Cheung backed to the wall, feeling awkward among his masters. There was a series of four paintings on the wall by the Portuguese painter Marciano Antonio Baptista, famous for his paintings of Macau, but known also for his works on Hong Kong. Cheung knew the paintings well because he’d dusted them so many times in his late twenties, after he was promoted from working in the basement kitchen. He liked the one of the temple for Tin Hau, whom the Macanese called A-Ma. But it wasn’t his favourite. He gazed now at his most cherished one. It showed another expatriate sports club—the Hong Kong Jockey Club—as a wide expanse of green field. In the foreground stood a lush forest of unidentifiable trees. In the background, on Morrison Hill, stood a posh European settlement, a lost castle from some distant other place. He could see it was meant to make Europeans long for Europe. The light fell on it in such a way that it glowed a warm terracotta. And beyond it in the distance, Victoria Harbour with six ships barely visible in perspective, all of them with tall European style masts. These were the ships that had brought them here, and the ships that could take them home to their real castles far away, except that they didn’t own those castles—their fathers, older brothers, masters, and employers did. The harbour water glimmered a pale, mysterious blue. In the far distance lay the Chinese mainland, Kowloon, and the New Territories, not yet ceded to the British at the time of the painting—1846 by the Western calendar. To the left was the old Colonial Cemetery, though you couldn’t tell from the painting what it was; you’d only know if you knew a bit of the history.

Cheung understood what was behind those unidentifiable trees in the foreground because his mother still lived in Wong Nai Chung, their natal village. Where once it had sat on high ground above an expanse of rice paddies, it now sat on low ground, all its geomantic advantages destroyed by the unrelenting changes to the land surrounding it.

The half-swallowed village was mostly abandoned after the typhoon of 1923, and more fully abandoned after the typhoon of 1925. But after the flood waters had receded, a handful of stubborn villagers returned, including his mother, dragging his sister, Hok-Yee, with her. When Cheung was a boy, his mother had been powerful there as the village matriarch. Now he visited her when he could, which was not often, because the needs of his masters at the club were so great. And the Hong Kong Cricket Club smelled a lot better.