I walk past Maxwell Chambers almost everyday. It used to be called Customs House. The other day I stopped to look at the plaque that tells you the history of the building. In the between the lines that say the building was air-conditioned in 1973 is my mother, aged 22, just married to my father, joining the civil service. She could read and write in English, and that was a great time to work for the government. Fast forward to the 1980s, and you see me and my mum between the lines, on Saturdays. She brought me to work on Saturdays, and I would sit on her high work bench (at that time civil servants sat in positions higher than their clients, so they could talk down to them; roles have since reversed), playing with a typewriter or writing gibberish, pretending to write Really Important Letters.  And when work ended in the afternoon, we would take a bus and go to my dad’s office in Hong Kong Street. My mother didn’t believe in strollers, so she always carried me around; that is why in my memories she is always big.

I can still remember the smell of my father’s office; it smelt like dried mushrooms, peanuts, and cigarette smoke. He ran a dried goods import export business and there was always peanuts floating in the drain outside. I loved it. His really old friend was sometimes there, and he would be brewing kungfu tea, a really bitter tea that I always asked to drink. He was amused by me, because you don’t usually come across a kid who loved bitter things like I did. Anyway at some point he died and that was the end of kungfu tea.

So that’s me and my mum and my dad, on the heritage trial.