Kowloon Tong Read Free Page B

kite—George had come face to face with Mr. Chuck, who was rolling the same piece of string from the opposite end. "Snap!" George cried out. Mr. Chuck gave his name as Henry. The two men, one English, the other Chinese, laughed at their predicament
and their frugality, and in that moment, seeing themselves as kindred souls, they became friends.
    By then, Wing Commander G.F.S. Mullard had been demobbed and was simply "Geo," a newly married accounts clerk in the shipping department at Jardine's. Mr. Chuck had arrived not long before from China—he described himself frankly as a refugee and was grateful to the colony for allowing him entrance. He was looking for premises to start a textile factory. It was a fantasy of George's to run his own business too, and indulging this fantasy he had made a note of various vacant buildings in Kowloon. George was able to provide many suggestions, and he was fascinated when Mr. Chuck acted on them in such an unusual way. Mr. Chuck hired a Chinese geomancer to examine each site. George had expected a scowling man in bright robes with red eyes and a sorcerer's cap. The geomancer was a little smiling man with spiky hair and a rumpled suit and might have been a tram conductor. His name was Mo. In a well-made wooden box he carried a
feng shui
compass, and this he used to evaluate the sites.
    With enthusiasm and obvious skill, sketching on the back of an envelope, Mr. Mo explained the spiritual energy of Hong Kong, the way it was channeled and harmonized. It was a lesson in divination, and when he had finished Hong Kong seemed to George a place of marvels. The mountains above Kowloon were nine dragons. Hong Kong itself, detached from the mainland and beautifully shaped, was the dragons' ball.
    "You see
long zhu?
The ball?" Mr. Mo was making his map.
    They sat in a coffee shop, George and Mr. Chuck and Mr. Mo, in Mong Kok, where Mr. Mo lived.
    "We are Sons of the Dragon," Mr. Mo said, scribbling. "Sons of the Yellow Emperor."
    "The meaning is that we are Chinese," Mr. Chuck said. "That is all."
    Of all the sites, the one in Kowloon Tong was shown by the geomancer's compass to be right in every way. The
feng shui—
"wind-water"—was so harmonious that Mr. Mo exclaimed that this spot on Waterloo Road fitted the classical epithet for the perfect Chinese address, "the Belly of the Dragon." It was at the edge of the old
tong,
the pond where in a fabulous age the Nine Dragons had crouched to drink. The small splintery house standing there, with its dead tree and the buried bones—all dark omens—would of course have to be removed. But if the new building combined the Five Elements, and if it had no triangles in it, and it was built long and narrow, its narrow side facing north-south on the natural channel of Waterloo Road, that was as effective a conveyor of fluid vitality as a river; and if the red doors had prominent arches over them to allow the passage of that same
ch'i,
the flow of energy through Kowloon, then the structure on this auspicious site would bring good luck and great prosperity. In the raising of the structure, the Five Elements were incorporated into the factory building: Earth was its brick, Fire its electricity and red doors, Wood its paneling and beams, Water its mirrors and the tang beneath it, Metal its sewing machines.
    Imperial Stitching started a year later. Mr. Chuck put up most of the money. Using all his savings as his investment, and the promise of his work, George became Mr. Chuck's partner. It helped that George was British, too, since Imperial Stitching
specialized in uniforms—school uniforms, chauffeurs' jackets, concierges' frock coats, matrons' whites, nurses' smocks—the sort of items the colonial government ordered in large numbers when George's bid on a government tender got a favorable response. The factory employed two hundred workers, mostly women, and also made shirts, slacks, simple dresses, and underwear. Mr. Chuck bought some