Читать книгу A Time of Ghosts - Hok-Pang Tang - Страница 11

To us in Communist China, Hong Kong – then still a British Crown Colony – was a fantasy world, a symbol of the whole world outside, and that outside world was the stuff of dreams.

An overseas Chinese student returned from Hong Kong with three immense bags of used clothing given him by a relative who owned a laundry in America. He distributed them among the students, and there was something for almost everybody. I got a shirt that became one of my finest possessions. I valued it so highly that I wore it only on special occasions.

We all appreciated his generosity, but it left us puzzled. How was it that clothes considered old and worn out in a Capitalist society were looked on as first-class garments in China? That question grew and grew until it filled the whole school, and soon an assembly was called to lecture us on avoiding the material temptations of Capitalism.

“These clothes all belonged to 'bourgeoisie' men and women,” a school official stood up and declared. “Foreign working class people cannot even afford to have clothes on their bodies. The overseas student’s relatives must be working for the bourgeoisie, who are using this opportunity to erode Communism with their decadence. So you must protect yourselves! Don’t wear those clothes!”

In spite of the lecture, some continued wearing their prized hand-me-downs, but they were subjected to heavy criticism and finally had to demonstrate their proletarian sympathies by burning the clothes or cutting them up with scissors. Yet even with the ban, we continued to be amazed by what the overseas students possessed – wonderful soaps, toothpaste, even socks that miraculously fit all sizes, unlike our Chinese socks. Their colorful plastic toothbrush cups, their toothbrushes, even their underwear appeared of marvelous quality to us. We ordinary mortals washed our clothes with a certain kind of crushed plant for soap, and brushed our teeth with salt, using pig-bristle toothbrushes. Many of us did not own underwear.

We were also mystified by adults visiting from Hong Kong. They all looked so energetic, dignified and well-groomed. The men had nice suits with shining shoes, the women were like flowers opening in the wind. Both males and females smelled good, which even became a saying in China – “People from Hong Kong all smell good.” Some even thought the wind in Hong Kong perfumed. Of course it was just a fantasy helped along by the meaning of the name Hong Kong – “Fragrant Harbor.”

One day an overseas girl showed up at school wearing a mini-skirt. To her it was natural, but it got the boys very excited, and they followed her everywhere – the library, the halls, the dining room – always finding some excuse to circle about and watch her. She must have felt very attractive with all the attention, but the school soon set a rule that all skirts must cover the knee, or be considered part of a rotten lifestyle designed to entice others into criminality.

That did not stop the youthful libidos. After the new rule went into effect, the male students developed fantasies that women in the outside world always wore gauzy garments showing off their breasts, and that among them bikinis and nude swimming were common – and those fantasies became a big part of their emotional lives.

Some things the overseas students told us seemed like outright lies, but we believed them nonetheless. They said in Hong Kong you didn’t need rice coupons, and you could eat whatever you wanted. And they told us something else that seemed like heaven on earth – that sugar was put on tables in restaurants and people could use all they wished, with no extra charge. It was astounding. In China sugar was used more like a medicine, obtained by getting a doctor’s note and buying it through the “back door.” It was like gold dust. Though we found the tale very hard to take seriously, we never denied that it might be possible.

Of course we all longed for a view of the wonderland outside. The mere thought excited us.

Then, at age sixteen, I got the opportunity to go and see for myself.

Overseas Chinese students poured regularly into and out of China through Hong Kong at that time, and for a while student travel outside became so easily approved that my parents agreed to let me go with my sister and her boyfriend and her two girlfriends on the train from Canton to Kowloon via Shenzhen at the border. Even the name “Shenzhen” was exhilarating. In Cantonese pronunciation, it sounds like the Chinese word for a butterfly-fluttering of the heart.

My Father wrote his niece and nephew in Hong Kong, arranging for us to stay in their home, and he also wrote his sister-in-law and some other old friends, asking them to give us an allowance to spend while staying there, because we could not exchange Chinese money for foreign.

