"DO YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY?" I asked my future husband as he leaned against a latticed cherrywood screen in the makeshift library, set up to separate it from the rest of the house. Some tenuous connection had wrapped around us after our simple conversation, with its small words heavy with emotion, and I wasn't quite ready to break it yet. So I extended the olive branch.

"I would love to," he said and I stood. William looked alarmed and I wondered why before remembering British etiquette and that gentlemen ought to give their seats up for ladies, not the other way around.

To assuage him, I asked him to bring me a chair and drag it over to the table. He lifted it with ease and set it down beside his own. I sat next to him and quietly explained the rules in English as best as I could. The noise was so great that I had to lean in closely, my face brushing his, and I caught a whiff of his scent: cologne mixed with something fresh, almost minty. I felt heat flush my cheeks at the slight contact. He didn't seem to notice, and that unfurled something in the pit of my stomach. Did women often touch him in this way, so casually, like it didn't matter at all? Was that how British society functioned?

Because I was technically not even supposed to be sitting there with him, when I was unmarried, with no veil to cover my face. Did he expect me to be so loose with my affections?

William nudged me as he picked up a tile and put it out. "Did I do that right?"

I fixed my attention back on the game, still feeling uneasy as I stared at the tile: the character for fortune on it. (1) There were four in total scattered throughout the game, and there were already two discarded in the middle. He could have made a pair with it, or yut duey ahn, but the chances were very slim. (2)

"You're doing fine," I assured him.

He beamed. I watched them play for a bit, and William seemed to have picked up the hang of the game—even if the manzi or number characters were giving him a bit of trouble. (3) I got up from my seat and began wandering the room aimlessly, not sure what or who I was looking for.

"Liz!" My favourite cousin called out.

Laughing I forgot all sense of decorum and flung my arms around Henry Lau—a cousin from my mother's side, also known as my biu go. (4) "Henry!"

We were somewhat black sheep in our family, both having been Western-educated. He had been shipped off to some American school, though, while I had simply attended a Catholic school in Hong Kong. I hugged him tightly, breathing in the scent of cigar smoke and old books. He stood a few inches taller than me, at five-eight, and always wore crisply tailored suits that contrasted with his ways when he was at home: eating street food out of the dai pai dong and working as a barrister at his father's firm. (5)

"It's lovely to see you, Liz," he said cheerily, letting go of me. "Where's your groom? I heard you were getting married."

My stomach soured at the reminder. Even though William and I were now cordial I didn't want to think about how I would soon be tying my life to his, to a foreigner's. "He's over there, no doubt having his money stolen by my aunts."

Henry barked a laugh. "Oh, little cousin, how I've missed you." He checked his watch. "I need to go discuss something with your father but I'm certain we have lots to catch up on."

I meandered back toward the mahjong table where they were beginning a new round and resumed my seat. Facing William, I asked, "How did it go? Did you sik wu?" (6)

One of my aunts laughed. "Kuey sik gai wu!" (7)

I smiled proudly anyways. That was better than I'd done the first time I played.

"Congratulations on winning your first round of mahjong! You must be one-tenth-Chinese by now, then," I teased him.

He snorted, his blue eyes now cold with anger, or maybe not cold. Maybe hot, maybe one of the hottest fires, the kind that burned blue on expensive gas ranges. His returning look was bitter. "But that is not enough for you, right?"

And then he walked away, leaving me dazed and confused.

☕️

DEAR FELICITY,

THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST IN CORRESPONDING with me. I must say, I have never written to someone as far away as England before. You must tell me what it is like there. Do you live in the countryside or in the big city of London? I have spent my entire life in Hong Kong, so any details you wish to share would be illuminating.

Tell me, what was your brother like when he was younger? Is he as... well, dare I call your brother irritating, as he is now? He is awfully confusing and terribly annoying by being so.

I set down the pen, not sure if I should continue in this vein. What if this little girl idolized her brother? It simply wouldn't do to shatter her illusions of him—though long ago my own brother had destroyed my ideals toward him. And... how could I write to her without any bitterness in my tone? I had done my best not to be cynical about the whole affair, about having my hometown taken over by the British, but how could the gap—no, the impossible divide—between us ever be bridged?

I reread one of her letters to William, trying to get a feel for who she was. She seemed to love adventure as much as her brother did—probably more so. She likely had a more glamorized vision of it in her mind, one that was all thrilling danger and exotic locales. Not gritty escapes and real peril, not sleeping rough every night and being chased out of towns as a nomadic vagrant.

Finally, I sighed and tucked the letter away into a drawer of my desk. It was too early in the morning after last night's big family gathering to be worried about other people's families, anyways. Most of the house except for our servants were still asleep. As I made my way toward the kitchen to get some tea, I thought about the gossip I had overheard last night. Some of it had been regarding the British takeover, fear and uncertainty of what would happen, thus causing them to direct that trepidation toward my fiancé. Most of it had, unfortunately, concerned myself. Or, to be more specific, it had concerned my future husband.

No one in my family, as far as I knew, had ever married a foreigner. Well, I had an uncle who had married a Japanese woman and been disowned, but that was almost close enough that it didn't count. Their children still looked somewhat Chinese. It was not the same affair as marrying a gweilo, a foreign devil, would be.

Ours was a union that could only be tolerated in Hong Kong, I realized. Despite all of his sister's letters and wishes to meet me... In England I would be as foreign as he was here. I would be a stranger with foreign customs and ways that were viewed as barbaric and primitive. In China he would have been spat upon and not allowed in, viewed as lesser and untrustworthy. So much of our cultures was foreign to the other, but last night...

Last night I knew there had been some kind of bond formed between us, some link that had been forged and thrust under cold water to seal. A way for us to bridge the gap between two people, for us to stop viewing the other as simply a representative of their race, and more as human. Even if he had been so abruptly cold after playing mahjong... I still didn't understand his odd behaviour.

Were all men so inscrutable, or was he special?

(1) 發 - wealth tile.

(2) 一對眼 - literally, a pair of eyes. In mahjong, to win you need 4 sets of 3 matching tiles/3 of a suit and a matched pair (called eyes).

(3) 萬子 - literally, the number ten thousand. There are four sets of these with nine tiles in each set, numbered one-ten-thousand to nine-ten-thousand.

(4) 表哥 - Mother's brother's son who is older than you.

(5) 大排檔 - open air food stall

(6) 食和 - winning a round of mahjong, literally "eat something"

(7) 他食雞和 - literally "he ate chicken" but means he won the round without winning any money because of a poor hand

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MAHJONG:

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/essays/mahjong.htm