Georgina Tang’s childhood was deeply unhappy. Growing up in poverty in Hong Kong’s New Territories in the 1960s, as one of eight children born into an arranged marriage, her first memories are of physical abuse at the hands of her jealous mother.
“When they were forced to marry at the age of 21, my father was in love with another woman, whom he never quite forgot about,” says Tang, now 63. “It drove my mother crazy. It made her furious that I was my father’s favourite – she hated me because he was affectionate towards me.”
Tang recalls her mother beating her with a bamboo stick until it splintered, and worse. “She would starve me and send me away while everyone else was eating,” she says.
A thin and sickly child, Tang was frequently ill but rarely taken to see a doctor or given medicine.