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Faye Bradley

Contributing Online Editor, Style by SCMP


“This is where my bed was.”
Katie Aung stands at the centre of Tai A Chau, an uninhabited island south of Lantau, with former marine police officer Les Bird, pointing to a spot on the ground.
“This is where I lived.” She turns slightly, and gestures again. “My bed faced this way. Head this end, feet down here. I lived right here for many years of my childhood.”
In the 1990s, it was to this 1.2 sq km speck of land in the South China Sea that Aung, a former Vietnamese refugee, was confined.

Tai A Chau today is almost entirely reclaimed by nature – a deserted outcrop. But its past as a detention centre remains etched into the landscape, lingering beneath the undergrowth: the concrete spine of a former camp cutting through the island, the foundations of village houses that once stood there – quiet, stubborn reminders of what once was. It is this past that Aung and Bird, who oversaw the search-and-rescue operations for tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong across three decades, have come to recall.
After disembarking at the old jetty of Tai A Chau, Aung walks inland with Bird. Along the way, they spot an ornate, rocky fish pond, built by other refugees who had once inhabited the island. Aung recognises it immediately; she and the other children would gather around its edge, watching the colourful fish that darted through the water.
Upon entering the main clearing of the island, Aung slows and looks around. Framed by hills on both sides, the space opens up before her, its present at odds with what it once held. Here is where she makes sense of her old sleeping quarters.

“We both stood there in silence for some time,” Bird says, recalling the visit he made with Aung in February. “Katie was lost in her memories in a moment that must have been pretty poignant for her.”
In the late 70s through to the 90s, waves of refugees fled Vietnam’s post-war turmoil, risking their lives on rickety boats in the South China Sea. Many were rescued – or intercepted – by authorities. Under British colonial administration, Hong Kong established temporary detention centres on isolated islands and former military sites. One of them was Tai A Chau, where children and adults alike spent months, or even years, under tightly controlled conditions. For them, these camps became formative, often traumatic, spaces.
“In my mind, I still see the island as it was during that first week in 1989 [when the camp was opened],” says Bird. “We received about 3,000 desperate people. We had to provide shelter, food and fresh water – and there was nothing on the island. It was mayhem.”

What unfolded in those early days was improvised survival. “I remember fathers, dressed in rags, scavenging for materials – broken boats, tree branches, anything – to build shelter, and mothers, many with babies, trying to find ways to feed them. There were no sanitation facilities. No power. At night, the island was in complete darkness,” Bird says.
He recalls the threat of disease being inescapable. “We knew, in the heat of the day, it wouldn’t be long before something would spread.” Even now, the sensory memory lingers. “As Katie and I walked across the island, I could still see those scenes,” he says. “I could still smell the smoke from the fires people used for cooking – and that strong ointment of White Flower Oil everyone relied on, hoping to keep illness away.”
After a few years of operating as a ramshackle “tent city”, the government built an all-purpose holding centre on Tai A Chau, in 1991. Life on the island continued to be regimented and constrained.

Detainees were housed in shared halls, movement was restricted and repetition often replaced any sense of freedom. But within these walls, small acts of resilience – learning new languages, forming friendships and even building fish ponds – offered the faintest glimmers of normality.
Aung was just nine years old in 1989, when she left her parents and hometown of Da Nang to join her two aunts aboard a small dinghy. Boat No 761 carried 77 people on a perilous journey to Hong Kong that would last seven days and seven nights.
“We had to leave at night, then head to the mountains for a night or two,” she recalls. “We left during the Lantern Festival, so there was a lot of distraction; that way, the police didn’t catch us.”
Much of the journey remains blurred. “I don’t remember a lot of details,” Aung says. “The strange thing about memory is that the brain blocks most of the trauma.” What endures are fragments: the confined space of the boat and the physical reality of survival.
“All I remember is being in a tiny cabin, curled up – kind of like hugging your knees.”
Aung recalls men in green uniforms transferring them, one by one, from the sinking boat to a larger vessel, its deck crowded with others bound for Hong Kong’s Green Island, then used as a processing centre for new arrivals, as well as detainees awaiting release or relocation.

