by Jason Y. Ng
He didn’t act like a cop, but what did Jun know about Hong Kong police? The guy ran his eyes over Jun from top to bottom, lingering at his feet. Got to get rid of these shoes.
The man continued: “I know it’s a pain to have to go all the way home to get your ID card. I’ll give you 2,500 for the bars now.”
Jun started to say that they were worth more, then remembered his Swatow accent.
The man seemed to understand anyway. His eyes narrowed but his unfading smile did the talking. You know, I know, that you’ll take it. No one forgets his ID card at home. He put his hand in his pocket, waiting for the signal.
Jun nodded.
In a doorway beyond the bakery, the man drew out a wad of cash the size of a mango and peeled off five brown bills.
Jun nodded again in thanks. The cash was enough to disguise him and get him back to Swatow.
“Good luck, Ah Tsan,” said the man as he headed back to the pawnshop.
Ah Tsan. Everyone’s favorite bumpkin from China. Hong Kongers loved to make fun of that ignorant TV character, with his unquenchable lust for money. So the man—and the pawnbroker too, probably—had taken him for a mainlander right off. He had to get out of these clothes now. He was dressed for a robbery, one that was all over the news.
Jun snaked through streets and alleys, never moving more than a block in a single direction, searching for clothes. He felt too conspicuous to enter a small trendy place in the window of which stood a cardboard man dressed in a tank top and sport coat; a big store was needed, one where he’d be just another faceless shopper.
Somehow his wandering took him back to Jordan Road, a few blocks east of where he’d left millions in gold and diamonds, bundled for easy transport, on the floor of a jewelry shop. He started back, petrified at the thought of being so close to where his brother was killed. But the entrance to the Emporium, a department store stocked with goods from the mainland, came into view, and he headed there instead. Upstairs in the men’s department he grabbed the first suit he saw, a slate-gray two-piece. Then he picked up a shirt and a pair of shoes, and left about nine hundred dollars lighter. His own socks and underwear would last till he made it home to Swatow.
Clutching the bag to his side, he walked north on Nathan Road, then west on Pak Hoi Street, a warren of grimy concrete heaps covered with hanging signs dense enough to blot out the sun. A fast-food outlet turned up. Nothing but a shabby storefront lined with yellow plastic walls, it was a good enough place to get something to eat and finally become, for a few hours, a Hong Konger.
A girl in a yellow shift accepted Jun’s grunted order. Changing outfits now would attract attention, so he ate at the rearmost table in his old clothes while a Sammi Cheng hit crackled through hidden speakers.
The restaurant’s cramped bathroom made it difficult to strip off his black jeans and polo shirt, but with contortions he managed to don the suit and tie his shoes. Not until he’d shoved the Emporium bag with his old clothes into a street bin did he begin to feel lighter and freer. But he was still far from home.
Ling Ding. He had to get there. Once he made it onto the island and was officially in the PRC, a boatman would take five hundred to ferry him back to the China coast. But he didn’t know where to start, and the people who brought him here, the only ones he knew this far south, were on a table in some police morgue.
For a half mile or so he kept away from any street where he might feel conspicuous, though he didn’t even know what that meant now that he was dressed in a suit. Was his haircut wrong? His posture? Was he still Ah Tsan to everyone he passed?
Suit or not, he felt their eyes on him. Were they stealing glances at his feet? The shoes were good: an exact replica, as far as he could tell, of the shiny ones on the feet of men he passed. It couldn’t be the shoes.
A reflection in a real estate broker’s window assured him that he looked good. If only Su Yin could see him now.
Farther on, Jun found his way blocked by barriers hastily erected in front of a construction site. A sign proclaimed the birth of a new commercial building, and under it was a man in a yellow hard hat and dusty blue coveralls, squatting against a wall and eating a late lunch of char siu fan, roast pork and rice. He spoke to his mate in a dialect Jun recognized from a city near his own. Jieyang dialect, a little different from Swatow, a little clumsier-sounding to his ears, but as clear and familiar as a letter from home.
The man in the hard hat would know Jun’s life, would see Hong Kong the way Jun did, and might remember when he too first arrived in this roiling stewpot, confused and scared.
