A Day in My Life in Crowded Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world. With 5.8 million people occupying its 413 square miles [1,070 sq km] of land, it has 14,483 people per square mile [5,592 . . . sq km]. Since only 10 percent of the land is occupied, that represents an average of about 140,000 per occupied square mile [54,000 . . . sq km]! Yet, the local people seem to have adapted admirably to the hustle and bustle of a crowded city, with its cramped living space, noisy traffic, and pollution.

I WOKE up to the shrill call of my alarm clock at 7:30 a.m., got up from my couch bed, and dressed quickly. I share the small flat with my parents and three younger sisters, all of whom work. Thus, there is always a lineup for the bathroom, and our time is limited. After a quick breakfast, I grab my bicycle for the ride to the train station. The daily ordeal has started. I become one of the vast multitude heading for work in bustling Hong Kong.

My train takes me hurtling past tightly packed tenements and densely populated skyscrapers. Then I change to a bus to cross the harbor. We make our way through a tunnel, bumper to bumper. What a relief to emerge onto Hong Kong Island where my office is located in the central financial district. The whole journey can take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half, depending on the traffic. I finally make it by 9:30. But there’s no time to sit back​—the phone starts to ring. My first client for the day. And that becomes the story of my day​—one call after another, the telephone seldom on the hook. Then a brief break for lunch.

Now the problem is finding a seat in one of the numerous restaurants in the area. It seems as if everybody is trying to eat at the same time and at the same place and often at the same table! Once again I share my table with total strangers. That’s life in crowded Hong Kong. Then after my quick but nourishing Chinese meal, it’s back to the office.

My workday is supposed to finish at 5:30, but that is seldom possible. Sure enough, when I finally get a breather and look at the clock, it is 6:15. Some days it is well after seven o’clock before I can get away. And then comes the trek back home.

First the bus, then the train. Finally it pulls into my station, and I head for my bike. As I cycle home, I recall how our little town has grown into a bustling, bursting modern city. The low village houses have been replaced by soaring high-rise buildings, from 20 to 30 stories high. Big, wide highways have taken over great swaths of terrain, and huge overpasses bristle with a constant stream of noisy traffic. The old leisurely way of life has gone forever.

Home is a bit on the small side​—less than 300 square feet [28 sq m] for six of us and no private room for me. That is why I sleep on a couch in the living room. At least my parents have a room to themselves, and my three sisters sleep on bunks in their tiny room. Privacy is a luxury for us.

Even though it is small, it is a vast improvement on what we had before, when all of us lived in one room in a government housing estate. But how good even that is compared with the lot of the thousands who live in Mong Kok district and who rent “cage apartments,” stacked three high and measuring six feet [1.8 m] long by 30 inches [0.8 m] deep and 30 inches [0.8 m] high. They have space for a mattress and a few personal belongings. No furniture.

By nine o’clock everybody is home, and we sit down for our evening meal. After supper someone switches on the TV. That kills my hope of some quiet reading and study. I wait until all have gone to bed at 11 o’clock, and then I have the room to myself and some peace and quiet for concentration. By midnight I too am ready for bed.

I have been working since I left school some 12 years ago. Some day I would like to marry, but I have to work so hard for a living that I do not have much time even to get to know a woman well enough. And finding a place to live is harder than scaling heaven, as we say. Though we have learned to cope, this type of hectic city life does not seem natural to me. Yet I recognize that I am far better off than millions and perhaps billions in other parts of the world who live without decent homes, electricity, running water, or adequate sanitation. Surely we need a better system, a better world, a better life.​—As told by Kin Keung.

‘Children Are Precious, but Sons Are Essential’

With a population of over 850 million and a birthrate of 31 per 1,000, India sees some 26 million new babies born each year, equivalent to the population of Canada. It is not surprising that one of the most urgent government projects is to control the rapid expansion of its population. How successful is it? What are some of the obstacles it faces?

“BEFORE 20, No! After 30, Definitely Not! Only Two Children​—Good!” is the advice given by one of the colorful posters that line the hallway to family planning headquarters in Bombay, India. Another portrays a harried mother surrounded by five children. It warns: “Don’t Regret Later!” The message comes through loud and clear: Two children per family is enough. But getting people to accept and act on the government’s two-children-per-family recommendation is not easy.

“The Hindus consider a man happy in proportion to the number of children he possesses. Among them, indeed, children are considered to be the blessing of a house. However numerous a man’s family may be, he never ceases to offer prayers for its increase,” says the book Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies. From a religious standpoint, however, it is the male child that is of greater value to the patriarch of the household. “There is no misfortune equal to that of not leaving a son or a grandson behind to perform the last duties in connexion with his funeral,” the book goes on to explain. “Such a deprivation is regarded as capable of preventing all access to an Abode of Bliss after death.”

Sons are also needed to carry on the rite of ancestral worship, or sraddha. “At least one son was almost essential,” writes A. L. Basham in The Wonder That Was India. “The intense family feeling of Hindu India enhanced the desire for sons, without whom the line would disappear.”

Along with religious beliefs, a cultural factor influencing the desire for sons is India’s traditional joint, or extended, family arrangement, whereby married sons continue to live with their parents. “Daughters marry and go to live in the homes of their in-laws, but sons remain at home with their parents; and the parents expect their sons to look after them in their old age,” explains Dr. Lalita S. Chopra of the Bombay Municipal Corporation Health and Family Welfare Division. “This is their security. Parents feel safe with two sons. Logically then, if a couple has reached the suggested two-child limit and both children are girls, there is a good possibility that they will keep trying for a son.”