“I remember arriving late at night at the dock, and they sprayed me,” she says. “They asked me to turn 360 degrees so they could spray me with pesticide – to kill any germs or bacteria I might have carried. They basically treated me like an insect.”
As a child, Aung remembers life on Tai A Chau as something akin to imprisonment. “Guards opened the door, and then it shut, and they locked it,” she says, describing the camp being made up of large, hut-like structures. “You weren’t allowed to go outside. Everybody stayed in their bunk beds. I’ve never been to prison, but what I imagine it to be – this was it.”
For Aung, the years that followed were marked by constant movement. “I was at Whitehead [Ma On Shan] – that was the worst – and then they moved me to Tai A Chau.”
It was there, around 1992 or 1993 until 1996, that she spent the longest stretch, before being transferred through several more detention camps. Guards, she recalls, came from a range of backgrounds, and included Afghan and Indian personnel. Daily life was defined by a quiet, unrelenting monotony.
“As a child, I didn’t know what hopelessness was, but I knew what boredom was,” she says. “Every day was the same.”

But during those years, Aung picked up Cantonese through shows such as Enjoy Yourself Tonight – the camp was allowed one hour of television each evening – and began learning English at a school in the camp.
Her name appeared on deportation lists more than once. “Each time, somehow, I was left off.” Eventually, after her aunt – who had secured her own release – advocated on her behalf with the help of a lawyer, Aung was granted her freedom.
“At first, I thought they were calling me again for deportation. But this time, they told me I was free to go.”
She spent a final few months at a detention centre near Kai Tak, which she calls a “freedom camp”, while awaiting relocation to her next destination.
Later, during a period of looser restrictions, Aung was allowed to work outside the camp as a seamstress, in a factory producing hospital gowns bound for the United States, though she had to return each night.

In 1997, Aung left for the US, closing the chapter that had defined her early life and, in many ways, rewrote its trajectory. She arrived in Louisiana with little English, navigating high school through sheer determination before earning a place at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she studied chemistry before building a career as an analyst at a chemical company. But her story did not settle into a single path.
In time, she met her husband, started a family and quietly began building something of her own. Now, she is the force behind ventures such as Yummi Sushi in Dallas, Texas, where she is based – a successful entrepreneur whose journey speaks not just of survival, but of reinvention.
Last year, Aung came across Bird’s book, Along the Southern Boundary: A Marine Police Officer’s Frontline Account of the Vietnamese Boatpeople and their Arrival in Hong Kong (2022), an encounter that saw long-dormant memories resurface, drawing her back to Hong Kong. It began with a childhood friend from the Tai A Chau Detention Centre, who had tracked down Bird after researching the island and later organised a reunion for former residents.
“She found Les and asked if he could take us back,” Aung recalls. After initial contact in January, Bird reconnected with her ahead of her trip to Hong Kong in early February.

On the boat to Tai A Chau, Bird showed Aung a PowerPoint presentation featuring photographs from 1989, when the island had been turned into a refugee camp.
“She was fascinated by every image, studying them closely – searching for faces, for fragments of memory, for anything or anyone she might recognise,” he says. “When she did recognise something, she would tell me the story behind it. I found that fascinating. It became a kind of history lesson for me as well, shaped by Katie’s own experiences.”
Each photograph prompted further questions, the answers to which pieced together a clearer picture of the past.
“By the time we arrived at Tai A Chau,” Bird says, “I had a fairly good idea of where Katie would have lived on the island during her time there.”
Since the release of his book, Bird has been contacted by numerous former refugees eager to share their stories. One of them, Connie Sam, reached out after seeing a photograph of Vietnamese refugees on the deck of the people-smuggling freighter Huey Fong. Others have written to say, “That’s me in your book”, or, in one case, “That’s my mother looking directly at the camera – and that small child standing next to her is me.”

“Once something like that happens, I pack a bag and go wherever they are,” Bird says. “I’ve travelled to some pretty remote places, and the meetings are always emotional. I can’t plan or imagine what I’ll say. It’s surreal, having someone who appears to be a complete stranger hug you and refuse to let go of your hand, and then listen to their stories.”
In 2022, Bird gave a talk at the Vietnamese Heritage Museum in Orange County, California, where the impact of these connections was clear: “Everyone in the audience was a former refugee, many rescued from the South China Sea, who had spent time in the Hong Kong camps. My talk lasted 45 minutes; the Q&A continued for three hours. People stood up to tell their stories. For many, it was the first time they had found the courage to speak publicly about what they had endured. It impressed on me how difficult it is for people to talk about trauma – even when they have survived almost certain death and gone on to thrive.”
Like Aung, many former refugees went on to achieve remarkable things. David Tran, featured in Bird’s book, created hot-sauce producer Huy Fong Foods and the popular Sriracha brand. Oscar-winning actor Ke Huy Quan has spoken publicly about his own refugee journey.