Up to now Jun had uttered maybe five words out loud. He’d worked to escape everyone’s notice. That would change if he spoke to the hard hat. Trusting a stranger—one from a city near Swatow, but a stranger nonetheless—could cost him everything.
He was not raised to rely on strangers, much less ones in a hostile city. But the men he trusted were dead, and strangers were the only people who knew the way home. He’d have to take the risk.
When the second man walked away, Jun approached. “Friend,” he said, “could you help me with directions?”
“Mmm.”
“Where are the boats to the islands?”
“Which one? Lantau? Cheung Chau? Go to Central.”
Did he know those islands? Maybe from a movie. “Heard there’s one with cheap beer . . .”
The man nodded. Bright sun and concrete dust had pummeled his complexion for years, making him look older than Jun, but he sounded young. “Ling Ding. Tough to get there.”
“Just curious. I heard you can pay a sampan driver.”
“Too far for a sampan. You’ll need something bigger, a walla-walla.”
“Know where I can find one?”
“Sure. But you don’t want to advertise this, right?” The construction worker thought a second. “Wait here.” He got up and ambled to a shed on the far side of the site. Jun watched a crane until he returned.
“Eight o’clock,” the man said. “There’s a dai pai dong near the night market, Saigon Street, the first food stall west of Shanghai Street. Wait there. My guy will get you to the boat. But it’ll be a hundred up front.”
Under the spell of the familiar speech pattern of his home and thoughts of Swatow, Jun dug into his pocket and placed a bill in the man’s creased brown hand.
To kill time, Jun ducked into a movie. Entertainment was the last thing on his mind, and staying in one place would be torture, but theaters were dark and he needed a place to think. He paid and watched the film from the second-to-last row. Or rather, he sat with his eyes open, chained to his dread, while a Stephen Chow comedy paraded irrelevantly on the screen.
Wing was dead. As far back as he could remember, just seeing his brother’s face had been enough to keep out the cold. Now there would be nothing left of him save a few photos Jun had collected in a drawer. He remembered his favorite, one that a stranger took of them both on a boat in Guilin—Jun looking stiff under the camera’s eye, Wing as serene and eternal as the limestone peaks behind them.
Then there was Su Yin, who would never be his. He was returning to Swatow with nothing to give her.
The money was gone, along with the life it would have bought him. Once he’d dreamed of a wife and a car and a large flat. Now all that mattered was that he make it home to have nothing and be nothing. And to get that, he must follow the orders of a construction worker he didn’t know and maybe shouldn’t trust.
Every few minutes a sound or movement would draw Jun’s attention to the comedy, but he never picked up the plot, and didn’t care. By the time he left the theater, his skin clammy from the air-conditioning, dusk had fallen and Temple Street was aflame with a hundred thousand lightbulbs. The night market’s hawkers had turned the streets into an outdoor bazaar.
Jun began to feel invisible among the people milling through the market. He had no more interest in shopping than he had in the movie. Nevertheless, he threaded through displays of toys, jade, watches, and
artwork, occasionally fingering a wallet or Buddha statue to look casual. Again he felt eyes on his feet for some reason. Twice he compared his shoes with other passersby. They were fine.
It occurred to him to buy a gift for Su Yin. By then time was short, but he found a shiny compact with a mirror and the inscription I ♥ HK laid over an illustration of the city’s skyline. Not much, but he needed to conserve his cash. The movie and the compact had left him with about fourteen hundred.
At a few minutes to eight he sat down at Mak’s Dumplings on Saigon Street. A waiter placed a glass of ching cha in front of him and took his order. Jun’s stomach was tight, but everyone else was eating, and now was not the time to stick out or act strange.
He watched the hawkers across the street while turning the small compact over and over in his hands.
A man approached his table at ten after eight. Slowly, almost meekly, he took a seat alongside Jun, not facing him. Older than Jun, older than the construction worker, he wasn’t one of your fashionable men, not any kind of gangster that Jun could see. He wore a tweed sport coat that covered a barrel chest, plain shirt, no tie. A serious expression, tight, determined lips.
