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Hong Kong resident Tang Lung-wai returned to Hong Kong on Tuesday after serving about 26 years in a Philippine prison on a drug conviction, reuniting with his brother at the airport. Looking ahead, he said he hopes to obtain a driving licence and find work as a driver or delivery worker.
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Tang, whose sentence expired at the end of July, was accompanied by Immigration Department officers on a flight from Manila.
He said he plans to rest first, then visit his parents' and grandparents' graves and have a meal with family. He will stay with his brother and hopes to be allocated a single public housing unit. Once settled, he hopes to rebuild his life through work.
Speaking to the South China Morning Post before leaving the Philippines, Tang described his state of mind as "still as water." He recalled kneeling on a football pitch four times a day for roll call at New Bilibid Prison, looking up at passing planes and wondering when he would be on one returning to Hong Kong. "Now I am finally on this flight," he said.
He said he felt a genuine smile when he was allowed to take off his orange prison uniform and put on his own clothes. He survived the years by repeatedly telling himself that hope remained — a mindset he described as his own form of self-comfort, insisting that nothing is absolutely good or bad and that the rain always passes.
Tang was arrested in 2000 in connection with a drug case involving about 8kg of methamphetamine. After about 11 years in detention, he was convicted of drug trafficking in 2011 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He maintained his innocence, but his final appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected.
In late 2024, the Philippines changed the calculation of good conduct time allowances, allowing life-sentence prisoners who had served more than 21.5 years to apply for release. A court later confirmed Tang's sentence expired on July 30 this year.
