A Vietnamese refugee returns to the Hong Kong island where echoes of a lost childhood remain

“This is where my bed was.”
Katie Aung stands at the centre of Tai A Chau, an uninhabited island south of Lantau, with former marine police officer Les Bird, pointing to a spot on the ground.
“This is where I lived.” She turns slightly, and gestures again. “My bed faced this way.

Head this end, feet down here.

I lived right here for many years of my childhood.”
In the 1990s, it was to this 1.2 sq km speck of land in the South China Sea that Aung, a former Vietnamese refugee, was confined.

Tai A...