking at my five-year-old daughter (Caerly-Ann, it’s a Scottish name) and thinking ‘You’re sooo lucky’. Or she’ll say ‘Buy me this, Mummy’ and I say ‘Sweetheart, when Mummy was your age, she didn’t have all these things’. And she’ll go ‘Why?’ And I’ll tell her a little bit about how Grandma and Granddad and all her uncles and aunties had to escape in a boat."
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Ann’s and Sharon’s nephew, Sinh LE, 23, mans the Rice House takeaway most nights.
“I was born right opposite the Rice House, just over the road in Ditchburn Place when it was the Mill Road’s maternity ward.
My family came all the way from Vietnam but I’ve only had to come across Mill Road! I’d never heard all theses amazing stories from my aunties or grandparents. Everyone in the family is too busy working. It’s the Chinese work ethic. I think we work too hard…” |
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| "Where you live is home for a child, so when war suddenly broke out between Vietnam and China in 1979 and people started calling us ‘bloody Chinese’, it was weird." |
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