When the great day came, my parents loaded us with gifts for the relatives in Hong Kong, and told us ten thousand times to be careful and watch out for one another. It rained lightly as we all piled into pedicabs, carrying our oiled-paper-and-bamboo umbrellas. At the station we folded them and returned them to our parents.

The train was late. Mother kept dispensing last-minute advice, but our minds were already in Hong Kong and we paid little attention. When at last the gate to the platform opened, my parents bought special platform tickets to come a little farther with us to say goodbye. We, however, had already forgotten them, and my sister and her friends hurried off to the train unmindful. But Mother would not let go of my hand. She kept massaging my head, giving advice, and I impatiently said, “Yes! Yes!” and tried to pull away to the train, not really hearing a word she said.

Finally she released me, and I hurried onto the train and sat down with the others, chattering eagerly. A double whistle of the engine broke our conversation, and the train began to move. I could hardly bear the excitement.

It took six hours to reach the border, and it seemed forever. But at last we passed through Shenzhen, and I saw armed police watching us as we moved to the magic line that separated us from the outer world. Loud, tinny, political voices and shrill revolutionary songs shouted from the loudspeakers.

And then the moment came.

We crossed the border just before gliding onto a long, long bridge with almost no water beneath it. The moment we were across, the atmosphere seemed to change. No more blaring songs or harsh political slogans!

The train pulled to a halt and we got up and stepped onto a platform where we transferred from the Chinese train to a Hong Kong train.

Our new conveyance was a different world. Things were so bright! It was filled with colorful advertisements, and there were snack sellers from whom one could buy candy and cigarettes. Even the little snack bags were beautifully printed and decorated. But the Communists had done their school indoctrination well. The first thought that came to my mind was, “Capitalist tricks – making the outside beautiful while hiding rotten things inside.”

In spite of that, there was pleasant music, and the train not only looked better, it smelled better too, and it moved faster, yet more quietly. I looked around at the other passengers and was surprised to see relaxed faces, not the serious ones to which I had become accustomed.

We got off at Kowloon. When we walked out of the station into the open air, I was amazed by the crowds, the fast cars, the tall buildings, even the speed at which people walked. In China all walked slowly and gloomily, but here they all seemed in a hurry to get to something for which they were late. Car fumes gave the air an odd smell that I found strangely enticing and energizing. It made me feel cheerful.

I held my fifteen-dollar Hong Kong bank note in my hand and did not know where to go first. Hong Kong was small, but filled with excitement. People say a foot of land there is worth an inch of gold.

We divided up to stay with different relatives at different places. All of us together were too much to inflict on any single family. My sister and her boyfriend got into a taxicab and disappeared. Her friends vanished as well.

I was supposed to stay with a female cousin. I did not know if my fifteen dollars was enough to get me there in a cab, so I decided to take a bus – but which one?

I asked an old lady, but she did not know. I waited for a bus to stop, and when it did, I asked the driver. He told me I would have to transfer from bus to bus to get to my destination, and “We don’t give change” he added before driving off, leaving me there.

I went into a nearby grocery store, where immediately my eye was caught by chocolate. I was ecstatic. It was only fifty cents! That gave me change for the bus.

By that time it was about seven in the evening. I took the next bus, looking out the windows at countless brilliant neon lights all along the way. Though it was night, the lights were on in all the buildings and the whole city radiated as though it were day. Accustomed to streets dark even with streetlights in China, I was fascinated.

The driver was very nice. He even let me off between stops and showed me where to wait for the next bus, adding, “Just give the address to the next driver, and he will tell you when to get off.”

Following his directions, I easily reached my cousin’s house. It was in a very quiet residential area, not new and beautiful, but just an old, two-story building. She lived on the second floor.

I knocked, and a middle-aged man – my cousin’s husband – opened the door. “Ah! Finally you have arrived! We worried you had gotten lost!”

I went inside and greeted my cousin. We all sat down, and a servant brought us tea, and my cousin brought food – pork chops and eggs – a “Western” dinner. As I ate hungrily, she looked at my shabby clothes. “We shall have to go shopping after you eat,” she declared.

My cousin was in her early thirties, and a little chubby. She seemed always to have a happy expression on her face. As soon as I finished, she hurried me out the door and off to a department store.

