Mr Cheng – Hysan 95

Mr Cheng

Owner, Paris Cotton Singlets Company

My father and I were refugees who came to Hong Kong in 1948. At first, he worked at a construction site for HK$5 a day. We rented half a store and set up a few manual knitting machines in the back alley behind it. We extended our clients to shopping malls, such as the one there before Sogo. We were able to make up to HK$20-30k a day. At the time, that was about the price of a building. One knitted jumper cost about $100 and back then, our styles were greatly influenced by British brands, such as Jaeger, as this is where the wool was imported from. Eventually, our landlord didn’t want us to rent there anymore and so we moved to the ground floor of 13 Pak Sha Road until we sold it and moved to our current location.

Before down jackets became popular, when the economy wasn’t so good, everyone knitted. That’s because wool yarn can be reused by pulling the knit apart and straightening it out in hot water. You can add different coloured yarn after pulling it apart to make it multi-coloured. One ball of wool could last the rest of your life. It was a wise investment – a package of yarn can last generations. Back then, Hong Kong was full of refugees and a shirt was considered really expensive so of course buying a ball of wool yarn and knitting clothing for yourself made sense.
So it was the economy that pushed people to buy yarn and made it so popular before.

People used to be very frugal and even if they got wealthier, they would only use the extra money during Chinese New Year to buy a whole set of new clothes and get a haircut – and also get better quality yarn. If they were poor, they would use bad quality yarn which is thicker and harder and long-lasting. That became a trend and people knitted everywhere in public and on the bus. There was a saying that there were more yarn shops than rice shops because business was so good at the time.

“Before down jackets became popular, when the economy wasn’t so good, everyone knitted. That’s because wool yarn can be reused by pulling the knit apart and straightening it out in hot water.”

“One ball of wool could last the rest of your life. It was a wise investment –
a package of yarn can last generations.”

These days, the reverse is true. We’re living in a wealthy society, why would people need to buy a ball of yarn when they can buy knitted clothing for HK$50 on the streets? Economic circumstances have changed now. Yarns started to have different styles because people got wealthier and started to use more trendy colours. There were yarn stalls inside shopping malls and in Causeway Bay, there were also had a lot of yarn shops but now you see there aren’t any yarn stalls in malls anymore.

We are in Causeway Bay because rent was cheaper back then and we decided to stay here. The shop grew with Causeway Bay. Hysan was a big construction site that used to be a small hill and there were explosions every day at noon to reduce the hill. Times Square was a tram depot and on Russell Street it was only a dai pai dong area but now it’s one of the most expensive places in Hong Kong.

Our customers keep coming back because of our work attitude. One of our regular customers, called May, started working with us. We’ve had employees who worked until they were in their 80s. One of my father’s principles was that he never fired anyone and we really respect our customers. My mom was always willing to teach people how to knit and answer any questions. These days they call this “service” but that is just how we treated our customers.