Ann, a member of the Village Aunties' Workshop and an employee of Pokfulam Farm, can often be found in the pottery room. Because of her work and her love of handcrafts, after dropping her daughter off at school, she always goes to the pottery room at the farm early in the morning to make pottery, or sews clothes at home before going to work, never missing a moment of "handcrafting". Even on holidays, Ann always returns to the farm to work in the pottery room or take part in the activities of the village aunties' workshop. One reason for this is that as a member of the Village Aunties' Workshop and Pottery Room, she feels responsible for keeping the workshop running, and the other reason that motivates her is the excitement of making things.

 

Mammy's me time

 

Ann has always been a craftswoman, perhaps because of her family background, even before she started the Village Aunties' Workshop. Her mother was a garment factory worker and as a child she watched her mother make clothes and learned from her mother's experience. By primary school, Ann knew how to make scarves out of old trousers with a needle and thread, and she also made drawings and submitted them to newspapers, choosing to study art at secondary school. In 2014, the conservation team organised the 'flower pot painting' activity to decorate the venue for the Village Festival. Ann and her daughter participated in the village decoration activity for the first time, and everyone got to see Ann's creative side.

 

Roughly speaking, Ann spends about a third of her time in the pottery room and the Village Aunties workshop during the holidays. "I feel that the time she spends in the studio is her own time, and it gives her a moment to step away from her role as a mother and wife and enjoy her time alone doing what she likes, which also relaxes her mood. When Brian Kam asked us to come up with a new name for the studio when it first opened, she remembered how his daughters would say, "Mum, I want to...", and suggested the name "Escape and Enjoy the Pottery". In fact, it also expresses her feelings at the moment - to escape from her original role and enjoy the joy of making things.

 

She likes to look for creative ideas on the internet, and if she finds them interesting, she will recommend them to the aunties in the village and make them together. Some time ago, she found it easy to start weaving paper rattan baskets and the material cost was low, so she strongly recommended it to the village aunties. When they all worked together, they tried to use this technique to make different items, and eventually they made handbags, hats, tissue boxes, and Mei Yee even changed the techniques to use bamboo strips to weave baskets: "We found that by learning the same technique and then using our creativity and adding our own ideas, each village aunt can make different kinds of artwork.

 

It's not easy to find a group of like-minded friends who want to spend every weekend and holiday in the workshop, practising their craft or volunteering. That's why Ann values the time she spends with her friends and doesn't want her passion to go to waste. "Now that we have Pokfulam Farm as a place where we can have more opportunities to develop our skills, I hope that our crafts can contribute to the development of the farm," she says.

 

From being a loner, Ann is now a group of people who work together to learn from each other's experiences, share their joys and, more importantly, make up for each other's shortcomings," says Ann. "Ling Ling is good at knitting with thread, but I am not interested in that, I like to knit with paper rattan. However, I understand that there are similarities between the two techniques, so I learned from Ling Ling. As we had known each other for many years as neighbours, we would do handcrafts and eat together, which made us feel relaxed and relieved. That is why I rarely go out when I am on holiday, because Pokfulam Village already has a lot of resources to spend time with, the costs are low and the humanity is strong. It's rare to find a village in Hong Kong where you can play with natural dyes and make pottery, and the mountains are full of natural resources for everyone to explore". Sometimes Ann would post her daily life on Facebook, and her daughters' parents would envy her and sign up for public events organised by the villagers. The parents were amazed that there was no need to travel far to the outskirts of the city, but that a traditional village had been preserved in the city, where they could have access to a stone mill, make sticky rice cakes themselves, and experience village life that is rarely seen.