His eyes, like Jun’s, were looking everywhere, sweeping the landscape and most likely catching everything: the man across the street hawking bags of dried pork intestine, the woman pushing a cart full of duck eggs, the sign advertising foot massages, the tea shop, the store selling embroidery from China, the compact in Jun’s hand.
The one thing the man’s eyes didn’t take in was Jun. Instead he accepted his ching cha, took a small sip of the plain tea, and placed it back on the table with an extra degree of care that mesmerized Jun.
“So, Ling Ding, is it?”
Jun said nothing.
“Not much of a place, if you ask me. Nice rocks and trees, I suppose. You a nature lover?” The man took another sip of tea, still looking everywhere but at Jun. “You can play cards there, mahjong. Girls too. You going for the mainland girls? A handsome guy like you, needing to pay for it?”
Again Jun didn’t speak.
“Didn’t think so. No, Ling Ding is just a stopover, right?”
Jun stood up. This felt wrong.
“Sit down, Zhang Jun.”
Hearing his name weakened his knees. He plopped back into his seat.
“Listen carefully. Your team is dead. We know their names—three were ex-PLA, and their fingerprints are on file. The Public Security Bureau in Guangzhou worked with us on this. I’ve got friends there, and they can move fast when they want to. They sent out officers to speak with the families, and it turns out one of them had a younger brother they couldn’t locate. Does this look familiar, Jun?”
The man slipped a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it to reveal a younger version of Jun: his graduation picture from Swatow No. 1 High School. Photocopied, enlarged, faxed, but clear enough.
“That construction site where you found your friend? It’s across the line, in 14K territory. Everyone knew the robbery was Wo Shing Wo, and your 14K friend was happy to stick his thumb in the eye of a rival triad and earn some cash in the process. The big guys aren’t getting along too well since that knifing last month. If you’d spend time reading the papers instead of planning heists, you’d know that. But we were already onto you. The pawnshop owner’s son heard about the robbery on the radio and put two and two together when you walked in and sold a bona fide gold bar for less than it’s worth. Only a crook does that.”
Jun shifted in his seat.
“Think you’re the only one who likes cash, Jun? Reward money is irresistible. And it’s a lot easier than the kind you went after. Just pick up the phone. And those Credit Suisse bars? They’re numbered, you know.
“So we had your picture. And thanks to the phone call from the pawnshop, we knew you were still in Yau Ma Tei. When your 14K construction worker buddy from Swatow called us and said a mainlander was trying to get to Ling Ding, we were ready.”
Jun placed his hands on the table, braced himself for a run.
“You’re not ex-army, are you, Jun? Not like your late brother. That’s why you can’t run backward. A good skill—the army teaches that for a reason. But you tripped, I’m told. That’s why you’re still alive.”
Jun scanned the street, planning his route, finding places where the market stalls would make it hard to follow him.
The man read his mind: “Don’t think of running, Zhang Jun. Look around.” He nodded toward the street.
What Jun had taken for passersby were men in their late twenties, feet planted firmly, jackets open, eyes on him as if their careers depended on it. And now the sage-colored shirts of the uniformed policemen appeared, two officers at each end of the dai pai dong, four across the street flanking the plainclothes men.
“My name is Detective Inspector Herman Lok, Royal Hong Kong Police, Yau Tsim Division. You know what Yau Tsim is, Jun? That’s my beat. If you screw up anywhere in Yau Ma Tei or Tsim Sha Tsui, I get the call.” He stood up. “I’m arresting you for attempted armed robbery.” Lok drew handcuffs from his side pocket and in two swift moves bound Jun’s wrists; the compact dropped to the ground and shattered.
Another officer threw a hood over Jun’s head and adjusted the eyeholes. The city around him darkened. In shame he lowered his gaze until all he saw was pavement and the feet of the men surrounding him, shod in black leather over black socks.
Jun’s socks were white; framed in the eyeholes, they stood out like a dove among crows. Now that he thought of it, no Hong Kong man wore the white socks that were so common in China. Not even the construction worker.
Arms from unseen bodies ushered Jun to the waiting van.
