I waved it away, in spite of the lovely vanilla and caramel scents that wafted up from those delectable confections. “Can’t you see they are making fun of us? And pushing their tastes and traditions on us in order to indebt us. It’s the Opium War all over again. What is wrong with you?”

“They are just trying to be nice, Violet. Don’t be such a sourpuss.”

“They undermine our traditions with impunity, then act as though we have none and give us theirs as an act of charity. A monkey’s wedding. That makes you the monkey.”

“I was going to ask you be bridesmaid.”

Old Mah would be furious, not just because the man who killed the Immortal Carp line had stolen his daughter, but because the British colonizers were now also doing so. If the original taipan of this backwater fishing village had accepted Grandfather Mah as his son, we’d be Witt-Weatheralls ourselves. And Emily would have had a proper wedding at the Church of Christ on Bonham Road. This would have been fine with Old Mah. He was a hypocrite like that.

“I wish you’d put more work into finding a place to live and less into these ridiculous schemes of yours,” I said. “Father will never forgive you.”

“He will,” said Emily. “Just you wait and see.”

CHAPTER 11THE WORLD OF EMILY MAH

July 9, 1937

Emily might have been spoiled, but she wasn’t incorrigibly so. Early in the morning, while Lai Po-Chuen and Tak-Wing were still asleep, she snuck out of the dorm to get them some breakfast. There was a street vendor in Wan Chai whom Tak-Wing particularly liked. It was a bit ridiculous to go so far, but these were the days of grand gestures. The bus arrived quickly. Emily hopped on. She very seldom went around the city on her own. Usually, she was with someone—Violet, Po-Chuen, Amah, or Tak-Wing. It was exhilarating to board the bus on her own and jostle the other passengers, businessmen and colonial administrators on their way to work, mothers taking young children to school, amahs on their way to do the morning marketing. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to find the street vendor. He was, after all, just a man with a cart, who set up in more or less the same location each day, depending on who else got there first and what the rumours were around police raids. Street vending was illegal, but it was also the way a lot of people made their living. There were so many street vendors that the colonial administration couldn’t deal with them all, and had to settle for the occasional raid, more as a show that the law existed than as an effective enforcement of it.