馬二發
我是一九七零年來英國的。不知不覺轉眼間已經三十三年了。 我的家鄉在廣東番禺，廣州市的郊區， 現屬廣州市轄。五十年代我到香港，那時從大陸去香港謀生的人很多。我初到香港時，當地的經濟並不那麽好，但主要你肯買力，每天兩頓飯還是可以解決的。由於那時年輕，吃得苦，不大計較小節，所以我在港打工的時期生活還算可以的。過了一段時日，我覺得作為年輕人還是要學一門手藝好，這樣才能四海為家。學什麽呢？當然隻能是一些常見的玩意了。那時香港的科技並沒有現在那麽發達，你總不能學電腦什麽的吧； 我選擇了學理發，從此這門手藝便奠定了我一生所走的道路。 六十年代末期，香港的政局並不太穩定，上街遊行的也有，罷工罷課的也有。雖說這些事並未對香港經濟發展造成太大的影響，但畢竟是令人擔心的。當時我剛好搞了一間理發鋪，作為職業也好，事業也好，總算是有個起頭，正待樹靜風息。起初我並沒有離開香港到外國去的打算，但我的嶽父那時已在英國謀生，他建議我們到英國來。經過幾番考慮，我便弄了一張勞工簽證，老遠地從香港跑到這裏來，從此就這樣糊裏糊塗地在這兒 紮了根。
開頭的幾年我在飯館裏打工。那時的中式餐館並沒有現在那麽多，外賣店就更少了，倫敦的唐人街亦沒有現在那麽規模。我們一家住在唐人街後邊不遠處的小菜市附近，每天上下班都在這個華人店鋪比較聚集的巴掌之地進進出出，所以對所謂唐人街還算了解。經過觀察，我漸漸發覺我在香港學的手藝可能還有用武之地，於是便決定‘重操故業’- 搞理發。當時一間理發鋪的老板提議我加入股份，做半個老板。但我謝絕了，沒有接受這位同行的好意；我認為還是當打工仔比較踏實。就這樣，我又在新的國度裏揮動起我熟悉的剪刀，當起一名跨國理發師來。
英國的華人大部分在餐館做工，而倫敦的華人又聚集在唐人街的為多。他們普遍每周工作六天，每天十二個小時，時間長得可謂起早摸黑，空閑的光景實在不多。不少人因而隻好爭取時間在上班前或下午休息的暫短時間剃頭理發，甚至購物什麽的。這樣一來，唐人街內的理發店的顧客便自然多起來。說是在，那時理發店的生意並不太冷淡的；畢竟幹我們這一行的人不太多，年輕一代的人願意以理發職業的人也很少。（當然現在的情況就不同了；現在的理發師傅已發展成美容師，不少人在這行當中賺大錢，甚至因為曾經替某位電影明星洗頭剪發而搖身一變成為時尚界的名人。所以近年來年輕的小夥姑娘都願意幹這一行）。話又說回來，平時我們的工作本來就不算太少，逢年遇節就更加紅火；許多時候甚至應接不暇。理發這行當看起來很簡單，其實幹起來不容易，費神又費力。但由於客源較足，成本沒有搞餐館那麽大，也沒有什麽大風險，姑且混兩餐總不算太難。你看，這幾十年我不正是靠這把剪刀混飯吃、養活一家四口的嗎？
幾十年的辛勞，盡管並沒有在我的手頭上留下了很多東西，我們一家人還是活得挺有意思的。 最值得我安慰、也是我最大的收獲的是，我的兩個兒子都上了大學。大兒子是劍橋大學經濟學的畢業生，現在倫敦金融城的一家美國跨國大公司工作。小時候由於我們住在唐人街附近，他經常在唐人街進進出出，接觸中國文化的機會便很多，加上我們還送他到周末華文學校學中文，所以他三年級時就會用中文給外公寫信，在中文學校讀書裏更是年年考第一。而我小兒子拿的是電腦課程的文憑，目前正在尋找適合的工作。他們倆總算有出息，沒有白費我們的一番心血。若果當年我們並不到英國來，他們很難得到這麽樣好的學習環境，更不用說我們根本付不起這麽龐大的學費和各類生活雜用費等；說不定還得接過我的剪刀替人量頭剪發什麽的。應該說，英國的教育製度雖並說不上是十全十美，但還比較是來還算很優越的。
An Ordinary Life; Excellent Education
I came to England in 1970. It has been 33 years ever since.
