Page 9 - Demo

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STEP 1: LINE UP
she spent almost all her time listening to others because she didn’t realise that she had the opportunity to speak up. (she figured out pretty early on in life that as long as she listened and did as she was told, everything would be okay. plus, it was easy to stay quiet.)
she only very vaguely remembers her days in kindergarten, but there wasn’t much to remember anyways. there was a lot of lining up for all sorts of things, like for the assembly, to collect homework, for lunch, to be arranged into one of the tiny little beds for nap time, so on and so on.
but what she can still clearly see, is a girl that was — unconventional — behavioural problems, the adults had said then.
the girl was active, funny and made faces at cameras. this was the girl’s simple happiness, but the adults didn’t see it like that, all they saw was a naughty child with behavioural problems.
so she had to go. countless scoldings and detentions made the girl silent, moulded her meek — a good girl who didn’t stand out from the line up. no chance for mistakes.
STEP TWO: COPY BOOKS
the next thing she knows, years have passed and she’s wearing a new uniform and studying new things in a new school.
the adults call it siu hok.
her nemesis in primary school was the sing so biu. she was never particularly good at memorisation and numbers yet still she was made to recite the multiplication table. everyday after a gruelling six hours at school, she would go to a tutorial centre to do her homework. she was especially bad at mathematics, since she hadn’t yet managed to get the multiplication table