Smart Moves

Life has come full circle for stylist LIZ KEELING, who is back in Sai Kung with her headmaster husband and baby son in tow, after living there as a child in the 1980s.

- Tara Jenkins

I grew up in Sai Kung. I was born at the Matilda Hospital and my family lived in Nam Wai Village, just up the road, until I was ten. The 1980s was Cathay Pacific’s heyday: my father was a flight engineer, and most of my parents’ friends worked for the airline. Many of them lived in Sai Kung because it was near the old airport at Kai Tak – expatriates here were either pilots, or teachers at the nearby ESF school. My early memories centre around playing outside with my friends in the compound, swimming at the beach, and our Filipino helper Emma cooking us sardines and rice.

I used to ride up at Bea’s River, and when we moved back to the UK my parents promised me my own pony. They kept their promise, but returning to England was a rude shock. Most of my new school friends lived miles away, not just down the road, and I really missed the sun and outdoor life. It was a shock for my mother too, I think. All her friends were around her in Nam Wai, and she was quite lonely in our small village in Somerset.

My mum and I first went back to Hong Kong when I was in my twenties, to celebrate a friend’s birthday, and I just felt like I’d come home. From then on, I planned to return, and when my husband Ben was offered a job here (as principal at Shrewsbury International School Hong Kong), we jumped at the chance. After we arrived, I continued my work in interiors with The Home Stylist.