大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the 大象传媒 Learning Centre on behalf of Frank Wing Yow Soo with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Frank moved to Gloucestershire with his parents in 1948, to open the first Chinese laundry in Cheltenham. Before that, the family spent the war years living in Birkenhead.

The story Frank remembers is that his father, who was born in Kwangtung, China, and came to Europe during the First World War, got on a ship to go to America when the war ended in 1918. But when he got off, it turned out to be Liverpool and that was how he came to stay in England. Here are Frank's war memories.

My father travelled all over England and Wales - possibly the equivalent of today's back-packer - working in Chinese laundries.

After a few years however, he settled down and started his own laundry in Birkenhead. He married a local English girl and they had two daughters. For whatever reason, they divorced after about 15 years.

He went back to China and married my mother in 1937, before returning to his laundry in Birkenhead. Due to the speed of the marriage, it may have been an arranged one. If so, it was certainly a successful match.

I was born in 1938 in 90 Oxton Road, Birkenhead. The house was destroyed by a bomb in the early part of the Second World War. Luckily we had heeded the air raid warning and were all inside the cellars of the Birkenhead Brewery, just down the road.

My father re-opened the laundry at 66 Oxton Road, almost opposite the Brewery. This was quite convenient, as we didn't have to run very far whenever the warning sirens went off.

I remember the laundry had a great big cauldron, about five feet across and heated by a coke fire underneath. All the dirty clothes were piled in and boiled, before being transferred to a large wooden tub for rinsing. The clothes were then spun dry in a "hydro" and then transferred to the "drying room" with wires strung across the ceiling.

The room was heated by an iron coke stove which was also the heater for the flat irons. The flat irons were more versatile than the electric irons available then. In fact, stiff collars could only be formed or shaped with a flat iron - electric irons were too bulky and couldn't get hot enough.

Only Chinese laundries were able to produce the very stiff collars as preferred by the police and armed forces and for formal dress wear.

Electricity was only just coming in. Many houses had no supply. Ours in Birkenhead had electricity only on the ground floor until 1948. Upstairs, candles had to be used.

In 1945, to wash and iron a shirt cost 6d (2.5p). An average working women's weekly pay was 拢2/10 (拢2.50) for a 40-45 hour week.

Our laundry was one of the bigger of the Chinese ones and we had quite a few English girls working for us. They worked according to our timetable, so some days were very long, ending quite late at 8pm or 9pm at night.

During the war and for several years after, you couldn't buy rice or any Chinese foods. The only way you could obtain these foods was when a ship came into port with Chinese sailors in their crew. They knew that wherever they went there would be Chinese wanting rice, dried vegetables and noodles, who would be willing to pay almost any price. A bag of rice could cost a month's wages.

Every Sunday, we would go from Birkenhead, across or under the River Mersey to Chinatown in Nelson Street, Liverpool, which was one street away from the Cathedral.

There were a few little shops that sold Chinese goods and also the Hoi Yin Community Association where people could play Mah Jong or obtain help.

My father was a founder member as he did a lot of community work. There were very few cultural exchanges but once or twice a year the Association would arrange for a group of entertainers to come and perform live Chinese opera on a Sunday afternoon. As I didn't know the legends or stories or understand what was happening, I used to run around the aisles with the other children.

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