It is one of my realistic
watercolour works.
All the scenic spots in the realistic paintings are important places related to
my growth, so everything in the painting is an important memory of mine.
The place in the painting is
Wan Chai, an old town in Hong Kong.
It was 8:
00 p.m. on December 23rd,
2009 (a social movement was taking place in Hong Kong in those days), and it
was the time when Hong Kong citizens had got off work. They were in a
relaxed mood after getting off work because they could enjoy the light from the
street lamps and smell the aroma from restaurants. The trams running on Wan
Chai Road have a history of more than 110 years. The scenery in this old town
has remained little changed over the past few decades. It is a memory shared by
many Hong Kong people of our generation.
I lived very far from Wan
Chai when I was a child. However, because the Hong Kong Table Tennis
Association was located in Wan Chai at that time, and I, a 12-year-old member
of our school’s Table Tennis Team, would register for the Hong Kong Open Table
Tennis Tournament, I had to got to the Hong Kong Table Tennis Association from
my school, which was situated in Fanling, after school. The single way time was
1 hour and 45 minutes, so it would take more than 3 hours to make a return
journey. For me, I felt as if I had been to a foreign country. Every time I
went there to sign up, I would smell food fragrance from restaurants nearby
when I was about to return, but I had no extra money (except return fares) to
buy any dish. Also, seeing the nostalgic urban scenery, I felt a bit sad! With
the dream of being a table tennis player, I kept practising. That’s a clear
memory of my childhood.