Though in theory all children are viewed as God-given, the realities of day-to-day life dictate otherwise. “Medical neglect of girls is evident,” reports Indian Express. “Their survival is not considered really important to the survival of the family.” The report cites a survey in Bombay that reveals that out of 8,000 fetuses aborted following sex-determination tests, 7,999 were female.

An Uphill Struggle

“In a family, it is the male who generally decides how many children to have and how large the family will be,” explains Dr. S. S. Sabnis, executive health officer of Bombay Municipal Corporation, in an interview. Even if a woman would like to space her children or limit her family, she is under pressure from her husband who may be against it. “This is why we’re sending male-female teams to each home in the slums in hopes that the male health worker will be able to speak to the father of the home and encourage limiting the size of the family, helping him to see that he can give better care to fewer children.” But as we have seen, the obstacles are many.

“Among the poorer people, the infant mortality rate is high due to poor living conditions,” Dr. Sabnis says. “So there is definitely a desire to have many children, knowing that some will die.” But little is done to care for the children. They wander unattended, begging or perhaps picking through garbage for food. And the parents? “They do not know where their children are,” Dr. Sabnis laments.

Advertisements in India often portray a happy, prosperous-looking couple enjoying life with their two children, usually a boy and a girl, who are clearly well cared for. It is in this segment of society​—the middle class—​that the two-child concept is generally well accepted. But it is far removed from the minds of the poor, who reason, ‘If our parents or grandparents had 10 or 12 children, why can’t we? Why should we be limited to two?’ It is here among India’s impoverished majority that the war on population control is facing an uphill fight. “The population is young now and of childbearing age,” reflects Dr. Chopra. “It appears to be a losing battle. We have a tremendous work ahead of us.”

Growing Up in an African City

Population growth rates in sub-Saharan African countries are among the world’s highest. There each woman, on the average, gives birth to more than six children. Poverty, deteriorating environment, and scarcity of resources only add to the hardship. Here is a firsthand account of what life is like in that part of the world.

I GREW up here, in a major West African city. There were seven of us children in the family, but two died early on. Our home was a rented bedroom and parlor. Mother and Father slept in the bedroom, and we children slept on mats on the parlor floor, boys on one side of the room and girls on the other.

Like most people in our neighborhood, we didn’t have much money, and we didn’t always have everything we needed. Sometimes there was not even enough food. In the morning, we often had nothing to eat except reheated rice left over from the day before. At times even that was scarce. Unlike some who reason that the husband, as the wage earner, should have the biggest portion, with the wife next and the children getting what’s left, our parents would go without and let us children share what small amount there was. I appreciated their sacrifice.

Going to School

Some people in Africa believe that only boys should go to school. They feel that it is not necessary for girls to go because they marry and their husbands take care of them. My parents did not hold that view. All five of us were sent to school. But it was a financial strain on my parents. Things like pencils and paper weren’t much of a problem, but textbooks were expensive, and so were the compulsory school uniforms.

When I began to go to school, I did not have shoes. It wasn’t until my second year in secondary school, when I was 14, that my parents were able to buy shoes for me. Mind you, this doesn’t mean I had no shoes at all. The only pair I owned was for church, and I wasn’t allowed to wear them to school or any other places. I had to go barefoot. Sometimes my father was able to afford bus vouchers, but when he could not, we had to walk to and from school. It was about two miles [3 km] each way.

Washday and Fetching Water

We washed our clothes in a stream. I remember going there with my mother, who carried a pail, a bar of soap, and the clothes. At the stream, she would fill the pail with water, put the clothes in, and rub soap into them. Then she would beat the clothes on smooth rocks and rinse them in the stream. After that she spread them on other rocks to dry because they were too heavy to carry home wet. I was young at the time, so I was assigned to guard the drying clothes so that nobody would steal them. Mother did most of the work.

Few people had water piped to their homes, so one of my chores was to go with a bucket to fetch water from an outside faucet, called a standpipe. The problem was that during the dry season, many of the standpipes were locked to conserve water. On one occasion, we went one full day with no water to drink. Not a single drop! Sometimes I had to walk miles in search of just one bucketful of water. Carrying the water on my head for such long distances wore away my hair where the bucket rested. I had a bald patch at ten years of age! I am glad to say that the hair grew back.

Children as Security

Looking back, I would say our lot in life was average, perhaps even above average for our part of Africa. I know lots of other families whose living standard was far worse than ours. Many of my friends at school had to sell at the market before and after school in order to bring in money for their families. Others could not afford to have something to eat in the morning before school, and they would leave home hungry and be in school all day without food. I can remember lots of times when one of these children would come and plead with me as I ate my bread at school. So I would break off a piece to share with him.

Despite such hardships and difficulties, most people still like to have large families. “One child is not a child,” many people here say. “Two children are one, four children are two.” That is because the infant death rate is among the highest in the world. Parents know that though some of their children will die, some will live, grow up, get jobs, and bring home money. Then they will be in a position to look after their parents who have grown old. In a land with no social-security benefits, that means a lot.​—As told by Donald Vincent.