 

"Driving" for daughters

 

"I always put practicality first in my crafts," she says. Like many mothers, Ann's crafts revolve around her children. She learned to drive a sewing machine because of her two daughters. "Since the birth of my two children, my family has become more and more burdened. I realised that buying a pair of shorts costs a few tens of Hong Kong dollars, but that amount of money was enough to buy a few yards of fabric and make a few pairs of trousers," she says. As long as I know how to sew, I can not only save money, but also make clothes and accessories for my daughters when they want them, such as dresses for the National Dress Day at school, hand-sleeved aprons for painting classes, etc. So Ann started learning to sew from scratch, first trying out other people's old sewing machines, then getting hooked, buying a new sewing machine with computerised embroidery, and filling her house with boxes of fabrics and accessories from all over the world.

 

The daughters have been influenced by their mother and now, when they and Ann see an interesting piece in a shop, they always study how it is made. In their minds, their mother knows how to make anything that can be made with a sewing machine. Now Ann can make her daughter's dresses, pencil cases, mobile phone cases, wallets and so on from fabrics of her choice, and she feels that she is a "wise mother" in her daughter's mind, able to make everything herself.

 

Passing on the wisdom of life

 

Nowadays, Ann does all the day-to-day fabric work herself, even making combs and curtains without asking for help. Although online shopping is very convenient and inexpensive, for a person who loves handmade things, things made by her own hands are thoughtful and unique, and she enjoys the sense of success in the process. Sometimes, even when Ann buys a finished product, she will try to modify it, adding and changing things to make it unique, thus gaining more fun and satisfaction. "When I know how to sew, I will teach my own daughter. This is what I mean by inheritance, and inheritance can be the wisdom of everyday life, not necessarily limited to craftsmanship, which is so highly valued by the general public. In today's society, many people don't know how to sew, they don't know how to fix the buttons on their clothes, and they often have to leave it to someone else". If we learn these common sense things, we won't have to ask for help, and sometimes we might even be able to help others. There was once a parent friend of Ann's who was looking after his daughter on his own, but as he did not know how to sew, but his daughter's school uniform needed to be altered, the alteration service outside could not solve his friend's needs, so he asked Ann for help, and in the end she was able to alter his friend's school uniform smoothly. Although it was just a small favour, she was able to give her friend a sigh of relief when she was at her wits' end, so a well-developed craft can definitely help others.

 

Apart from being practical, the constant learning process has inspired Ann to think about aesthetics and apply it to other aspects of her daily life, thus enhancing her sense of personal aesthetic sense. "I remember someone saying something along the lines of, "Even if technology advances and allows you to get perfect scores in every subject, the Artistic discipline can never be calculated by a supercomputer". Take mathematics as an example, if you press the keyboard at any time, the computer will be able to calculate even the most complicated questions for you. However, no rule can measure one's sense of aesthetic beauty and even more so, computers can't replace them. They can only be cultivated through daily practice and training in craftsmanship."

 

Little Woman of Pokfulam Village

 

Ann followed his husband to Pokfulam Village after marriage in 2008. The house was an ancestral home inherited from her husband's grandparents. The villagers called the two elders "Big Chicken Uncle Six" and "Auntie Six", and Grandma and her husband were born here, so strictly speaking, she was considered an outsider. When she moved into Pokfulam Village, she started from zero, and became interested in the history of the place, the background of each of the villagers, and sometimes fantasised about what life was like for the villagers in the past. "The place where we live used to be a tea stall run by my grandfather. Whenever I met a senior in the village, they would tell me about the past of my husband's family, the funny stories of my husband's childhood and his grandmother, and how the elders got along with each other, so I felt like I was reading a living history book, which was very interesting. As a member of the Pok Fu Lam Village Conservation Group and an employee of the Pokfulam Farm, Ann had the opportunity to learn from the village elders, such as traditional food preparation and fire dragon making. In the past, her husband seldom paid much attention to what was going on in the village, but now he and her grandparents ask her what village activities she would recommend, and they attend events with her and even volunteer to help out. "In the past, my name used to be 'daughter-in-law of Auntie Six', but now, everyone knows me as Ann, and my name is 'Little Woman of Pokfulam Village', which is my nickname on the Pokfulam Village Facebook page, haha!

