Hong Kong: Abandoned children

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In the 1950s and '60s hundreds of thousands of Chinese people fled to the British colony of Hong Kong to escape famine. Conditions for the arrivals were so desperate that some families chose to abandon their children in the streets so they would be taken in by orphanages. Many were adopted in homes in Britain and other English-speaking countries. Laura FitzPatrick talks to one of the adopted children, now known as Debbie Cook. (Photo: The young Debbie Cook with kind permission from the family)

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service. We're looking back at
0:09.2	stories of Hong Kong's history, because it's 25 years since the territory's sovereignty
0:13.9	was handed over from the United Kingdom to China. In our final programme we go back to
0:19.1	the late 1950s and 60s, when Hong Kong was overwhelmed by refugees from Mao's China.
0:26.1	They were so bad that some refugee families abandoned their children in the hope that
0:30.6	they would be adopted. Laura Fitzpatrick spoke to one woman who was left in the street
0:35.6	as a baby.
0:42.9	They're crowded together because they have to be. In Hong Kong there's no room to spread
0:47.3	out. Some of these blocks hold as many as 3,500 people.
0:52.2	At the height of the Great Famine, millions of families did everything they could to escape
0:56.6	Mao's China. Many of them managed to cross into neighbouring Hong Kong, which was then
1:01.9	a British colony.
1:03.4	In an area of 62 square miles, over 3 million people are squashed together. Every week
1:09.2	another thousand refugees poured in from communist China and everyone must live somewhere.
1:15.0	Some of the new Chinese arrivals decided the best hope for a better life for their children
1:19.9	was to leave them in the streets. Debbie Kirk, as she's now known, was one of them.
1:24.8	We were left in places like trash bins, public conveniences, graveyards in the gutter, just
1:33.8	anywhere, hopefully where the general public would stumble across us. How did you end up
1:39.8	in the orphanage and what's your story?
1:42.5	Well, I was found abandoned by police in a very poor area at the staircase and I actually
1:49.5	have the address of 163 Prattestreet at about 1150 AM on the 28th of July and they reckon
1:58.1	I was about 14 days old.
	...

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