Old Haunts

Yesterday, I took Tunji to the area where I lived as a child. There was an amusement park/zoo called Lai Yuen near there, and I used to go to that zoo to look at lion, tiger, and bear... yes, as in just one, singular, not plural. There was also a REALLY old elephant. There also used to be an ice skating rink and I remember spending many happy hours there just skating around. That was also where I fell and seriously hurt my tail bone, and had to lay on my stomach for almost a whole summer. Well, it seemed like a whole summer anyway at that time.

That whole amusement park/zoo is no longer there. It is now just another huge apartment complex. It makes me sad to see that zoo is all gone. Somebody told me that there's not a zoo here in Hong Kong anymore.

Up the road we went and we got to where I used to live, Chung Shan Terrace. We walked up the hill, and I can barely recognize any of it. They have built a whole lot more low rise apartments along the hillside where it used to be just slopes and "wild" vegetation. It's always strange going back to where you grew up. Everything seemed to be so much more and bigger in your memory, but when you see it now, you think to yourself..." This was IT??"


The "driveway" into our old area. Our building is on the left. That whole structure on the right wasn't there before:




Our flat was the one on the second floor, without all the caging. All the exterior walls weren't tiled either. It was just white wash paint with green trims before. From that balcony, we used to be able to see the ocean. Now you can only see high rises. There used to be a couple of more trees too, and fuller. We used to play in the area where the cars are parked:




The one in the middle on the second floor used to be my bedroom. We didn't have all that aluminium window frames back then. We did have some wooden framed mosquitoe screens installed though.




I had to have this picture because I remember having my picture taken at that very spot when I was probably 3.




The ghetto highschool I used to go to. It really wasn't a very good school at all. I did however made some good friends and had good memories, esp from the school band in which I played the clarinet: