After I finished school, a relative of mine suggested that I should apply for the HAECO recruitment exam. I was interested because I saw two football pitches in HAECO. What I mean is, I applied for the exam because I like playing football. I saw two interviewers: the first was a foreigner and we chatted a bit, the second was an engineer, who questioned me about some basic knowledge and asked me to do some electrical drawings. They gave me the offer a month later. One of the football pitches was on the roadside, verging on the nullah near the catering department and police station. Another pitch was half an apron and half a closed area. The apron part was turned into a police station later. Anyway the two parts happened to make a pitch, and even the police played football there. It was a Pan Am pitch, close to the apron. We went for the game once we got off, and we played from 5:00 to 7:00.

There was not yet a place called San Po Kong at that time. The HAECO workers played football at a lawn, which later became Paris Theatre. The car park that appeared later was the HAECO hangar.

I was born in Samshui in 1927, and I worked for the Nationalist Air Force at No.1 Aircraft Manufacturing Plant in Kunming. I had three brothers. My second elder brother was a worker of the Air Force Manufacturing Plant, and with his introduction we became the apprentice of the Kunming Air Force. I joined the force at 16 or 17, underage as a matter of fact. In 1949, I was working at Tianhe Airport in Guangzhou — the Nationalist Party had not yet retreated at that time. For several months at the end of 1948 I lived in Tianhe Airport, then I visited Hong Kong with a colleague, who went for an interview at Cathay Pacific. A week later I did the same and was hired by Jardines. It was difficult to live in Hong Kong in those days. It was difficult to find a job, but I had the red book, that is, the Air Force certificate. PAMAS and Jardines were inclined to hire skilled workers from China National Aviation Corporation, Central Air Transport Corporation and the Air Force because they didn’t have to spend anything to train us.

I came from Macau. During the Japanese occupation I was studying in a secondary school in Guilin, and when the war was over I went back to Macau. After I finished school I moved to Hong Kong. At first I wanted to receive flight training in the Far East Flying Training School. But then people told me I could never make a living out of flying; it could only be an interest, because no one would hire a Chinese pilot. Hong Kong was so dominated by foreigners, you know. So I thought I’d better study engineering. In 1947 I joined the Far East Flying Training School and studied mechanical engineering for two years. After I graduated I joined Jardines. At that time Cathay Pacific rented out two C-47s to Myanmar Airways, and they had to send 10 engineers to station at Myanmar because the country didn’t have any engineers of the kind. I was a qualified engineer by then. Once I joined Cathay Pacific I was sent to Yangon, and I stayed there for over a year. In 1951 or 1952 I went back to Hong Kong as the contract finished. I was intended to join HAECO, but the business environment was quite bad at that time. So I became a sailor instead. It was in 1954 that I joined HAECO.

That’s how I got into Jardines: during the exam interview they asked me some knowledge about planes, and I got them 100% right. That’s how I got to be a technician of Jardines. Before that I worked in the Chinese Air Force’s aircraft manufacturing plant — the Kunming No.1 Aircraft Manufacturing Plant, that is. My job was to produce graph representation of aircraft in the design room. Since DC-3, that is, the Air Force’s C-47, was the model I most often drew when I first entered the plant, I knew all about it by the time I went for Jardines’ exam interview!  I came to Hong Kong in 1948, and I went for the exam because Jardines happened to need man of my sort. A friend told me about the recruitment when I was flying from Kunming to Hong Kong. That’s why I went for it.

I graduated from the Far East Flying Training School in 1970. There was no recruitment from HAECO at that time, so I worked at an automobile repair workshop. Later our teacher told us about the recruitment, and almost a hundred of us went for HAECO. It was difficult for a secondary school graduate to find a proper job, and people hired us as apprentice. In the automotive garage I had not only salary but also tips; however, HAECO offered just $20.6 a day. At the beginning I didn’t have chance to work overtime, so I earned just a little above $500 a month.

I have a penchant for planes since childhood. I like making models of aircraft and collecting photos of them. And I am also passionate about aerospace. NASA developed rapidly in the 60s and 70s, and I was already deeply enchanted when at school. Whenever they undertook a project, I would go look for information on the United States Information Service. I had my secondary education in a technical school, and I studied electrical engineering in the college. It happened that the principal of HAECO contacted the school for recruitment by the time I graduated. They looked for instructors, and when I got in I was already a tutor. The classes I took up were about basic electronics and basic engineering. The principal sent me to America’s Boeing Company for advanced study, and after I’d learnt all about different types of plane I came back to teach. I started with the “Viscount”, then 880, 770, DC-10, L-1011, 747, etc.