Lee Fook Chee’s eye-opening challenge of life exposed
Hong Kong Memoirs by Lee Fook Chee
A rickshaw hastens along Salisbury Road, past the Tsim Sha Tsui Fire Station and on towards the Star Ferry, Lee Fook Chee
Chance meeting with Lee Fook Chee
By sheer coincidence, some years ago, photographer and publisher Edward Stokes met Lee Fook Chee on The Peak.
Lee Fook Chee selling his prints on The Peak in 2005; the photograph was taken by Laurence Lai
Then an elderly man, Lee, was selling photos of Hong Kong he had taken in the 1950s. A keenly felt personal engagement followed.
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The result is a recently published photographic memoir of Lee and Hong Kong, Lee Fook Chee’s Hong Kong, Photographs from the 1950s.
Orphan with no formal education
Lee Fook Chee was born in Singapore in 1927. An orphan, he had virtually no education, and during the war, he laboured for the Japanese in Sumatra. When peace came to the region, Lee sought his personal independence and became a seaman.
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He reached and came ashore at Hong Kong in October 1947. Once settled here and helped by a cousin who owned a photo studio, Lee gradually learnt the skills of photography.
A cousin of Lee Fook Chee’s, seated playfully on the ‘KCR’ line at Sha Tin, Lee Fook Chee
Then, with the can-do spirit so common of the times, itself the converse of the struggle and broken relationships of the post-war years, Lee developed a precarious living with his camera during the 1950s, selling his prints to tourists on The Peak.
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Throughout the 1950s, and now with a young family, Lee Fook Chee lived in a squatter home, one of countless such families living in the hillside shacks that surrounded the urban areas.
Refuge from war and poverty
Lee reflected the waves of newcomers seeking refuge from war and poverty in Hong Kong. Many, indeed most, arrived with little and had no choice but to build their lives from scratch.
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Lee’s circumstances were far removed from colonial society and the photographic salons. He took ID photos of refugees. He also photographed his young family in their squatter home, proud of small consumer purchases: a sewing machine, a transistor radio, and an electric fan.
1950s crucial decade
The 1950s, when the book’s photographs were taken, have been called the crucible decade for Hong Kong. It was when immigrants and refugees began to surmount their hardships, when a light industrial economy took off, and when modern Hong Kong began to take shape.
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Lee’s life and his photos taken during the 1950s reflect, in many ways, the experiences of the growing city. He photographed the remarkable changes to the physical fabric of Hong Kong: Edwardian buildings replaced by modern tower blocks, spreading reclamations, and recently undreamt-of urban improvements.
Day-to-day captured by Lee Fook Chee
But even more, his images capture day-to-day life in the Colony: the bustling streets; transport of all kinds; traditional markets; fishing life along the coasts; and, in the still-rural New Territories, bucolic rhythms that changed little over centuries.
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The result, a visual mosaic of Hong Kong as it was on the cusp of modernity, is presented in the finely reproduced duotone plates of Lee Fook Chee’s Hong Kong, the book.
Two elegantly dressed ladies, probably Shanghainese, posed one afternoon at The Peak; Central District lies far below, The photo is from between late 1951 and early 1952, Lee Fook Chee
Each image is the result of Lee’s painstaking photography, some sixty years ago. Hong Kong in the 1950s was enriched by photographers arriving from China, notably from Shanghai and Guangzhou. As Hong Kong became more prosperous, those blessed with education could pursue cultural interests.
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Lee, with his half-grounded literacy, may have gleaned some photographic know-how from the local Chinese photo magazines. But his origins and life were far removed from the buzz of photographic cultivation.
Lee Fook Chee’s life contrast
The gulf is epitomised by an exhibition in April 1955 – a photo hanging that was part of the first Hong Kong Arts Festival.
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As portraits of the event’s opening reveal, the gathering featured gentlemen in suits and ties, ladies in elegant dresses and shawls, each with a glass in hand.
It was a circle entirely removed from Lee Fook Chee’s squatter hillside life.
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The best-known photographers of the 1950s and 1960s followed art-photographic trends: Fan Ho, Mak Fung, Chung Man Lork, Yau Leung, Kan Hing-fook, Chan Chik, and others.
