Fung Keong Rubber Manufactory Company – Cheng Kwai Ying, outworker 1930s

HF: Fung Keong Rubber Manufactory Co. was founded in 1925 by a Nanyang Chinese Mr. Fung Keong to manufacture and sell rubber shoes and rubber products. I believe it was the oldest such factory in Hong Kong.

This extract provides an insight into life as a female outworker with the company in the 1930s:
Cheng Kwai Ying, female, spinster, age 22, outworker, Fung Keong Rubber Factory, Shaukiwan, Hong Kong, lives with brother and sister-in-law at 5 Tai Cheung Street, Sai Wan Ho, rent four dollars a month. There are four cubicles on the floor, and over twenty persons on the floor. Family occupies one cubicle. Brother has daughter, age three, brother skilled worker in Taikoo Dockyard. [earns over a dollar a day]

Occupation: stitching uppers together; owns sewing machine for which she paid eighty dollars second-hand. Has made ten dollars deposit with Fung Keong Company; recieves sixty to seventy pairs of uppers a day; sister-in-law assists her to a certain extent in work; paid according to size and kind. Earns 70 cents to $1.00 a day; ten pairs require from two and a half to three hours. She herself stitches about fifty pairs a day, works every day…(3)

Presumably Cheng Kwai Ying was working on some of these styles:

Fung Keong Rubber advert. Courtesy: HK Heritage Project – Newsletter 2015 No. 2

IDJ has sent the following image. Fung Keong is printed on the tyre. Can someone tell us a little more about what this image says?

HK Governor Sir Alexander Grantham visits the Fung Keong Manufactory booth at the 6th Exhibition of Chinese Products in 1948 – the first post WW2 Courtesy: HKMemory

Sources:

1. The HK Memory Project – Fung Keong Rubber Manufactory Company
2. The HK Heritage Project – Newsletter Past & Present 2015 No.2
3. Workers of HK in the 1930 (source: HR Butters, Report on Labour and Labour Conditions in Hong Kong, Sessional Papers. 1939, Hong Kong, Norohna & Co) quoted in Society: A Documentary History of Hong Kong, Ed. D Faure, HKUP, 1997

See:

1. The Hong Kong Memory Project Hong Kong Memory (HKM) is a multi-media web site that gives free and open access to digitized materials on Hong Kong’s history, culture and heritage. The materials include text documents, photographs, posters, sound recordings, motion pictures and videos.
2. The Hong Kong Heritage Project The Hong Kong Heritage Project is a non-profit organisation established in 2007 to preserve history and promote the appreciation of heritage in Hong Kong. Our Archive holds a unique collection of audio, visual and documentary records, as well as Hong Kong’s largest oral history collection, which interest both local and overseas researchers and academics.

Related Indhhk articles:

1. The Rubber Industry in Hong Kong – several manufacturing companies – adverts and factory image
2. Rubber Footware – 1952, 60 factories, 8,000 workers
3. Continental Rubber Manufacturing Company Ltd
4. 1939 Report on Labour and Labour Conditions in Hong Kong – the “Butters Report”