I looked up and down and drank in the luxury of the place. So many clothes – suits, coats, pants, shirts – anything one could want, in colors and styles not seen in China.

A salesgirl quickly appeared. She was very pretty, wearing deep red lipstick. She helped me try on a shirt. I was in heaven. Of course it was ordinary service, but for me having a lovely woman help me try on clothes was a sybaritic experience. With her makeup and glossy, curly hair, she looked nothing like women in China, and when I inhaled, I found even her clothes were fragrant with perfume.

Once I was in new clothes, she dumped the old ones unceremoniously in a waste can. I was too embarrassed to ask for them back. Then we hurried off to a shoe store.

I woke up the next day refreshed and ready for more. My cousin asked whether we should go sightseeing or to a movie, where we should go to eat, but I interrupted. “I have something to do,” I said simply. I was too ashamed to say that I had to go see other relatives and friends of my father to get an allowance to spend.

They were puzzled by my refusal, knowing how dismal life in China was for young people.

I put the letters from Father in my pocket and set off. The moment I stepped out the door, everything was exciting, full of energy, jumping. People hurried about in nice clothing. Young men in neat school uniforms passed by, tidily groomed, shoes shining.

I peeked in shops that were filled with food, department stores packed with remarkable products of all kinds, restaurants brimming with adults and children eating a great variety of foods. Some establishments were pricey, with expensive dim sum, others cheap and serving simple but delicious food. There was something for everyone. I even saw people walking along with bird cages in their hands, on their way to restaurants to relax, just as in my childhood.

I passed major commercial streets where the heavy traffic frightened me. I saw not a single bicycle on them, just cars and big trucks with noisy horns tooting constantly. Instead of a man with a wooden stick regulating traffic, there was a mechanical light. Pedestrians did not struggle with cars for the road as in China, where people all walked in the road until a car came up and honked at them to move aside, and where every day, people on bicycles were struck by cars.

I saw police but steered clear of them, thinking they might be very mean like those in China, where police always meant trouble, and where we usually only saw armed policemen when an execution was imminent. Then too, I had been taught in school that all Capitalist police were rotten.

There were newspapers and many different magazines laid out on sidewalks and display racks. Some had half-nude women on the covers, the kind that meant certain expulsion in my school. Just selling such a magazine in China could get one a jail term. I tried hard to control myself, not to look at such dirty Capitalist magazines, but could not resist a quick look as I passed by. When I stopped before some newspapers, I was surprised to see an article referring to Communists as robbers and thieves! Nearby were other papers from China with quotes from Chairman Mao in headlines, and articles glorifying him. It was very confusing.

I looked up and was shocked to see a Kuomintang flag flying on a building. In China one could be executed just for having one. But the block beyond had another building with a six-starred Chinese Communist flag. It all seemed bizarre – surreal.

Later, people explained to me that I was in a colony of Britain, that there everyone had freedom of speech. Under Britain, the Kuomintang and Communism could live peacefully side by side. What a concept! Those two life-and-death enemies living side by side in Hong Kong! It was astounding.

I held out an address and asked strangers how to get there. It proved just as easy as the first time, and soon I was at the home of friends of my father. They greeted me warmly, gave me some 200 Hong Kong dollars, and invited me to eat with them. I filled my stomach, then went on to the next address, then to another.

After several such visits, I had accumulated over 1,000 Hong Kong dollars.

The following day I went to see a childhood friend of my father known to me as “Number Eight Auntie.” She was wealthy and had a chauffeur. I was in my new clothes, but she looked me over critically, clucking “How can you wear such clothes?” Then she swept me off in her private car to an incredibly high-class place where they cut my hair. Then we went shopping, and a whole group of salesgirls measured me and helped me find garments, assisted me in donning pants, shirt, and tie, and special-ordered things to be delivered later. Their attentive bustle made me a little uncomfortable. Fortunately they asked if I wanted to keep my “old” clothes, and I hurriedly said “Yes!” They put them in a beautiful plastic bag.

Number Eight Auntie bought me three suits and two pairs of shoes. Then she hurried me off to the Peninsula Hotel for lunch.