The Tai A Chau’s detention centre closed in 1996 and its buildings were demolished. Although it now stands empty and eerie, the island stirred memories for Aung.
“I haven’t fully processed the trip yet,” she admits. “I’m a busy mum, businesswoman and wife, so I haven’t had the time.”
Still, the journey brought clarity. “I don’t see myself as a victim. I appreciate the time I spent in the camp. It trained me, in a way, for the road map I’m on today.”


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Hong Kong

A Vietnamese refugee returns to the Hong Kong island where echoes of a lost childhood remain

Vietnamese refugees arrive in Hong Kong. Some are wearing the green or khaki shirts of the Vietnamese military. Photo: courtesy of Les Bird

Katie Aung (right) and Les Bird at Tai A Chau during Katie’s return visit. They are standing where ramshackle boats full of desperate refugees arrived 35 years earlier. Photo: courtesy Les Bird

The Tai A Chau detention centre, in 1991. Photo: SCMP Archives

Vietnamese boats in Tai A Chau bay. Photo: courtesy Les Bird

A photo taken just after the first refugees were allowed onshore on Tai A Chau, in April 1989. Photo: courtesy Les Bird

Refugees form a queue, waiting to be interviewed, on Tai A Chau, in April 1989. Photo: courtesy Les Bird

Vietnamese refugee children in Hong Kong. Photo: courtesy Les Bird

A Vietnamese refugee family leaves a camp in Kai Tak en route to Britain, in 1987. Photo: SCMP Archives

Les Bird’s 2022 book, Along the Southern Boundary: A Marine Police Officer’s Frontline Account of the Vietnamese Boatpeople and their Arrival in Hong Kong. Photo: courtesy Les Bird

Former refugee Linh Sam with Les Bird’s book, Along the Southern Boundary, open on a 1978 photo that shows her and two of her children. Photo: courtesy Les Bird

A photo taken from a Marine Police launch shows Vietnamese refugees on Tai A Chau in the camp’s chaotic early days. Photo: courtesy Les Bird

In pictures: ‘Made in Hong Kong’ - craft industries that built the city

A wig factory in Aberdeen in 1967. Photo: SCMP Archives

A plastic-flower factory in Tai Kok Tsui, Mong Kok, in 1981. Photo: SCMP Archives

An elderly woman assembles plastic flowers on a boat in the Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter in 1986. Photo: SCMP Archives

An engraver carves a set of mahjong tiles in 1969. Photo: SCMP Archives

Luk Ping-kee engraves characters onto mahjong tiles in his Kennedy Town workshop  in 1987. Photo: SCMP Archives

Ko Yun-kan, craftsman and owner of Kung Yau Cheung, a mahjong supplies shop on Shanghai Street, in Mong Kok, that operated from 1973 to March 2026. Photo: Dickson Lee 

A stamp engraver in Central, in 1970. Photo: SCMP Archives

An engraver carves a Chinese stamp in 1991. Photo: SCMP Archives

The Regina Hair Products wig-making factory, in To Kwa Wan, in 1969. Photo: SCMP Archives

A worker at the Regina Hair Products factory in 1961. Photo: SCMP Archives

Craftsmen carve ivory for a Kowloon store in 1978. Photo: SCMP Archives

A craftsman makes decorative items out of ivory in 1967. Photo: SCMP Archives

A worker polishes an ivory statue in 1967. Photo: SCMP Archives

A cruiser is under construction at Cheoy Lee Shipyards at Penny’s Bay on Lantau Island in 1986. Photo: SCMP Archives

Governor David Wilson (right) visits a porcelain shop in a Sham Shui Po market in 1987. Photo: SCMP Archives

