Thanks for your letter, cousin. It was really great to hear from you. You are my heart ambassador out there in the world. Mama too much, but I love her. And man, you make me all homesick. Ha ha, yeah, I got married to a nice girl from the home village up in the Sai Kung hills. Her Chinese name is Sum-Yin, and her English name is Jane. Her father and my father were childhood chums, catching crickets together in the village lane. He helped me get a job at the General Post Office, where she was already working, so that is how we met. She was the most beautiful girl there, bar none! I told Mama already that she speaks English—no problem, don’t fuss. I’m sure Mama laughed. I know she just worries about me, so far away. But we’re doing fine. Got one kid already and another on the way. Someday soon I’ll take Jane and the little ones back to Kingston, and Mama will get to meet her.

Yes, for sure if you wanted you could come out here, and I’d help you best I could to set up. Lots of business to be done here, you could do pretty well if the war doesn’t come. If it does, well, it’ll be hard times for all of us, my cuz. There’s no certainty in this world anywhere you go. But right now the war’s rattling just over the border in China. People are expecting the Japanese to invade Singapore, but they are saying not Hong Kong. It’s too small and too useful. My friend, you’d be taking a risk, though, because rumours are just rumours, and the war is a lot closer to Hong Kong than it is to Newfoundland. I don’t know if Brother Du Bois is right, though, about the Japanese liberating anyone. They been doing some stuff in Manchuria that’s not so great. I’m more inclined to throw my lot in with the British. Yes, I know they are thieves too, but the life here is not so bad. A man can make a decent living. These days, I’m working for the radio station ZBW. I have a band with my friend Tanaka and this Chinese girl, Emily Mah—she’s got a great voice and is a lot of fun. Tanaka is Japanese, and he has no faith in the current Japanese government. He says Asia for Asians is a nice dream, he believed for a bit, seeing as how the British here keep all the good things for themselves—clubs, horses, cricket fields, fancy addresses, that kind of thing. But there are other forces at work. If you want to come, you’d best just come to sell your rum and maybe a few other things for yourself or other folks, and not hold your breath for anything else.