Elsie Tu

To give is better than to take

By Flora Chan

A former Hong Kong Legislative Councillor, Dr. Elsie Tu, more familiarly known locally as Mrs. Tu Yip Shek Yan, recalls her 20s from the vantage point of her late 80s.

Like many youths nowadays, Mrs. Tu was pursuing her tertiary education in her early 20s. She studied at the University of Durham in England. After four years, she graduated with a diploma in the Theory and Practice of Teaching.

Said she: “Christianity was another treasure from the university. I would not have come to Hong Kong for missionary work if I were not a Christian.

From The Bible, she acquired the decency of bestowing favours upon the needy. This is also the kind of life her father wanted her to lead.

“My grandparents passed away in my father’s adolescence. He could not but give up schooling,” said she. “He then worked to support his younger brothers.

“They lived in the vicinity of coal mines where people living nearby were mostly penniless.”

Mrs. Tu’s dedication to the impoverished was fortified by this subtle link with her upbringing.

Upon graduation, Mrs. Tu became a teacher in Halifax. World War II ignited soon after a year’s teaching.

“I joined an organisation called Civil Defence then. When the Germans came across and dropped bombs, it was our mission to save anyone who might be blown up,” she said.

One night in 1941, when she was on her way to the venue of her duty, a bomb was dropped by air.

“I jumped into a subterranean air-raid shelter.

“I was all right. But when I came out of the shelter, all the houses around were destroyed.”

She found a man who had a big wound to the head, so she got him into the shelter.

He asked her to take him home as he lived nearby.

She wanted to comply, but some of her colleagues advised her to go back down into the shelter.

She complied, while her colleagues remained outside.

“Unfortunately, there was another bomb. They were killed.

“That was the worst experience I ever had.”

1945 was a year that marked a turning point in Mrs. Tu’s life. In Halifax, she got married to her first husband, Mr. William Elliot, in church. He brought her to Hong Kong three years later.

“Mr. Elliot is so narrow-minded that I could not stand it, so I rejected him when he first asked me to marry him.

“Not until he promised to open his mind up did I agree to wed him.”

She said Mr. Elliot kept his promise for only a short time.

He relapsed into narrow-mindedness after going to China.

“He insisted that Chinese discredited God. They were uneducated.

“Most of their knowledge about China stemmed from movies that portrayed Chinese as opium smokers and gangsters.”

Yet, Mrs. Tu wanted to check it out on her own.

Hong Kong was the first territory of China she set foot on.

“Hong Kong is very old,” said she when asked about her first impressions of Hong Kong.

“At that time, Hong Kong people wore Chinese long gowns. Bamboo was used when carrying goods.

“Houses had three to four storeys. A majority of people lived in wooden huts.”

Having realised that hospitals were inadequate, Mrs. Tu ran a clinic. And she was responsible for interpretation.

“It was a difficult task. Since I was so busy, I didn’t make a proper progress in learning Cantonese.”

She got words mixed up.

“I always get confused with tauh and touh, which mean ‘head’ and ‘stomach’ in Cantonese, respectively,” said she, pointing at her stomach and laughing.

Many people came to Hong Kong from China as refugees in those days. Adults had no jobs and children received no education. The situation was terrible.

“People only earned about $1.20 per day. But to me, I thought at least $6 was needed to sustain a person’s life each day.

“Some children had to work, like making matchboxes and packaging biscuits.”

Mrs. Tu believed children should go to school instead.

She founded a school in a tent, which later became the Mu Kuang English School in Kwun Tong, with her present husband, Mr. Andrew Tu, in 1954.

The school only had two teachers: Mr. and Mrs. Tu.

“Mr. Tu taught Chinese and history, and I taught the other subjects,” said Mrs. Tu.

The school has kept her in Hong Kong for 53 years so far.

Comparing the 20-year-olds of today to those decades ago, Mrs. Tu claimed that they have changed, particularly in their attitudes.

Said she: “They are being less respectful to parents and they are less willing to help people.

“When you get old, you will find that money does not buy happiness or health.

“But you will be glad if you can look back your life and remember that you have given others a helping hand.”