 

More than 10 years after the campaign to save Pok Fu Lam Village, the enthusiasm of the villagers has not waned. While Ann continues to reflect on what she has left behind in the village, she has already built up a library of stories about Pok Fu Lam in her mind. "Earlier, I saw a stack of old photos of Pokfulam taken by Mr Chan Ming-keung, an old postman who used to work in the neighbourhood and was known as 'Postman Chan'. Because of his love for the place, he gave us a chance to see what Pok Fu Lam looked like in the 1960s and 1970s. I am a person who likes to fantasise. If I keep the photos I have taken over the years, and if I have more experience as an outsider than as an ordinary villager, maybe in a few decades I will be another 'Postman Chan'! One day, when I am old enough, my daughter will be able to tell her friends that her mother had different experiences in Pokfulam village, and the more I think about it, the more interesting it will be.

 

The wampi tree in the old house

 

Ann's house has a small garden with a wampi tree and a mango tree. In the summer the house was very busy. From time to time, neighbours would visit and taste the fresh wampis and mangoes. As the fruit is pesticide-free and often blemished, Ann chooses the big, beautiful ones to give away and keeps the less perfect ones for her own consumption. "People in the neighbourhood usually share their fruit and gourmet with me, so we don't mind, we just want to be happy! " she says. To make things easier for everyone, she has become more thorough in recent years, cleaning the wampis, peeling and removing the seeds, and developing her own recipes to make jam for the neighbours. When she succeeded in developing the jam, she thought: "Why not make bread so that everyone can enjoy it with the jam? So this summer, all her friends and family will receive the jam and bread set. Making jam and bread at the same time is a lot of work for a mother juggling work and looking after her two daughters, isn't it? "But it's not too much effort for me because I like making it myself, it tastes different and the most important thing is that my friends and family are happy with the food that money can't buy." As for the mangoes, Ann will give them to the volunteers and friends who serve Pokfulam Village as a thank you for their efforts throughout the year, and looks forward to seeing them again next year when she will give them as a token of her appreciation. "I appreciate the neighbourhood of Pokfulam Village. It is rare to see people doing everything without compensation," she said.

 

Although Pokfulam is a densely populated village, the fruit trees are tall and large, with the wampi trees reaching up to two storeys. Ann's family had to climb the trees to pick the wampi, and her tree stood out from the Chi Fu flyover," she says. "I remember a few years ago, some people from outside the village saw our mango tree and came to buy mangoes from us, but I refused them all. My daughters wondered how they could make money selling mangoes! But I taught them that the mango tree was left by our ancestors and that they were all blessings from our ancestors. Now that we have a full life and no lack of money, why don't we share it with everyone?

 

Although Pokfulam is a densely populated village, the fruit trees are tall and large, with the wampi trees reaching up to two storeys. Ann's family had to climb the trees to pick the wampi, and her tree stood out from the Chi Fu flyover," she says. "I remember a few years ago, some people from outside the village saw our mango tree and came to buy mangoes from us, but I refused them all. My daughters wondered how they could make money selling mangoes! But I taught them that the mango tree was left by our ancestors and that they were all blessings from our ancestors. Now that we have a full life and no lack of money, why don't we share it with everyone?

 

In commercial society, where money has become the easy mode of transaction, money seems to be the solution to all problems. In village life, however, we are accustomed to the "barter" mode of communication, where surplus resources are shared with everyone. In this primitive and humanistic form of rural exchange, the value of an item is determined by the parties involved in the transaction through interpersonal communication, which saves resources and promotes the exchange of feelings and skills among neighbours. This form of exchange, which is not measured in money, is less convenient than "buying and selling", but it is more heartfelt and warm, which is perhaps the experience most lacking in today's city dwellers.

 

"I want more people to know about Pokfulam Village and the life of the village aunties, especially those from outside the village who come for the guided tour, so that they can understand why we like our current way of life, and I hope to preserve this place so that generations of people can continue to live here."