In 1985 I found a brown A4 paper envelope at the Triomf municipal rubbish dump. The Triomf dump was a popular place for students to look for old furniture and household items, faded Tretchikoff prints, magazines and books. The dump no longer exists. The A4 brown paper envelope, which had a date, 1979, written on it in pencil, was found on the top of other rubbish in a large skip so must have been newly thrown away. It seemed likely that ‘Dad’ had passed away circa 1979, and that his family had kept some of his things, finally throwing them out in 1985. This small archive has intrigued me ever since. The archive attests to how some items are 'time travellers' and are kept, while other items are thrown away - and then found again. From these scant artefacts I have attempted to determine what Mr Man Tong’s life in Richmond might have been like.
The material in the brown envelope consists of the business records of a Mr Man Tong from Canton (Guandong province) in China who ran a grocery shop at 25 Stanley Avenue, Richmond, in the 1940s until 1953. His real name was Li Guang He, as this is how he is addressed in the six letters received from a family member in Foshan in China. Man Tong was a generic nickname for a Chinese man, yet Li Guang adopted it as his ‘trade name’ for both his business and various local relationships. Presumably Mr Man Ton also came from Foshan...
