Robert Hung Ngai learnt quickly to adapt and not let the change of circumstance overwhelm him – a characteristic that carried him through these times and many others in the future. He experienced a severely disrupted education as the war constantly threw up impediments, attending schools in Hong Kong, Guilin, Kunming, Macau, Hong Kong (again) and the US during his teenage years. On the positive side, he learned to speak Cantonese, Putonghua, some south-western Chinese dialects (which deserted him through lack of use as he got older) and English. He grew accustomed to living away from his family early, and coped with life-threatening situations, such as the escape from Hong Kong and later from Liuchow. “My life was full of conflict at that time: first the Japanese in China and then the Communists in China,” Mr Ho noted.

Following the war, the then teenager returned to Hong Kong and attended Pui Ching Middle School, where he established a loyal group of friends that he has remained in touch with ever since. However, after the declaration of the People’s Republic of China, plans to attend Lingnan College in Guangzhou were overturned and he was sent to the United States to finish his high school education and improve his English before attending university in the United States.

His choice of the US, rather than the family tradition of the UK, was due to Pui Ching graduates’ closer association with the former and the fact that many of his friends would be headed there.

Gaining permission to attend high school in the US

“Had there been no revolution in China, I would have gone to Lingnan and only afterwards gone overseas for my postgraduate studies, as that was the system in our family. But there was a revolution and that’s when my grandfather encouraged me to go to England. I didn’t want to go there as all my Pui Ching friends would be going to the US. My father said: “If your grandfather wants it, then go there.”

However, I persuaded my grandfather not to send me to the UK by showing him a brochure of boys in shorts and knee socks in winter and telling him there was no hot water for baths. “You don’t want your grandson to catch pneumonia, do you?” I said to him. He looked at the brochure, then I didn’t hear anything from him for a long time. Finally, he sent someone to tell me: “All right, you can apply to the US.”

Then the question was where to apply? My parents knew someone in the US Consulate-General who was from Kansas City and I asked for a recommendation. The answer came back: “Well, Pembroke Country Day School is one of the best in the country.’ Although it was a day school, they had room for a few boarders. There were seven of us in total. However, I was the only foreign student. The other six came from Oklahoma!”

In studying at Pembroke Country Day School, then an all-boys school, Robert Hung Ngai experienced an all-English education for the first time as well as a complete change of culture as he had not been overseas since a babyhood visit to the US.

Prior to this move, most of his education had been in Chinese, with English just an individual subject and taught at a basic level. He recalled that he could understand to a limited degree but he had never really had to converse in English before. When he first went to visit the school, headmaster Bradford M. Kingman had said to his mother: “If your boy only comes to this school for one year, I’m afraid he will have trouble with his English and US History when he enters university.” As a result, Robert Hung Ngai spent two years in Kansas City.

It was a lonely challenge initially, away from all family, amah, household staff, and previous friends. Yet the situation forced him to communicate totally in English, which he later came to appreciate, and to gain independence fast.

Out on his own overseas

“Of course, I was alone then and being in the school where there weren’t many boarders made me extra alone. I think, though, it also stopped me being shy. I became very independent and gained confidence in myself.”

Being the sole student from overseas, Robert Hung Ngai experienced culture gap incidents, especially as people in the 1950s did not travel abroad as much as now and had less experience of meeting people from different countries. “At that time, a lot of people in Kansas City didn’t know about the Far East. I remember one question was: ‘Do you have trees in China?’ This has stuck in my head right to this day. But then they all laughed when I got excited about seeing snow for the first time.”

He had to get used to cornflakes for breakfast instead of congee and to hearing people say, “I’ll see you”, and realizing it was just an expression and they didn’t necssarily mean that they would meet again. But people were generally very kind, realising he was without his family and inviting him home to stay with them at holiday times such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. “I was very fortunate that way,” he said. The dormitory supervisor, an English teacher, also looked out for him, inviting him to have dinner with his family, inviting Robert Hung Ngai to have dinner with his family and helping the teenager’s English improve.

His parents had organised a guardian – an old neighbour from their own Kansas days at the United States Army Command and General Staff College – and in the summer Robert Hung Ngai stayed there as it was too far and far too expensive to keep travelling back and forth to Hong Kong. “Getting to the school from Hong Kong took several days at that time, with stops in Tokyo and Honolulu ahead of San Francisco and then another flight to Kansas City so I didn’t go home for several years,” he said.

Holidays with his parents’ former neighbour, though, were not his favourite occupation.

Teenage angst and vacations with his guardian

"I found it difficult going back to my guardian’s house as she was a very elderly lady. First of all, she ate very little and so I had to do the same. Secondly, we had nothing to talk about together. Most people did not have television then. She only listened to serials on the radio and read the newspaper, but at that time I wasn’t interested in that. Instead I would go around the neighbourhood trying to do odd jobs: washing a car was 50 cents; mowing a lawn was US$1, depending on the size of the lawn. I always really appreciated it when someone at school would take me in and I could be with younger people.

“But my guardian meant well. And she did like to travel, which meant I saw a lot of nearby states: Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, New Mexico. I thank her for this. I would be at the steering wheel as she didn’t like to drive. Mind you, she wanted me to go slowly and these were great highways we were on. When she began to nod off, I would start to speed up… only to be soundly admonished when she eventually woke up!”