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Pag. 20

PEKING OPERA BLUES

There was no warning at all.

Not even that sense of impending doom I frequently got when my dad approached, punishment in mind, or the tickling sensation of danger I felt when about to do something risky…and fun.

It just happened.

One day, after morning workout, my dad told me we were going out on a trip. I was just seven years old, and my father had never taken me on an outing before, so the prospect of spending the afternoon away with him was a Big Event—especially since, for a change, he didn’t seem the slightest bit angry.

Shouting at the top of my lungs, I ran back to our bedroom and changed into my best outfit: a Western cowboy costume, complete with ten-gallon hat and plastic six-shooters, that had been my parents’ birthday gift, with a little help from the ambassador and his family. Dressed to kill (or at least to rustle cattle), I waved excitedly to my mom as I walked with my father down to the bus stop, then took the twisting journey down to the base of Victoria Peak.

I’d never been down to the lower city before, through I’d seen it from above all of my life. It was dirtier and more crowded and louder than anything I’d ever seen in my life, and I loved it.

“Watch where you’re going!”

“Very cheap…For you, I’ll make it half price.”

“Screw off--!”

“More along, move along.”

“Screw you!”

“Fine sweet buns, fresh this morning—“

“Hey!”

“—Half price!”

The Peak, with its clear air and open streets, suddenly seemed like a blank, unpainted canvas. This, on the other hand, was a picture of life in glorious color, stinking greens and foulmouthed browns and angry reds and sweet and satisfying blues and yellows. How could I go back?

“Sweet buns, Dad!” I tugged at his arm, pointing toward the shouting vendor. I knew my father would just snort and pull me away, telling me that money shouldn’t be wasted on snacks. But it never hurt to try.

Pag. 21

Well, sometimes it hurt.

Instead, my father turned, smiled benevolently, and pulled out some coins. Bowing his head, the vendor gave us a brown paper bag full of steamed buns, so hot and soft that the white fluffy dough stuck to my fingers when I reached in to poke at them. The street scene receded into the background as I grabbed a bun and pushed it into my mouth, gasping as the rush of cooked vapor burned my tongue. The red bean paste inside was thick and sugary, and utterly delicious. The two of us ate buns all the way to the harbor, all the way to the pier where the Star Ferry embarks for Kowloon.

For those of you who’ve never been there, the city of Hong Kong is stretched across a set of small islands, the biggest of which is also called Hong Kong. Hong Kong Island isn’t much bigger than Manhattan. The smaller ones, Lantau and Lamma, are lovely, scenic places, full of fishing villages and little open-air markets.

And then there’s Kowloon.

Kowloon isn’t and island; it’s the bottom tip of a peninsula that hangs down from the mainland, part of a land grant that the British squeezed out of China in 1860 after a series of border squabbles.

Hong Kong, a city that began as a haven for pirates and smugglers, has always been a place where opportunists have hopped back and forth across the line of law, where the devout and the diabolical have tipped their hats to one another when passing in the street. Nowhere in Hong Kong is this more apparent than in Kowloon: the heart of new Hong Kong, the turbocharged engine of the city’s nightlife, its underworld, and its artistic community.

In Kowloon, it’s said, everything’s for sale, and everyone has his price. Or hers. In the hot streets of Tsim Sha Tsui, gamblers smoke thin black cigarettes and throw bundles of currency on rolls of felt; dance-hall vixens drape themselves on the shoulders of sugar daddies while scanning the clubs for fatter meal tickets to come; money changes hands everywhere, and lives are constantly shattered and remade.

Kowloon’s alleys are always full of smells: fresh cut flowers, skewers of roasting meat, perfume, nervous perspiration. And sounds—squeals and laughter, the music of street side crooners and itinerant tunesmiths, heated conversation, soft, secret whispers.

The Star Ferry is the gateway to this other world, bringing the honest and hardworking people of the Hong Kong side to their weekend haunts, businessmen to their mistresses, students to their bars and basement clubs. Then back again at dawn, to start the cycle over.

I’d never been to Kowloon, and I’d never been on the sea, not even the placid waters of Victoria Harbour. I stared in fascination at the people emerging from the ferry terminal, some satisfied, others frustrated, all

Pag. 22

exhausted. All of them turned their faces away upon noticing the plump little boy in the cowboy costume, and one even spat a rude word my direction, until my father pushed me by the shoulders over to a wooden bench, which I clambered onto, swinging my legs back and forth. In one hand, I held the last sweet bean bun, still warm, and half forgotten.

“Where are we going, Dad?” I said, suddenly curious.

“Somewhere special,” he grunted, and shoved his hands into his pockets. An old man sitting next to me looked longingly at my bun, and I quickly and greedily took a big bite, to show him it wasn’t going anywhere.

A grizzled man in a blue shirt and cap began shouting and waving, and the crowd began to ooze from the terminal through the open doors to the dock, handing him their tickets as they passed. The Kowloon-bound ferry was not full, as it was still early morning, and there was room for me to scamper around, looking out through portholes and sticking my tongue out at those who dared to glare at me.

“Come here, Ah Pao,” said my father sternly. I shuffled back to where he was seated, a sullen look on my face. He took my hand and led me to the front of the boat. After a short word with the sailor who moodily stood watch there, he brought me forward into the bow. I watched in awe at the approaching city line, leaning my face into the salt spray of the water, and holding my cowboy hat tight against my head with one hand. I could have stood there forever, but unfortunately the ride across the bay is a short one, and minutes after we’d left the Hong Kong dock we were told to prepare to land.

I smiled at my father as we returned to our seat. He smiled back, a tight, sudden smile that disappeared as quickly as it came.

Even though it was still early, I’d already decided this was the best day of my entire life.

The hubbub of Hong Kong’s lower city was astounding, but it couldn’t compare to the scene that greeted me upon stepping off the ferry in Kowloon. I’d never before seen so many people; so much living, breathing, moving flesh. Hanging onto my father’s hand for life, I was jostled nearly off of my feet. Everyone had a purpose, headed for work after a long night’s sleep or for home after a long night’s play. What I wondered, was ours?

We pushed our way down to Nathan Road, the main thoroughfare of Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon’s commercial center, and then down a maze of side streets. The buildings were a uniform gray from the exhaust of motorcars, broken only by the shabby splendor of signs advertising food, music, and other, more cryptic pleasures. My head spun with curiosity, but my father was determined to move on, and I was dragged along in his wake.

Pag. 23

Finally, one last turn brought us into a street lined with tenements whose windows were dark and guttered. I felt a pang of regret: we’d reached our destination, wherever it was, which meant my dad would go about his business, and then bring me home—our adventure at an end.

“Here we are, Pao-pao,” he said, with an odd catch in his voice. The sign before us proclaimed the building we were about to enter as the CHINA DRAMA ACADEMY, a name that told me nothing. My father swung the knocker on the outer door, and we waited silently on the stoop. Soon the door swung open, revealing the bald head of a husky adolescent—a boy perhaps eleven years of age, on the heavy side, but thick with muscle.

“What is it?” he said, said, wiping beads of perspiration from his brow. He stared at my father with suspicion, until he noticed me standing on the lower stoop, my fist wrapped in the hem of Dad’s jacket.

“Oh, another one,” snorted the boy. “Funny-looking kid, mister.”

“Bring us to Master Yu,” my father said, his voice bristling.

The boy shrugged, then turned and walked inside, motioning us to follow.