Red Jade
she’d attended in New York. Gone now, she remembered, for good.
    Afterward, the old women checked into their rooms at the Budget Inn, where the Chinese staff made everyone feel at home. They were expecting an eventful day tomorrow so most of the seniors retired early. On the second day, the tour bus brought them to a different part of the city, to a different Chinatown where the buildings were new and tall, where the streets were clean, and the Chinese signs barely noticeable.
    The community didn’t look like a Chinatown, more like the modern Golden Village that it was called. The seniors enjoyed lunch at one of the many fine restaurants inside a huge luxury shopping mall. Most of the businesses were Chinese-owned, and the shoppers appeared more affluent, stylish, and exuded a fresh young energy.
    Mona imagined that she could start anew here.
    The tour group was allowed to roam the streets for an hour. Mona purchased two daily newspapers, Ming Pao and Sing Tao , to read on the trip back, thinking about local news and listings. She bought a Chinatown tourist map from a newsstand, and tried to memorize the streets as she walked, taking business cards from tea shops, clothing stores, Chinese supermarkets, and banks. New destinations, she thought.
    She overheard conversations in mainland-inflected Mandarin and Taiwanese.
    There was an international airport nearby.
    The afternoon turned to evening as they returned to the older Chinatown, to a buffet dinner at a banquet-style restaurant. The Budget Inn was within walking distance, and she finished the night going over the Chinese newspapers and watching the Chinese-language satellite TV news.
    It began to snow the next morning, and after a dim sum breakfast they returned south along the Interstate. The sky had turned to slate as Mona gently fingered the charm.
    Earth over Thunder , it sang. Return. No troubles at home. All is well.
    She took a deep breath. Welcome help. Time is on your side.
    She was keeping faith, in the yin and yang .
    In the balance of the universe.

Fan and Sandal
    He watched the stick of incense burn down beside the figurine of Kwan Kung, God of War.
    “We’ll see how clever the little whore is,” said Gee Sin, the bok ji sin , White Paper Fan, sipping at his tumbler of XO cognac. He huffed into the cell phone to Tsai, the cho hai , Grass Sandal, his liaison at the other end of the longdistance line.
    Outside the high-rise picture windows, the Hong Kong night covered the panoramic sweep of Victoria Harbour, its neon lights and colors dancing off the dark water toward the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront. Stretching out on the Kowloon side were the city lights of Yau Ma Tei and Mongkok, sparkling in the distance like a scattering of diamonds. A full moon was overhead.
    Down to his right, to the mean streets of Wan Chai, and then sweeping all around, was the power and money of the waterfront districts.
    Gee Sin was pleased with the information. Chinese jewelry stores. After all, she couldn’t eat the one-ounce gold Panda coins she’d stolen from Uncle Four, or the fistfuls of diamonds. She’d have to sell or trade them at some point. Then the underground money traders would expose her.
    He resolved to be patient, studying his reflection in the mirror wall of the Mid-Levels condominium: a bald pate with bushy brows flecked with gray, oversaggy eyes. An old face. At sixty-three years of age, he was the triad’s number three in command, holding a 415 rank, which was a magic Chinese number. Only the hung kwun , enforcer, and the Shan Chu , Lung Tau , the Red Circle Dragon Head himself, were above him.
    The Hung Huen , Red Circle Triad, had devolved from their long past nationalism and noble resolve to overthrow the corrupt Ching dynasty, and to restore the Ming era. Patriotic honor had given way, in a matter of decades, to the greed, power, and bloodlust of the modern world. The Red Circle had more than a hundred thousand members, half of them in Hong Kong and

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