Free Gweilo by Martin Booth

gained more than four free teas from this escapade.
    Leaving the Pen, my mother made her way down Hankow Road, one of a grid of back streets, window-shopping the jewellers' shops. She paused outside the Hing Loon Curio and Jewellery Company. In the window was something that caught her eye and we entered. Thereupon began a friendship that was to last decades.
    The interior of the shop was like a treasure cave. Heavy Chinese furniture stood piled piece on piece to the ceiling, layers of cardboard protecting them from marking each other. Glass cabinets contained cloisonné trinkets, ebony carvings, ivory figures and beads, trays of gold rings set with multicoloured stones, displays of unmounted gems, gold chains, pendants and brooches. One display case was filled with netsuke, another with jade miniatures and Chinese snuff bottles, Siamese silver and enamel fingernail covers and models of junks.
    The proprietor, Mr Chan, approached my mother, smiling. 'You like a drink? Very hot today. You like a Coke, Green Spot, San Mig. ?'
    My mother, not knowing one from the other and feeling it impolite not to accept such a kind invitation, went for a San Mig. At this, Mr Chan poured her an ice-cold beer. I, being adventurous, asked for a Green Spot and was passed a bottle of sickly orange juice.
    Whilst well intentioned, the drink was of course a means of keeping a would-be customer in the shop. For twenty minutes, we sat on leather-topped stools in front of a glass-topped counter. My mother bought a curio or two to send 'home', which meant Britain. When she was done, Mr Chan asked me, 'What year you born?'
    'Nineteen forty-four,' I replied.
    'What mumf?'
    'September.'
    'You mahlo!
    From a jam-packed cabinet behind him, he produced a small, crudely carved ivory monkey.
    'For you,' he said, handing it to me. 'I see you again.'
    Mr Chan was to be my mother's jeweller for the rest of his life and his two sons thereafter until the end of her life. She never bought a single item of jewellery from any other Hong Kong shop, declaring to all who would listen that Mr Chan was the only man of his trade who had not once attempted to swizzle her. For years, she directed friends, acquaintances, visitors and even tourist strangers who accosted her for directions in the street to his shop – 'Just mention my name – Joyce Booth – and you'll not be done,' she would tell them.
    It was not long before my mother acquired a social life. The wives of my father's colleagues began to invite her out during the day, and to dinner or cocktail parties in the evenings. When this social whirl began in earnest, she delegated the job of seeing me safely to and from school to one of the hotel room boys. Tall for a Chinese, he was handsome, in his late twenties and spoke English without the usual Cantonese accent or pronunciation. His full name was Leung Chi-ching, but we called him Ching. In a very short time, I came to love this man as if he were a favourite uncle. Every morning, he guided me across the traffic on Waterloo Road, Chinese-style. This meant crossing to the central white line and lingering there as vehicles zipped by on either side, waiting for a gap in the traffic to complete the journey to the far pavement. He insisted on carrying my rattan school case – an oblong sort of picnic hamper-cum-briefcase known as a Hong Kong basket – containing my books and some sandwiches wrapped in translucent greaseproof paper. Some of my fellow pupils were taken to school by an amah; some came by car. I stood out, accompanied by this imposing but obviously gentle man who acted like a bodyguard.
    One day, I asked Ching where he lived. He was reluctant to inform me. However, he embarked upon his life story, which he told me over the next few days, walking back slowly from school with the warm, late-afternoon sun in our faces, little eddies of wind lifting miniature dust tornadoes off the road surface.
    His father had been a wealthy landlord in Kwangtung province, not