I came to England in 1967 to be trained as a mental health nurse. It was just before my 19th birthday that I arrived. I went to Kent to train in one of the very big mental hospitals of the day.

Before I came I was a stateless person. I left with my family from Mainland China to Hong Kong at the back end of 1949. So we were neither Hong Kong citizens or People Republic of China citizens. We were stateless and we lived in a shanty town in Hong Kong for a long time, from 1949 until the shanty town was burned down in 1963. There we lived in a cardboard shelter in a disused football field until the Hong Kong government resettled us in one of those resettlement blocks. In the shanty town there was no facilities, no sanitary stuff, no electricity, no water, no law and order. Nothing.

I left school when I was 17. Living in a tenement block in Hong Kong, I was the first one in the whole estate to leave for England so it was quite a big deal when I left. I still have a photograph showing people seeing me off at the airport. It was on the 4th March 1967.

In the UK I was granted status in 1973 and in 1974, I applied for and obtained British citi-zenship. Now I am a naturalised British citizen. I lived in the hospital’s residential accom-modation for a year to study my A levels, because I wanted to do something more than nursing. Then I took a degree in Psychology from London University. After that I worked in nursing for about seven years. Then I branched out to social services. I worked in social services from 1974 until 1999.

I worked as a senior staff in one of the eight centres for people with learning disabilities in East London for nearly nine years. With social services, I was the head of a day centre for all kinds of client groups for mental health, learning disability, and older people.

I worked there for nearly four years. And during that time, I also studied part-time to get my MA in Social and Public Administration. I went to work in Oxford as the Head of Elders Services in one half of Oxford city. Later I got a job back in Newham, where we lived, and became Head of Inspection and Quality Assurance. So I’ve achieved the high rank of Assistant Director of Social Services of Newham. I stayed there until 1996 and left for a much bigger social services department in Hertfordshire. I become Head of Inspection for the whole of the county, looking after the two health authorities.

After that I took early retirement as I continued my law degree and continued with a legal practice course. I got my law degree in 1997 and then did the first bit of the legal practice course. I became independent and I began to run my own company. I kept doing registration inspection work for different local authorities. At one stage, I was working for four local authorities, contracting my time out. In 2002, I became inspector for the national body called the Healthcare Commission which has now become the CQC, Care Quality Commission. I worked there until I took another early retirement in 2008. And that was the last full time job I have got. In the meantime, from 2002 onward, I always had a part-time job as a member of the Mental Health Tribunal, which is a first-tier judicial office. Since retirement, I have been doing volunteering work for many organizations across London. I feel content and happy. So basically, my motto is ‘from shanty town to London town; from hospital ward to judicial office’, that is my life story.