A man there opened the car door for me, another took my coat, and yet another readied my chair. I was uncomfortable, feeling like a decadent Capitalist stepping on the heads of the proletariat. On the other hand, it brought back pleasant memories, and as the day wore on, I could feel my Communist reservations slipping into the background. Slowly I began to actually enjoy life again.

My new attitude was helped along by Number Eight Auntie, who, though in her late thirties, was still charming and beautiful. She seemed born to enjoy life. Her mannerisms, attitude, choice of words, even tone of voice seemed to evoke long-forgotten episodes from my childhood.

She introduced me to her closest friend with a wave of the hand and the words, “This wild child was educated under the barbarian Communists.” As the hours with her passed, my mannerisms from the old days began to return. I noticed a change in my speech, my gestures, my rediscovered deference toward elders.

When she returned me in her luxurious car to my temporary residence, my cousin was surprised and charmed by her, addressing her humbly and making every effort to please. I had mixed feelings about that. It seemed that in Hong Kong they first noticed the clothes, then the person. Those with money were respected automatically. Even well dressed prostitutes had respect. Only the poor were looked down upon.

As soon as Number Eight Auntie left, I noticed a sudden and remarkable change of attitude toward me from my cousin’s husband. Where first they were the givers and I the receiver, now, having seen me with my elegant auntie and my new expensive finery, they decided I might lend them some status as well.

My cousin was not oblivious of the fact that my new, auntie-bought clothes were better than those of her own children. And she noticed that other friends and relatives gave me expensive gifts, Parker pens and a Bulova watch.

One day I came back with some brand-name beach sandals. My cousin’s brother, staying in the same house, took one glance, gave me a dirty look, and seemed very angry, through he would not say why. He treated me so rudely that even my cousin and her husband noticed, and asked him what the problem was. “Nothing,” he replied sullenly.

I noticed that he was always looking at my new sandals and something seemed to be eating him. Finally he came up to me when I was alone and said, “You give my sandals back!” I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly, and looked blank. “You give my sandals back!” he repeated very angrily. Suddenly it dawned on me that he thought I was wearing his sandals!

I tried carefully to explain to him that they were mine, not his, and that apparently we had the same brand and size. He did not believe me.

“How could you afford to buy these? They are very expensive! I saved money for six months! They cost me an arm and a leg! Now don’t joke! You had better give them back to me!”

When I heard him say I could not afford them, it hurt my pride and made me angry. “Go back to your room and find your slippers!” I shouted at him, “And don’t bother me again!”

He stormed off, but in a few minutes came back laughing, holding his sandals in his hand – same size, same color. “They really are yours!” he said. “I had no idea you could afford to buy such things.”

Still angry and offended, I pulled a $500 bank note from my pocket and held it up in front of him. He was amazed. It was three month’s salary for him at the post office.

My cousin and her husband, now impressed with my sartorially-induced status, took me that day to have dinner with the family of her mother-in-law. She seemed to be showing me off very proudly.

Her mother in law, a lady in her late sixties, scrutinized me silently for five or ten minutes as my chubby cousin chattered on. Then she asked me my name, my school, my hobbies, what kinds of books I had read, and many other such questions. I answered politely, and she seemed surprised. She looked me full in the face and said bluntly, “Everybody says children under Communism have dirty hair, don’t wash their faces, have skin problems, talk slang with lots of dirty words, and have no education or manners. But your skin is delicate and pale and you are very polite. Even the children of the wealthy here cannot compare to you. I would not know that you were from the Mainland.”

After that, dinner invitations poured in from many different people with lots of questions about education under Communism. It seemed that everyone who had heard of me wanted to see the unusual Mainland boy. But I soon tired of being the circus animal on show. Then I went from being tired to being disgusted. I wanted a change, and asked a close relative to take me swimming.

A private car picked me up the next day and took me to a nice little resort house set halfway up a hill from the ocean. When all the polite rituals had been completed, I changed and walked down to where clean water lapped the shore. I swam until weary, then walked back up the hill to find that a servant had a very nice lunch waiting for me.

