Ah Fai · Shek Kip Mei estate rooftop

Where & when

• 香港石硖尾邨 · 香港 · 中国香港 ~1979–1984 the rooftop and the stairwell

About them then

Ah Fai · about 8 then

The boy from the floor above, a year older than me, always in shorts with a scab on one knee. He could fold a newspaper into a kite faster than anyone in the block, and his grandmother ran the little snack stall at the bottom of our stairwell.

Who I was then

The little girl from the floor below, with the long fringe, who held the kite string and never once let it go.

Why I'm writing

To reconnect · Just hoping to know they're well

On Sunday afternoons we climbed to the roof of our estate with a kite we had built from newspaper and bamboo sticks from his grandmother’s stall. The whole of Kowloon was laid out below us. You said that one day we would fly it higher than the tallest building in Hong Kong. In 1984 my family moved across the harbour, and I did not even say goodbye. The kite is the last thing I remember of that roof.

Passed on by 5 · reached step 3 · 2 keeping an eye out

Could this letter be about you? This is me