“Of course I did. But that messenger boy I sent did not look too bright.”

“Chinese wedding?” said Old Mah, wanting to be certain.

“What other kind is there?” said Captain Lee.

“There’s a registry wedding and an English wedding with only toffs to watch,” said Old Mah, resentment puffing out of his ears. “For a real Chinese wedding you have to consult the father of the bride when making arrangements and get his genuine consent.”

Ting-Yan pushed the boat off the pier with a long pole, and started the motor.

“You must get over it, Father,” said Emily. “You already said yes to us getting married. There’s no point getting wound up about the little details.”

We stayed in Chek Keng for a week. Old Mah was happy because his daughter and son-in-law served him tea in a proper ceremony. Since my mother was dead, I sat beside him in her place and received tea from my older sister as though she were my daughter. The only disappointment for me was that I was not allowed to comb Emily’s hair. It seemed to me that that would be a good sisterly ritual, but tradition said the hair-combing ceremony was reserved for a woman who had lived a lucky life. In traditional terms this meant she must be married, wealthy, and the mother of many children. I was none of those things.

I told Kathy Duffy about it afterwards.

“Remember I told you that in your mother’s home county of Shunde, women can comb their own hair in a ceremony of independence and self-sufficiency?” she said. “The ceremony is still alive. You could do it, if you want.”

“Why do you care so much about us Chinese people, and so little about your own people?”

She laughed. “I care about Irish people! Maybe too much! But when I was young, I was afraid to, because all my professors at Trinity College Dublin were pro-British and I was afraid to say I admired Sinn Fein. I studied Chinese people, I suppose, as a kind of proxy for Republican Irish. By the time I was self-assured enough to stand up for what I believed in, I was old, and knew a lot about China and very little about Ireland. So here I am.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, that seems very sad to me,” I said.

She smiled a small smile. “I suppose it is, child. If I were in Ireland and had a daughter, I’d encourage her to study Irish history. But I’m not and I don’t. However, I am in Hong Kong and I do have a student—you. I’m trying to give you back what the English took from me—that is, your own history.”

“Huh,” I said. “I guess that makes some kind of sense.”

“Don’t you sometimes feel like a fish out of water?” she asked.