Barefoot Tanka women wait to collect water from a shore hydrant; a drink stall stands to the right, Lee Fook Chee
Of these, Mak Fung, with his interest in real life over pictorial effects, and Chan Chik, known for his gritty reportage, are closest to Lee Fook Chee’s style of photography. Yet, despite their photographic moods and dramatic effects, when it came to a historical sense of remembered place, the art and salon photographers were sometimes lacking.
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The Lee Fook Chee images, by contrast, through stylistic by default if not by design, were mostly taken around the middle of the day, with strong but small shadows and even light across most scenes.
Photographic time capsule
Thus, Lee’s images have more interesting overall detail. And so, while less creative, their subject content is richer. Moreover, unlike the work of the greats of Hong Kong photography, generally taken over decades, Lee Fook Chee’s images form a historical time capsule.
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In 1954, Lee devoted himself full-time to his photography business and to capturing local life. He continued this until about 1960.
Shrimp sauce making, showing stages of processing the condiment and the ceramic, rattan and wicker containers used, Lee Fook Chee
Thus, between 1954 and the late 1950s, Lee Fook Chee took virtually all the photographs that appear in the book. By the early 1960s, with the advent of colour slides and pocket cameras, Lee’s tourist photo business declined, and soon afterwards, he resolved to abandon photo taking.
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Many of his later years were spent running a grocery store in the New Territories and selling ice cream and delicacies from a Dairy Farm bicycle. Beside a Sheung Shui school gate, Lee became a fixture.
Des Voeux Road just to the west of Pedder Street; it is a summer midday, heat bouncing off the ground, Lee Fook Chee
Smartly dressed – as always – Lee Fook Chee was called the ice-cream man. Who amongst the students could have guessed what Lee had achieved during the 1950s?
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Lee’s negatives lay hidden and unseen but were never forgotten, and despite various home moves, he guarded them with the utmost care. With minimal education, he had not had the luxury of taking photos as a hobby or as art.
The Cheung Chau landing looking to a nearby government jetty; a Marine Police launch lies alongside the pier, Lee Fook Chee
Despite this, in his old age, Lee knew and appreciated that his work had heritage meaning for Hong Kong. So it was that in about 2003, Lee Fook Chee once again began selling his 1950s prints – and once again he did so on The Peak.
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There, serendipity smiling, Lee and I happened on one another. Lee Fook Chee and I encountered one another just in time.
Once vigorous, became bedridden
From being a healthy 83-year-old when we first met, Lee had visibly declined by early 2012. Then, with a severe condition, and following a life-saving operation, he lost the use of his legs.
The vigorous octogenarian now was trapped, bedridden or in a wheelchair. No longer able to visit his much-loved Peak or to gregariously sell photos to tourists, Lee’s mind and spirit plummeted.
Buildings lining Hennessy Road; the photo looks towards Percival Street, hidden behind the background curve in the road, Lee Fook Chee
In September 2012, Lee Fook Chee died. Hong Kong lost an immigrant son of the hard post-war era.
Unknown in his lifetime, was Mr Lee a photographer? Surely, given his superb photos seen in the book.
Rickshaws wait in Wyndham Street; the view looks up to the Ice & Cold Storage Building, in the top left background, Lee Fook Chee
Yet, given his years earning a hard-scrabble living on an ice-cream bicycle, he was also a belonger – one of the countless thousands who, struggling down the years, made Hong Kong their home and who, with gritty resolve, led unsung lives.
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Lee Fook Chee passed away knowing his treasured photographs, a legacy he held with great pride, at last had been recognised. He died knowing they would be published in his book, a memorial that will not fade
Lee Fook Chee’s Hong Kong, co-authored by Edward Stokes
Lee Fook Chee’s Hong Kong was researched and written by Dr Patricia Chiu, with co-authorship by Edward Stokes. It was originated by The Photographic Heritage Foundation. A bilingual book, it is co-published with The Commercial Press.
Text Edward Stokes / Photos Lee Fook Chee, Photo copyright: The Estate of Lee Fook Chee
