I was born in Hong Kong. I came to the UK when I was about twelve and a half. So I think it’s 1973 or 74 that I came. My parents came first and then me and my siblings joined them a year or so later.

My dad was a sailor and so he had travelled to the UK quite a fair bit. And he’s not very well educated, so when he stopped working on the ship it was a bit difficult for him to find work in Hong Kong. He had a friend who was opening a restaurant in the UK, in Brighton in actual fact. They offered him a job, because in those days, it was very easy to come to the UK to work as Hong Kong was a British colony. So my dad took the opportunity and came. And then a couple of years later my mum came. Another year or so later, all the children in the family arrived in the UK.

I grew up in Hong Kong’s New Territories where English is hardly ever spoken, so I only knew some alphabet and couldn’t speak a word of English. So at twelve and a half years old it was very tough when I first came. I still remember the things that I learnt about the UK before I came and that was that people here eat sweet rice – now I know it’s rice pudding, but in those days I didn’t actually know it was rice pudding. So it was really tough when I first came because I couldn’t speak a word of English. I wasn’t a very bright student either. Not being able to understand a word at all about what was going on in school was very difficult. I didn’t have any friends. But luckily, because we couldn’t afford to rent a place of our own, we rented a room in a house with many other Chinese families. This, to a certain extent, helped offset the feeling of total isolation. There were only five or six Chinese students in my school. We were definitely in the very minority.

In the beginning the only thing I could say in English was my name and I actually carried a piece of paper saying my name is so and so. And for this I sometimes got bullied, like they’d mimic my accent and make fun of me. Eventually I overcame the problem as I slowly grew more confident with my English.

I lived in north London until when I was doing my O-Levels. Then I went to Kingsway College in Kings Cross and I did two years O-Level and two years A-Level there, so altogether I stayed in Kingsway for four years. Then I went to Middlesex Polytechnic for a business course. But I actually dropped out of my degree course because I wasn’t a business minded person, and I did it just because my mother suggested it and I had no clue what I wanted to do.

My first job was the Women worker at the Chinese Information and Advice Centre in Chi-natown. I did that for a couple of years. And later I joined several other to set up the Newham Chinese Association.