“I don’t run guns,” said Lee. “What I transport, I transport to ensure a better future for our children. Those monsters who have invaded Manchuria, they are not the same as the Japanese like your son’s friend Tanaka, who helped Brother Sun Yat-Sen. Who believed in a better Asia for all of us. These new Japanese think they are better than Chinese people. They talk about brotherhood, but they mean Japanese imperialism as a replacement for British imperialism.”

“But the British give you supplies. And you want the British out.”

“At least the British are honest about their intentions. They may not care about us, but they don’t actively try to hurt us.”

Cheung grunted.

“Who are you to judge?” Lee said. “You work for them.”

“I take care of my family.”

“There’s an art to war, Brother. Us little people have to weather the contradictions.”

Speaking of weather, the water had gotten choppier still, and grey clouds hung low overhead. There was a storm coming, if not a full-blown typhoon. Both men recognized this silently together. Lee gunned the motor at full throttle, while Ting-Yan rolled down the canopy roof.

The rains began just as they arrived at the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter. It was already packed with boats, mostly little fishing boats like Lee’s. Lee found a place to dock—less sheltered than he liked, but probably okay. They had to hop across the whole line of little boats that had arrived earlier to get to the first walkway.

Lee and Ting-Yan, alongside Cheung and Tak-Tam, hurried up Wun Sha Street along the route of the wide nullah from which Tai Hang got its name, “Big Ditch.” The whole village smelled of sewage and stale fish, though Cheung was used to it by now. All the hand laundries were closing for the day. Hauling their tattered rattan baskets on long poles slung over the shoulders, exhausted quarry workers—those unsung movers of mountains, fillers of oceans, and makers of land—walked beside Cheung and Lee. Cheung watched them wistfully. His father had been a quarry worker, until he was murdered by that swindler Mah’s bogus anti-opium pills. By the side of the road, hawkers sold roasted sweet potatoes, fried turnip cake, tea eggs, and sticky rice steamed in bamboo leaf. Even under threat of rain, people crowded around the noodle stalls hoping to grab a quick bowl before the downpour. The street smelled of all these delicious foods over and through the less pleasant smells of sewage and rot. As they went up the street, the scents of home-cooked family dinners mingled with those of glossy street food. The fragrance of red stick incense wafted up from shrines to the Earth God, who guarded the village flats from his hallowed ground in the portico of each dark front door.