In pictures: Hong Kong’s post-war fishing industry

Fishermen at Sheung Wan, in 1984. Photo: SCMP Archives

A catch is assessed at Lei Yue Mun fishing village, in 1967. Photo: SCMP Archives

A fruitful haul in Lok Ma Chau, on the border between mainland China and Hong Kong, in 1972. Photo: SCMP Archives

Britain’s Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at the Aberdeen Fish Market during his 1959 visit to Hong Kong. Photo: SCMP Archives

Kennedy Town Fish Market, in 1976. Photo: SCMP Archives

Fishing boats in Tai Po, in 1977. Photo: SCMP Archives

Fisherman Fung Siu-shing prepares his net in Yung Shue Wan, Lamma Island, before venturing out to sea in 1989. Photo: SCMP Archives

Fishing boats tied up in the Aberdeen Typhoon Shelter for Chinese New Year, in 1985. Photo: SCMP Archives

The Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter in 1984. Photo: SCMP Archives

Fresh seafood on offer at Aberdeen Fish Market, in 1992. Photo: SCMP Archives

A seafood farm in Tai Po, in the New Territories, in 1990. Photo: SCMP Archives

In 1994, fishing boats were soon to be a thing of the past in Tung Chung, which was earmarked for development as a support city for the new airport at Chek Lap Kok. Photo: SCMP Archives

A fisherman prepares his nets in Tai O, on the west coast of Lantau Island, in 1994. Photo: SCMP Archives

Shrimp-paste production in Tai O, Lantau Island, in 2002. Photo: SCMP Archives

Salted fish drying on a junk at Lamma Fisherfolk’s Village, Sok Kwu Wan, Lamma Island, at its 2006 opening as a “living museum”. Photo: SCMP Archives

In pictures: crossing the Hong Kong-mainland China border through the decades

The pre-Chinese New Year rush at the Kowloon-Canton Railway terminal in Hung Hom, in 1978. Photo: SCMP Archives

Crowds at the newly opened railway station in Hung Hom, in 1975. Still officially known as Kowloon Station, this facility replaced Hong Kong’s previous terminus, which was unable to handle increasing demand for cross-border services, particularly in freight. The only part of the original Kowloon Station that still stands is its clock tower, a landmark on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront. Photo: SCMP Archives

Hong Kong residents on their way to visit relatives cross the border at Lo Wu during the Christmas holidays, in 1979. Photo: SCMP Archives

A mainland train arrives at Hung Hom station on a trial run ahead of the resumption of through-train services between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. On April 4, 1979, the first through-train in three decades would depart from Guangzhou for Hong Kong. Photo: SCMP Archives

Shenzhen looked a much more forbidding place in 1983, as seen from Hong Kong’s Lok Ma Chau. Photo: SCMP Archives

Passengers in the soft-seat express through-train operated by the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation and the Canton Railway Administration, in 1984. Photo: SCMP Archives

A queue outside the Kowloon-Canton Railway’s Hung Hom Station, in 1987. Photo: SCMP Archives

Passengers prepare to take the train from Hung Hom across the border for the 1992 Chinese New Year holiday. Photo: SCMP Archives

The doors open at Lo Wu on travellers returning from the mainland after the Chinese New Year, in 1998. Photo: SCMP Archives

Mainland-bound crowds at the Lo Wu border crossing ahead of the 1999 Chinese New Year. Photo: SCMP Archives

Lo Wu immigration desks in 2002. Photo: SCMP Archives

The Huanggang border point in 2004 after Shenzhen authorities implemented new restrictions on short-distance cross-border bus services. The restrictions were introduced in response to traffic congestion and “bottlenecking” following the launch, the previous year, of 24-hour passenger clearance between Huanggang and Lok Ma Chau, on the Hong Kong side of the Shenzhen River. Photo: SCMP Archives

The West Kowloon High Speed Rail Station in 2018. Officially opened on September 23 of that year, the station marked the completion of the Hong Kong section of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, finally connecting the city to the mainland’s high-speed rail network. Photo: SCMP Archives

Artwork to commemorate the first anniversary of the West Kowloon High Speed Rail Link Terminus, in September 2019. Just over four months later, the station would be closed and cross-border rail services suspended as Covid-19 brought everyday life to a grinding halt. Photo: SCMP Archives

