I paid, slid a generous tip beneath the side of my plate, and was halfway out of the door before I recalled my reasons for coming to Chinatown. With the experience of the impatient shopkeepers in mind, I hesitated briefly before I ducked back into the warm, fragrant room. The waiter again greeted me with raised eyebrows. When I took out the framed photograph and explained what I wanted, the eyebrows went down and the face closed. He handed it back to me with scarcely a glance.

“No, sorry, don't know them.”

“Look, I'm not out to cause them any trouble, I'm not with the government or anything—” (although surely he could hear that in my English accent?) “but they worked for my parents until ten years ago and I'd like to see that they get a small pension. You understand pension? Income? Money?”

“I understand pension,” he said. “We don't know them.”

Stubbornly, I bypassed his authoritative stand and set the photograph on the table containing the largest number of diners, face up so they could all see the faces. “If anyone knows who these people are, could they leave a message for me at the St Francis? My name is Russell.”

The picture was gathered back into my hands before more than six or eight people could have looked on it, and I was ushered, politely but inexorably, out of the restaurant. I thanked the waiter who was shutting the door in my face, and stood in the damp alley, buttoning my coat against the sudden chill and feeling somewhat queasy with the unwonted amount of food in my belly.

I showed the picture at twenty-five or thirty other places, sometimes leaving my card, other times only able to say my name and that of the hotel before I was deposited on the pavement again. By that time I had exhausted the Chinese quarter, so I continued into the Italian quarter then worked my way back on either side of the main streets of Chinatown, but with no luck.

Sadly, I slipped the pretty frame back into my pocket and turned back down Grant, Chinatown's high street. It was later than I had thought. Some of the shops were closing—the greengrocer's wares had been depleted, the bookseller's behind it was dark: Time to go.