As I ate, I looked down the hillside and noticed a very old man carrying two buckets of well water slowly up the tiny, winding road to the house. When he arrived, my relative gave him some money and told me, “You should rinse off in this to remove the sticky salt water.” The house did not have its own water supply. All had to be carried in.

After a fresh, cooling rinse, I put on a soft cotton beach garment and lay down on a lounge chair, nibbling food and enjoying the ocean view. I was living in the lap of luxury, feeling very contented. Then I saw the old man again.

He was bent under the weight of buckets of water he was carrying to a house even higher on the hill. How sad that such an old man should work so hard to bring water that I just poured over me for a few moments and then it was gone. I felt guilty. My Communist education kept popping up like that. I felt once more the bourgeois boy exploiting the working classes – an old man laboring to bring me water for a wasteful rinse – a servant working to bring me food.

I needed to talk about it. I found it difficult to express my feelings to my relative, but did nonetheless.

He burst into laughter. “You think the old man comes here for nothing? I give him money! Actually he would like you to take even more showers so he can make more money!”

Oh, why was life never simple? Capitalism sucks the blood from workers to support luxurious living, my Communist education told me. If you don’t hire the workers, they will have no money and will starve, my relatives told me. I ran the problem over and over in my head but could not solve it. It spoiled the rest of my afternoon.

I accepted the invitation of an old friend of my father to go fishing and swimming off his yacht. As we skimmed through the harbor we passed other small boats – sampans – no more than fifteen or twenty feet long, but sometimes there were as many as three generations living on a single one. I saw little kids with soft wood tied to their chests and backs to keep them afloat if they fell overboard. There were cages of chickens and ducks, and there were dogs. Day and night, for weeks, months and years, they all lived aboard in the same tiny space. When our much bigger yacht passed by, it made waves that rocked them to and fro.

I could not help thinking of the great gulf between poor and rich. Here I was on a big, spacious, luxurious yacht, and there they were living crowded aboard a tiny boat. That, I thought, was Capitalism.

But when the yacht pulled out of the harbor and into the open sea, I was overcome with emotion. How vast it was! Another young man and I both dived into the water. I had never before swum in the open sea, and what a pleasure!

Then I heard screaming. I swam quickly back to my companion and helped him to the yacht. He had brushed against the stinging tentacles of a jellyfish, and was in severe pain. His face was swelling where the poison strands had touched him. We hurried back to shore and took him to a hospital.

On the following day another “Auntie” introduced me to her nephews. One named Chak Ch’un was near me in age. We hit it off immediately, but I soon noticed that he never mentioned his mother and father, nor took me to visit them. When we got together, we always met at a theater door or at a bus station or street corner.

He was a great guy. He took me all over sightseeing. We visited cheap restaurants, places selling ice cream and soft drinks, and wonder of wonders, he took me to the places I had dreamed about – the places where I could use all the sugar I wanted! At first I dumped it in my soft drinks because it was such a rarity to me, but after a while I grew jaded and did not use so much. My friend seldom used any.

He taught me a number of interesting things, such as how to shake up a soft drink bottle and squirt it out under pressure with the thumb. It was a great waste, but it was fun.

We went to lots of movies, but only the afternoon shows one-third to one-half the usual price. Once we both picked a film titled “The Last Kiss,” because it sounded erotic. But it proved a great disappointment, just a dull story about a poor university student chasing a rich girl, with a murder thrown in. To have a more lucrative relationship, he threw his pregnant old girlfriend from a tall building after giving her a last kiss, thus the title.

Hmmph! That corny story seemed an illustration of Capitalism, which does everything for money. I pointed that out to my friend, but he said, “Oh, it’s just a made-up story – who cares?” I tried to explain to him how it was a revelation about Capitalism, but could tell from his face that I was boring him. So I decided to dismiss him as an apolitical, ignorant child.

But actually he was pretty smart. The next time we went to a movie we mistakenly arrived too late to get the cheap tickets. He asked an adult to pretend we were his children and get us in for half price. Then he turned to me and whispered, “When you pass the ticket guy, just try to look short.”

