As he became more educated, he realized being able to speak English wasn’t enough. He would have to be able to bring wealth to her family also, or they would never permit the marriage. They were getting older by then. And he had no idea what plans her family might have for her. In those days, most marriages were arranged. Even if he weren’t Sui Seung Yan, a love marriage would have been so unlikely. He had to make money, and he had to make it fast.

He prayed to Tin Hau with her rosary on. He prayed to Mary. He prayed to Our Lady of Grace. This is the part Ting-Yan doesn’t like to talk about, so I don’t know if it’s true. If it is, it makes your great-uncle a crook, but what is a crook in a place where there are old customs and new laws, where the new laws are evolving, and where authority itself is an ever-shifting centre? It was 1928 and the Soong-MacMurray treaty granting China tariff authority and thus a route to modern statehood had just been signed. A guy could make a lot of money selling the kinds of goods that were taxed by evading those taxes through the old business and family connections that joined all the shopkeepers and boat people up and down the South China coast. Lee knew about the old trade routes because his mother knew about them. His mother knew about them because his father knew about them. His father knew about them because he’d travelled those routes like his father and grandfather before him.