Producer: Simon Yu

Mohamed Alli Din was born in 1930 in Hong Kong. While people can easily tell his foreign origin (Indian and Malaysian) by his appearance, they will be amazed by his familiarity with things in Hong Kong. Din is conversant in Cantonese. He has experienced all major events that took place in Hong Kong over the past decades, including the Japanese Occupation lasting three years and eight months, Typhoon Wanda, the communist revolts in 1967, the stock market crash in 1973 … Like that of most people in Hong Kong, his childhood was marked by poverty. He had a few years of schooling. However, the hardworking man managed to get a job at the Water Supplies Department and his living condition has improved gradually since then. His is a typical Hong Kong story.

Fermi was a Mainland-born Chinese. She was brought to Hong Kong when she was a child. After her graduation in 1995, she began working as a social worker. When Fermi discovered that many Southeast Asians in Hong Kong, like Din, could not get sufficient schooling, she could not help but ask 'Does Hong Kong have nine-year free education? Aren't the Southeast Asians people of Hong Kong?' It was this sense of justice that encouraged Fermi to establish Hong Kong Unison in 2001 to help Southeast Asians integrate into mainstream community.