A Tsing Yi Story: Mr & Mrs Lee
Under the canopies that shield the village streets from ravaging winds, blistering sunshine and unforgiving rains, exists a tight web of small businesses ranging from clothing boutiques to massage parlours.
Chung Mei Village is home to Mrs & Mr Lee who came to Hong Kong in 1990. 33 years ago they left the bustling city centre of Guang Zhou to start life a new in this little village in Tsing Yi. With every penny they had spent on moving to Hong Kong, this business was all they had.
Luckily, Mrs Lee had been a savvy business person since a young age. Not only had she had connections and experience as a distributor of fabrics and clothes in the mainland, she also used to have a side hustle of being a photographer in her youth!
With no special desires for anything fancy they worked hard to feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads. A simple comfortable life.
Every morning they wake up and get straight to work setting up the store, which requires an elaborate positioning and showcasing of their clothes, towels and other miscellaneous goods. This takes two hours using the same closet stick they had been using for the last 33 years. At the end of every day, another two hours is used to place each item back like a meticulous puzzle.
They don’t go on dates and enjoy a simple evening at home watching TV and sleeping early at the end of the day.
Mr Lee tells me they don’t really have holidays. On typhoon days, he tries to convince Mrs Lee to not open the store usually to no avail. The store, he confides to me, somewhat reluctantly is their second home. I have only seen their store close during Chinese New Year.
Mrs Lee is worried about the future of the businesses in the village. She tells me it’s gotten a lot more quiet in the last few years and it’s not just because of the pandemic. She blames the aging population.
During the pandemic, they managed to survive by selling towels to aunties who decided to sew their own masks out of them as a cost saving measure. seeing the trend Mrs Lee ordered a tonne of towels - they are stacked up to the brim with towels to this day.
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