My homeland town is in Fanyu, Guangdong Province, now under the jurisdiction of Guangzhou City. From Fanyu I arrived in Hong Kong in the 1950s, a period when many Mainlanders left the country for places abroad. When I first came to Hong Kong, the situation there was not particularly good, as the economy was really in bad shape. Nonetheless as long as you worked hard, feeding your month was not too difficult anyway. Since I was then young and willing to do whatever job on offer, I didn’t feel it particularly hard to make a living during my time in Hong Kong. However, after sometime I did feel that as young as I then was, I should learn something useful to prepare for the future. What should I learn then? Perhaps I should at least acquire some basic skills that were needed to make a living, I decided. Hong Kong then wasn’t as high-tech as it is nowadays, so you couldn’t actually learn things like computer skills, for example, let alone I had had very little schooling. So I chose to be a hairdresser. And this, as it later turned out, determined the path I was to take thereafter. During the late 1960s, for some reason Hong Kong experienced some political turbulence. Demonstrations, industrial strikes took place quite often in the city. Although these did not cripple the economy entirely, they were a cause for serious concern. Moreover, I had just started a barbershop then so that what I needed most was stability, for the sake of either my career or business. So the idea of migrating abroad didn’t appeal to me at the beginning. But then my father-in-law had already settled in the UK and he suggested that I should move over here too. After some thoughtful consideration, I decided to apply for a work-permit to come over here to find work. And that subsequently became the turning point of my life in a new environment.
For the first few years I worked in a restaurant. In those days there weren’t so many Chinese restaurants here, there were even fewer takeaway shops. London’s Chinatown wasn’t as big as it is today. We lived near the small market in Soho, for this reason we got to know the place quite well, as we spent most of our time in this small but rather crowded quarter of London. After some a while, I began to realize that the skills that I had acquired in Hong Kong might land me a career in hairdressing in this country, too. This would be much better than working in the kitchen, I thought. The owner of a barbershop then suggested to me that I should join her business as a partner. I declined the offer since I was quite happy just being an employee. In any case I was once again in the profession that I was familiar with, but this time in a new country.
Most Chinese people in the UK work in catering, which is concentrated mainly in Chinatown. They normally work six days a week, 12 hours a day. That’s why people say that those who work in Chinatown hardly see the sun in winter. For this reason whenever they have some free time between the shifts they would spend it on things like shopping, having a haircut and so on. This means Chinatown’s barbers are often kept busy. At any rate barbershops in those days were not particularly oversupplied. Nor did hairdressing as a lifelong career appeal to young people (of course hair-dressing has become a fashionable profession nowadays; that’s why there are so many beauty salons). Unlike some other trades, barbershops did not face lots of competition. Customers simply came and kept the barbers busy, especially before the annual festive seasons such as Christmas and the New Year. Hairdressing may not look too complicated a job, it nonetheless demands lots of concentration as well as physical energy. Since the market for such work is there, and since no huge investment is needed, being a barber has its advantages. As you can see, it is my little pair of scissors that has been with me all those years and kept us reasonably comfortable with our lives.
After decades of hard work, even though we are far from being wealthy in any sense, as a family we have so far lived a meaningful life. My greatest pride and also biggest achievement is perhaps that we have been able to support the two children of ours through the years so that they have been able to receive good education. My oldest son got a degree in economics from Cambridge some years ago. He is now working for a well-known US financial company based in the City of London. Since we lived near Chinatown when he was a little kid, he spent lots of time there and was therefore able to grasp quite a bit of the Chinese culture. We sent him to a Chinese school there and he did quite well all those years. When he was still a Level Three student he was already able to write letters in Chinese to his granddad in Hong Kong and that really fascinated the old man. My youngest son has a degree in computer studies and he is now looking for a suitable job in the field. Well, they seem to have made it, more or less. It appears that after all we have not wasted the efforts made over the years. Had we not come to the UK, I think, they wouldn’t have had that sort of environment for a good education. Presumably even if they had been lucky enough to go to university in Hong Kong, say, if we had chosen to stay there, it would have been a huge burden for us to pay for all the costs incurred anyway. God knows if they might have to follow my steps to become a barber as well. So you see, although the education system here is far from perfect, it has not lost its charm entirely.
By Ma Er Fa Translated by Cao Yuan