In pictures: Hong Kong’s groundbreaking Wah Fu public housing estate

Children play on an iron climbing frame in the new Wah Fu Estate, 1968. Photo: SCMP Archives

Wah Fu Estate in Pok Fu Lam was inaugurated by Governor Sir David Trench on September 27, 1968. Photo: SCMP Archives

(From left to right) Director of housing Donald Liao Poon-huai, Governor Sir David Trench and B.C. Field, of the Hong Kong Housing Authority, in front of Wah Mei House during the official opening in 1968 of the Wah Fu Estate. Photo: SCMP Archives

A grocery store at Wah Fu Estate, soon after the development’s opening. Photo: SCMP Archives

Wah Fu Estate in 1968: seaside living for the masses. Photo: SCMP Archives

British royal, the Duchess of Kent, aka Katharine Worsley, visited the Wah Fu Estate in 1970. Photo: SCMP Archives

The Wah Fu Estate in 1973. Photo: SCMP Archives

The playgrounds at Wah Fu Estate in 1973. Photo: SCMP Archives

A lion dance at the Wah Fu Estate in 1976 to promote a neighbourhood mutual aid campaign. Photo: SCMP Archives

Director of housing Donald Liao Poon-huai (second left) checks plans for the further development of Wah Fu Estate, in 1978. Photo: SCMP Archives

Wah Fu Estate residents add their names to a 1985 signature campaign launched by the Salvation Army Wah Fu Community Centre to persuade China Motor Bus to run more circular and short-distance routes. Photo: SCMP Archives

By 1978, Wah Fu Estate comprised 9,147 flats in 18 blocks of 10 to 27 storeys. In 2008, when this photo was taken, the Housing Department decreed that all 18 blocks were structurally safe and estate improvement works would be carried out in order to sustain the buildings for the next 15 years. Photo: SCMP Archives

In the 2014 Policy Address, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying announced the estate would be redeveloped. Photo: SCMP Archives

The sky’s the limit at Wah Fu Estate in 2014. Photo: SCMP Archives

A 2014 view of Lamma Power Station from the Wah Fu Estate. Photo: SCMP Archives

The “luxury residence for the masses”. Photo: SCMP Archives

In pictures: Hong Kong’s coldest days from the 1970s to 2010s

Visitors bundled up against the cold to see the frost on Tai Mo Shan, where the temperature fell to minus three degrees Celsius in December 1975. Photo: SCMP Archives

Bushes on Tai Mo Shan are weighed down with hoar frost as temperatures on the mountain plunged below freezing in 1975. Photo: SCMP Archives

A plant on Tai Mo Shan covered with frost in January 1990. Photo: SCMP Archives

A child enjoys the cold snap at Tai Mo Shan Country Park in December 1991. Photo: SCMP Archives

Locals head to Tai Mo Shan to see the frost in December 1991. Photo: SCMP Archives

A freezing day in Tai Mo Shan Country Park in 1991. Photo: SCMP Archives

Bushes on Tai Mo Shan are coated in frost. The Royal Observatory recorded a temperature of 5.9 degrees Celsius on February 20, 1996, which was the coldest Lunar New Year in 46 years. Photo: SCMP Archives

Children on Tai Mo Shan during the Lunar New Year in 1996. Photo: SCMP Archives

A cameraman takes video footage of ice on the outside the Hong Kong Observatory building on the top of Tai Mo Shan. Hong Kong Observatory recorded the lowest temperature this year on December 23, 1999. Photo: SCMP Archives

Frost on Tai Mo Shan at dawn on December 17, 2010, during a dry winter monsoon. Temperatures recorded by Hong Kong Observatory fell as low as 5.8 degrees Celsius, the lowest recorded in December for 11 years. Photo: SCMP Archives

Locals visit Tai Mo Shan to see the frost in January 2016. Photo: SCMP Archives

PostMag

Culture

Entrepreneur Katie Aung revisits the remote site of the detention camp that shaped her younger years


Entrepreneur Katie Aung revisits the remote site of the detention camp that shaped her younger years.


Vietnam

United States

A Vietnamese refugee returns to the Hong Kong island where echoes of a lost childhood remain

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Entrepreneur Katie Aung revisits the remote site of the detention camp that shaped her younger years

Entrepreneur Katie Aung revisits the remote site of the detention camp that shaped her younger years