Hong Kong Stories - Detour to Happiness (English Version) Series 49：Hong Kong Stories - Detour to Ha

Hong Kong Stories – Detour to Happiness
Episode 8
The Starting Line

“Happiness is having a good family, a good learning opportunity and a good opportunity for self-development, and I think that I am very happy.”

Kevin has thick eyebrows and big eyes and always wears a smile on his face. It is hard to imagine that he had tried to escape from his country in a boat and had survived the storms of bullets. He is an ethnic Chinese from Vietnam who spent his childhood in the post-Vietnamese war period, when there was political instability. He did not have a chance to receive formal education, and he spent all his time idle at home. His parents wanted him to leave Vietnam for a normal life, therefore they asked him to learn swimming when he was 9, so as to prepare himself for sneaking out of the country. He made his first attempt at the age of 10 with his elder cousin, and his attempts never succeeded, for he had cramped in the sea, ridden on a boat pursued and shot at by law enforcement officers, and even been arrested and jailed. Kevin had been living an aimless life until he was 15, when he started to feel confused and did not have a direction in life. At that time, he received the life-changing good news, that he and his parents were granted the visas to Australia to reunite with his elder sister, and they were about to start a new life.

After settling down in Australia with his parents, Kevin finally put on the school uniform for the first time. Language barriers and cultural differences did not make him give up his studies, as his parents and other family members were so eager to see him become the first intellectual in the family. He encountered academic difficulties, but fortunately a warm-hearted teacher, Mrs LEA, gave him free home tutorial lessons, so that his academic performance gradually improved. Kevin finally fulfilled the expectations of his family by obtaining a doctorate degree and having a successful career, but to him there was another kind of “ideal life”. From his own experience, Kevin understood that “knowledge changes one’s fate”, therefore he wanted to work in education. Eventually, he gave up his prosperous career in his thirties, and came to Hong Kong alone to pursue his “dream in education”.


Producer: TANG Wai-ling, Michelle
Broadcast: 7:00 a.m. (Mon), 20 June 2022
RTHK TV 31