Captain Lee knew that your great-auntie Siu-Wai was not a Sui Seung Yan like him. He knew how impossible it was. And still, he prayed and prayed and prayed. He prayed so hard he started having visions of Tin Hau with her rosary on—I mean, Mary. Sometimes he saw her ahead of him at the prow of the boat with her hands open and down at her sides, in true Catholic style. Sometimes he saw her with the right hand up and the left cupped at the belly in a mudra of courage. But her message was always the same: “Learn English.”

How is a poor, fatherless fisherman to learn English? he thought to himself. I can barely speak my own Shuilowaa dialect! And I certainly can’t read or write in any language. I have to make money so that me and my old ma can eat! But if he could learn English, he could perhaps pose as an overseas Chinese, and in so doing hide his Tanka roots. Then Siu-Wai might be convinced to marry him.

One day, when he was rinsing off the deck after a day of selling fish, a student walked by, and his book blew out of his hands and right onto the deck of the boat. The book had Chinese characters and English lettering in it, but neither did Captain Lee any good, since he couldn’t read at all. But what it did do was give him an excuse to go visit Padre Donovan of the Catholic floating church in Aberdeen. Padre Donovan had to get one of his pupils to translate Lee’s desires. The good priest thought Captain Lee was a little old, but let him sit in class with the small Sui Seung Yan boys of the floating church for English lessons after mass on Sunday mornings. It was humiliating to be a dim giant among all those snot-nosed little water bugs. But Captain Lee was a humble man and he also really wanted to marry your great-great-auntie Siu-Wai. It took him four years of hard work, humiliation, and eye strain late at night under a kerosene lamp after the fishing and odd jobs were done. But after four years, he could carry on a rudimentary conversation in English. All those four years, he saw her pass by the docks on her way to the Sai Kung market to buy fish for her family. Though she occasionally approached his boat, on days when he had fish to sell, he would make extra sure she didn’t see him. He asked his mother to sell her the fish.

He could tell she was wealthy because her clothes were nice. Not city wealthy—not that wealthy. But village wealthy. Her family grew rice and vegetables. They raised chickens and the occasional pig.