CHAPTER 114

2025-12-19

What do you learn from being ill?

After seeing a doctor, the illness will get better.

When you are sick, you feel uncomfortable: you may have a fever or vomit. A fever needs to be checked. My parents would first judge by touch, or use a thermometer to confirm that we had a fever. Then they would place an ice pack on our foreheads. If the fever did not subside, or if vomiting continued, we would be taken to see a Western-trained doctor.

The Western doctor we saw back then was named Mr. Pao Hon-fan, commonly called Dr. Pao “Sang” (“Sang” as in lively and vigorous), reputed for “never having treated anyone to death.” His clinic was on the south side of King’s Road in North Point; a short walk westward was the Chinese Restaurant. That building later changed hands and names repeatedly. On the north side of the restaurant, across King’s Road, stood the State Theatre.

Looking back now, after my younger sister Ai-Ling passed away, because my family no longer trusted the skills of the original attending Western doctor, when I was about three years old we all switched to seeing Dr. Pao.

Living in North Point Estate, the fastest way to the clinic was by taxi, followed by bus. I remember my father sometimes carrying me on his back to see the doctor. Before setting off, he put my school jacket on me to keep me warm. Thinking about it now, it was probably because we couldn’t get a taxi or missed the bus, so we had no choice but to walk. On Hong Kong Island one could take the tram; I suspect my father carried me most of the way, and by the time we reached King’s Road we had already walked a fair distance, so he simply continued for a few more blocks.

After entering the building, we still had to take the elevator. It felt like a big toy: after opening the heavy iron gate inlaid with a long frosted-glass window, we then had to push open the folding grille. Watching the door close was already a little performance in itself.

Inside the clinic, the senior nurse—also surnamed Pao—shared the doctor’s surname but was not related to him. I would cling to the chair to have my temperature taken again. When I saw the doctor, he was fair and plump, taller and bigger than my father, and very gentle in manner. Holding a thin metal strip, he reached toward my mouth. Beneath thick black eyebrows, his black eyes, behind black-framed glasses, focused intently on my tongue pressed down by the strip, and on my throat behind it. He then said a few words. I was terrified of injections, but that had no bearing on the outcome. Afterward, we waited to collect the medicine.

My parents worried that I was frail. To help me gain weight, my mother gave me “fat-boy water” (medicine for stomach pain), “Pagoda tablets” (deworming medicine), and cod-liver oil (unbearably fishy). She also arranged for Nurse Pao to come to our home to give my brothers and me booster injections. They put in great effort, but to no avail.

My childhood memories contain only two extremely brief fragments related to my sister. As for life after she was gone, there are no lingering images of sorrow. The belief that “after seeing a doctor, the illness will get better” was not shaken by the tragedy of my sister’s death. Most of my childhood memories are joyful. I believe this was because my parents deliberately avoided revisiting painful matters, protecting each of their sons.

In his later years, my father mentioned several times that it was a pity we had not gone to a studio to take a family portrait back then, leaving nothing to look at in remembrance. Yet he also felt fortunate that there was no tangible object to stir up grief.

But was I truly unaffected?

Many years ago, at a counselling seminar, a psychologist described a case. In essence, a man felt an inexplicable sadness every time he passed a funeral parlour, yet in his memory there was no instance of a close relative or friend dying. Why? During counselling, an earlier incident surfaced: from his birth until the age of six, he had been cared for full-time by a nanny who, for unknown reasons, was suddenly dismissed in a single day and replaced by someone else.

In a child’s mind, a full-time nanny is equivalent to a close relative. Such an abrupt disappearance, without the slightest warning or preparation, and without even a chance to say goodbye, delivers a blow to a child comparable to death.

My sister died of a whooping cough. I lay by the bed and witnessed her being carried away to the hospital after dusk. After that, everything reset to zero.

This case explained my long-standing, persistent unease: (1) my anxiety at the sound of a young child coughing with phlegm, and (2) my distress at the fading of daylight at dusk. The causes of this unease were finally brought to light. From then on, when I encountered similar situations, the sense of confusion disappeared.