Fiction: Group 3
Hong Kong.
Standing in front of that huge building, I suddenly felt small and vulnerable.
Shaking off the
feeling, I stepped into it and found the Chinese restaurant we were to meet up in.
The banker was a nice clean-shaven man with sleek black hair gelled back perfectly.
“What can I say about Hong Kong,” he tapped his chin as I managed to poise my pen over my
notebook.
“It has a familiar business environment.”
I nodded encouragingly.
“It has world-class business services and has a cosmopolitan lifestyle,” he ticked them off with his fingers.
That sum-up was quite good, so I jotted down the points and chatted with him about banking.
After that, I toured around the famous landmarks, the Peak, the Hong Kong Museum of History and many
many more.
I wrote everything down in my little notebook and went straight for the train taking me to
Dongguan.
I had no time to spare.
After a couple of hours of reading and staring out the window engrossed in my homesickness, I arrived at
the place famous for its garment trade.
I visited a garment factory where I saw workers from different parts
of the country, working hard to earn money for their respective families.
An old woman recounted her sad
story and I put it on record.
Once again, my wife’s image floated into my mind.
Some of them had to
leave their families behind to work in foreign lands and I just barely touched the surface of their
sadness.
The woman came up to me and clasped one of my hands in her wrinkled and old ones, thanking
me again and again though I had did nothing but gave her a couple of comforting words.
The clothes they
made suddenly seemed much more valuable.
After the visit, I went to the world’s largest shopping mall, the New South China Mall.
Feeling excitement
bubbling up my chest, I stepped inside.
To my surprise and disappointment, the mall was largely empty,
like the hole in my heart, the corridors were gaping holes swallowing people up.
Few merchants had ever
signed up and not many people went there.
Heart sinking, I described its emptiness in my notebook and set
off again to my next stop--Foshan.
There, I interviewed a man living in the city, who welcomed me warmly into his humble home which
reminded me of someplace I yearned to go back to, and told me about the history of Foshan.
Smoothing back the barely visible white wisps of hair on his head, he smiled and started the story.
“Long long ago,” the man said through the gaps between his teeth. “Foshan was named Lihua
Township.
In the Jin Dynasty, a monk founded a temple on our Tapo Hill.
It was left to rot and fell into
disrepair.
Then in the Tang Dynasty, a couple of residents found three statues of the Buddha, and then they
saw lights coming from the temple.
They then built a new one to hold the Buddhas.
Buddha in Chinese is
Fo, and Mountain is Shan.
Foshan is the name for this place ever since.”
After hearing the story, we chatted about life in the city and I learnt quite a lot.
I had to head to my last destination, but it was already nightfall, so I stayed at a motel, setting off early in the
morning.
My last stop was Zhongshan.
I arrived at Zhongshan and headed straight to a furniture
showroom.
Zhongshan was famous for its furniture and I wasn’t disappointed.
The place was full of
different chairs, tables, sofas, and the designs were intricate. I neared a column of baby furniture and I
suddenly remembered my expecting child.
I asked for the designer and we chatted about furniture for a while, then he told me that Zhongshan was
named after an incredible man named Dr. Sun Yat-sen.
The designer was kind enough to take me to the
Sunwen Memorial park where the largest bronze sculpture of
Dr. Sun Yat-sen was situated.
Then he took