We left the theater long after dark, and I asked my cousin if I might spend the night at his house rather than showing up late and disturbing the people with whom I was staying.

It was not a good idea, he told me, because he did not get along well with his stepfather – but added that I could stay at his auntie’s.

I called and told my hosts someone had asked me to stay over. They were surprised, because that was rare in Hong Kong. It was so crowded that eight or nine people living in a single room – often three generations of a family – was very common. People seldom had space for overnight guests, so they assumed I was staying with a rich friend.

We took a bus to his aunt’s house, but as the road grew bad and in poor repair and the street lights vanished, I began to regret my decision. I looked out the windows and saw people sleeping out all along the sidewalks because it was a humid night and uncomfortable to sleep inside.

Eventually we stopped at a very run-down three-story apartment building. It looked as though the entrance had not been cleaned in years.

My cousin saw I was not happy. “Don’t worry, it’s just one night – only a few hours – then I’ll be back to get you,” he assured me. There was not enough room for both of us, he added, so he was going home to sleep.

Though unwilling, I followed him up the stairs to the third floor. As we ascended, I heard the constant clack of mahjong tiles, and voices telling dirty jokes punctuated by loud laughter.

We went right to the room where the game was in progress. Four women played amid about seven or eight kids sleeping on the floor. As we entered, an old lady of about fifty rose from the table with a big smile on her face and greeted us.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Have you had dinner?” She barely waited for an answer before immediately producing cookies and candy, looking at me curiously all the while to figure out who I was.

My cousin explained. “We went to a movie too late, so my cousin here needs a place to stay for the night so he doesn’t wake up the people he’s staying with.”

It turned out the room we were in was the neighbor’s. His auntie led us next door to another small room that served as her apartment. It was packed with her belongings – clothing, snack foods, and cartons of cigarettes. There was one bed.

She apologized to him. “I don’t have an extra bed, and you are a big boy now. You can’t sleep with your auntie any more.”

“I’m going to sleep at home,” he replied. “He’s the only one who needs a place tonight.”

She pulled some sheets from a drawer and put them on the linoleum floor. Then she took one of the pillows from her own bed and placed it at one end of the sheets. That was my bed. Then she said she had to get back to the game, and told my cousin to show me where the bathroom was.

He led me down a long hallway with five rooms on the sides. I peeked into each as we passed. The doors were perpetually open, with just a curtain pulled to one side or open bamboo blinds to allow any possible breath of air to enter. All the windows were very small. Hong Kong was very humid, and at that time there was no air conditioning.

Privacy seemed unimportant, and the residents had nothing valuable to steal, and besides, a thief could seldom make his way across a room without tripping over the sleeping bodies of several people. There were even folding beds placed out in the hallway.

In the second room people were also playing mahjong, and again about five filthy kids of various ages slept on the floor. The humidity made them sweat, and the sweat made them smell.

In the third room a light was on, and what I saw made my heart jump. A big, tall foreigner was lying on a bed holding a tiny, half-nude Chinese woman. Both were smoking. I tried to pause for a better look, but my cousin hurried me onward.

In the fourth room a husband and wife snored soundly on their bed, illumined only by the dim light from the hall. Four children slept close by in a homemade bunk bed.

The door to the last room was closed. “A ‘Dao-friend’ lives there,” my cousin whispered. By that he meant a drug addict. Certain Daoists ate no meat, only raw vegetables, and were pale and skinny and weak-looking, with heads slumped so that their ears were nearly on their shoulders. That happened to be a good description of the way drug addicts looked too, thus the slang term.

We came to the end of the hall, where there was a public kitchen on one side and the public bathroom on the other, and there my cousin left me. In the kitchen each family had its own tiny clay stove, just big enough to hold one wok. There were no cooking facilities in their rooms.

The bathroom had large wooden buckets with lids, one for each family. Those were the toilets. They were emptied only once a week, so the bathroom reeked and was crawling with cockroaches. The walls were dark with soot, like the inside of a chimney, caused by daily smoke from the kitchen across the hall. Dirty water was all over the floor. The “sink” was a huge clay pot of water that one dipped out with a ladle.