A VIEW TO DIE FOR
by Christina Liang
Repulse Bay
It was the end of a long day and Serena Chen was especially in need of a drink. Thank God Heather had just popped in for one of their weekly wine-and-gossip sessions. They sat on the sofa on Serena’s balcony, sipping sauvignon blanc, taking in the unobstructed view of Repulse Bay on Hong Kong Island’s south side.
Heather was always one to lend a sympathetic ear. Serena was complaining about a work lunch where she was forced to welcome yet another newbie couple to town, a husband and his trailing spouse. “Can you believe the wife referred to Hong Kong as a hardship posting? What kind of hardship is it living in one of the safest cities in the world? Is it a hardship to have a helper cook, clean, and nanny for you? A driver to take you around town?”
“Do me a favor,” Heather said.
“What?”
“Do not introduce me to her.”
Serena laughed and gazed out at the sea. She had a view to die for at Bamboo Towers, the luxury compound at the foot of the Repulse Bay inlet. Despite its not-so-glamorous name, said to be derived from a time when British troops repulsed the pirates living along the shore, Repulse Bay was one of the more posh areas of Hong Kong. On either side of the bay were verdant hills, with luxury villas and apartment blocks built on their steep slopes. On weekdays, Repulse Bay Beach filled up with nonstop tour groups, usually mainland Chinese taking pictures of each other with their iPads. On weekends, families would gather under rented beach umbrellas seeking shelter from the scorching sun, while groups of young expats would cool off with the help of copious amounts of alcohol.
But on a Friday evening like this, in the distance lay nothing but the horizon and the occasional passing cargo ship. The sights and sounds of the big city were gone and replaced by the tranquility of a tropical resort.
Serena never tired of looking at the ocean. She’d earned this view with her own hard work, sweat, and tears. Hell, it had even cost her her marriage. She would damn well spend as much time on her balcony as possible. She’d even had a fancy wall garden installed, and she tended to her plants and flowers, especially her camellias, with great care. These were the constants of her home life, along with Heather Wong, her best friend, who lived upstairs.
Although
the buildings of Bamboo Towers were numbered one through eight, there were only seven, as there was no unlucky number four (the word for four sounding like the word for death in Chinese). The complex had its back to the mountain and face to the sea, and one of the towers was fitted with a big square hole in the middle, a “dragon gate” that enabled the dragon a clear path from the mountain to the sea. “Good feng shui,” her relocation agent had said. At the base of the towers were the remnants of a colonial-era hotel, said to have been frequented by playwrights, actors, and some European royals, where you could have traditional afternoon tea and imagine yourself in 1950s grandeur.
Bamboo Towers was a pretty straightforward choice for Serena when she moved to Hong Kong from New York. Her employer, Silverman Brothers Bank (SBB), held corporate leases throughout the complex, so even analysts had their rents subsidized. But Serena wasn’t an analyst. She had made partner, and in her years in Hong Kong, she had managed to up-tower from Tower 1 all the way up to Tower 8. There really wasn’t a rational reason for Tower 8 to be more aspirational, other than the luck thought to be associated with the number. But people in Hong Kong believed in luck and its role in creating and maintaining wealth.
Adding to the prestige was the fact that the Wong family of Wong Luck Holdings lived in Tower 8. The Wongs owned the entire complex, were majority shareholders in SBB, and owned the office building housing the bank in Central. But expats, even C-suite expats, rarely moved in these Chinese moneyed circles. The sphere of money, power, and influence of the Chinese tycoons made expat careers in Hong Kong seem rather quaint. At best, they could console themselves with a big paycheck, a debenture to an international school, and membership to the American Club.
Despite living in Hong Kong for over a decade, Serena still felt like an expat, even though she was Chinese. This allowed her to live a comfortable distance from the fiery politics back home in the US, which she was especially thankful for these days. It also allowed her to view local politics from afar and not get anxious as Beijing tightened its grip on the city. But as comfortable as she was, she also felt like she was cheating a little, never being fully invested in either place. Though there were definite upsides to being an expat. Serena and Heather would joke that as “long-term” expats, they lived in the Venn-diagram intersection of the “new” expats and the local Chinese, giving them license to gossip and gripe about both sides.
