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Hong Kong

Fifty-eight days later, Anyu arrived at the port of Hong Kong Island.

Sunlight, bright like pure gold, the air warm, damp, scented with musty algae and fresh fish.

Seagulls skimmed over the water in Victoria Harbor, junks with black and brown sails breezed past the coral-edged shores lined with emerald palms, and monasteries with ruby-red roofs floated in clouds in the far distance across the green hills in Kowloon.

Kowloon , they said, meant “nine dragons” in Chinese—it was named after the divine dragons sleeping under the mountains, who must not be disturbed, or they’d unleash accidents or disease or death as punishment.

Anyu held up her hand, shielding her eyes, gazing out.

People on the ship had said that everything in Hong Kong was brought over by the early colonizers, the trees of the flame of the forest from South Asia, the five-petaled frangipani from Hawaii, and the feverishly pink bougainvillea from South America.

They also said Hong Kong’s stories could unfold in the cracks of the steep streets slithering through slums and saloons, that Hong Kong’s love could be sought on the quiet echoes of wooden fish and the incense smoke that smelled of frankincense and pepper, that Hong Kong’s tears could be seen in the flap of fork-tailed sunbirds, the specked shells of barnacles, and the jelly-tongued limpets.

They said all the people loved Hong Kong, ministers and mistresses, cooks and crooks, villagers and vagabonds, and they also said Hong Kong was like no other, for it was an island for refugees, an atoll for the faithful, and a harbor for all birds of passage.

With Confucius, Esther, and Matthew by her side, Anyu, wearing the Diamond of Life under her shirt, carrying her bag that contained the Winter Egg, walked down the ramp.