I was appalled. I hurriedly urinated and got out of that terrible stink as fast as I could, and went back to my room. On the way I tried again to peek in at the tall foreign man and small woman on the bed, but the light was out and I could not really see anything.

I said good night to my cousin, then lay down by myself. I wondered about the lives of the people in the building, and thought of the line from Anna Karenina: “All happy families are similar, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I wondered whether the families living here were happy or unhappy.

The room was very close. The hot, smelly, humid air made breathing unpleasant, and with the constant clack and whir of mahjong pieces, the talk and the laughter, sleep was difficult – but finally it came.

I awoke some time during the night to the loud sound of a woman sighing and gasping and moaning in a regular rhythm in some other room. I could see that my host was in bed asleep near me, so I got up and shook her gently. She opened her eyes and looked at me.

“Hey, do you think somebody is sick?” I asked, as the moaning continued its odd rhythm. “Do they need help, do you think?”

She gave me an odd look, then replied, “Oh, I don’t think so. Maybe they just ate some bad food and got diarrhea. They will feel better in a while. Just ignore it and go back to sleep.”

She was right. The moaning increased in intensity, the rhythm quickened, and then suddenly it stopped. I fell asleep again.

I woke very early in the morning to a breath of cool air coming through the tiny window. I got up, peeked out at the street, and inhaled the outside air. Several delivery trucks were making morning rounds, and people were rising from sleep on the street as others walked off to jobs. A food stand on the corner already had a long line waiting for breakfast.

My hostess was still asleep in bed, snoring loudly. Suddenly, to my discomfort, I found I had to urinate.

On my way down the hall to the bathroom, the first thing I saw was a very nicely ironed British sailor’s uniform hanging on the wall. Next to it, in a narrow space under the attic stairs, was a small, folding iron camp bed. In the bed was a big, tall young foreign man asleep. His whole body was light brown and covered with fine, brown hair, like all not-quite-human foreigners. A tiny Chinese woman was asleep at his side. As I stared at him, he yawned and opened his eyes. My presence did not seem to surprise him in the least. “Hello!” he said.

I was afraid, and so disturbed by what I had seen that I did not continue on to the bathroom, but hurried back to my room. I waited a long time for my cousin to show up. After a while the woman I had seen in bed with the foreigner appeared at the door with some toast and milk she tried to give me.

I did not feel comfortable eating food from the hands of a woman I considered dirty and immoral. I felt it would pollute my hands. She was trying to be nice to me, but I was rude, so she left.

Finally my cousin appeared. I did not even say goodbye to his auntie, but hurried down the stairs as fast as I could. I gulped in the fresh air outside, then turned on him.

“How could a British sailor abuse our Chinese women?”

He seemed not to understand what I was talking about.

“Did you know that a Chinese woman was asleep up there with a British sailor holding onto her?”

My cousin gave me a strange look, then said, “So what? She’s a dancing girl, and the sailor is her customer. She takes them home to sleep. That’s her job.”

“No!” I nearly shouted, “That’s not an occupation! That’s prostitution!”

He gave me a weary look. “Oh, it’s just books that say that. We call that kind of woman a ‘chick.’”

He acted as though it were all perfectly normal. He seemed not to understand me at all. I recalled how my political education teacher actually burst into tears when describing how foreign armies raided China during the Opium War and slept with Chinese women, and how the Japanese imperialists had done the same. We were told that many women committed suicide rather than be raped by foreigners, and that any woman so raped was forced to kill herself.

My cousin obviously did not get it. I felt it my duty to increase his political sensitivity, so I launched into a lecture on the evils of Chinese women sleeping with foreigners. Just as I was really warming to the topic, he spluttered suddenly and burst out laughing.

“The British sailor gives her money! It’s a business deal!” he said very clearly and emphatically, as though speaking to a dimwit.

In spite of his unreformed thinking, I liked my cousin very much. And I really enjoyed sitting with him in a theater watching Hollywood cowboy films, chewing bubble gum and drinking Coca-Cola. But I began to worry that even after years of living under Communism, Capitalist decadence might in only those few days in Hong Kong be gaining a hold on me.