Wong Hung-cheung

From 1952, I worked in small Chinese newspapers; the ones printed on one sheet, meaning each edition consisted of just four pages. Some were notorious, such as the Hung Luk Pao (the Red Green Daily) and Chiu Yin Pao. They were called 'pocket newspapers' because they were easily folded and stuffed into pockets if someone approached and you didn't want to be seen reading a naughty sheet. I also worked for 'mosquito papers' - news sheets that appeared unannounced and disappeared a couple of days later - and entertainment sheets. The newspapers paid very little in those days and turnover was very high. We worked 12-hour shifts, beginning at 4pm or 5pm and were paid $4 a shift. We were paid at the end of each shift. When the Korean War erupted more newspapers started publishing.

The Chinese papers sold for 10 cents and cost less than five cents to publish.

We worked for them because we were not on staff and were free to do other part-time work, if we had the energy after a 12-hour shift. At times it was really desperate. The $4 a shift broke down into 60 to 70 cents per thousand Chinese characters. And we worked from handwritten scripts, trying not to make mistakes. Labour was plentiful and it was easy to get fired. Some reporters had impossible handwriting and we used to dread being given their stories to work from.

What we did was sort individual Chinese characters and place them in proper order on printer's blocks. We worked back to front so the characters came out the right way round when printed. Once a block was ready, we covered it with a wet cloth and applied printer's ink with large brushes, before the blocks were heated. Each block could print up to 5,000 sheets.