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the street and talk to him and smile and bow their heads.
    We visit every shop, and from every one Zhang collect a small brown paper bag, with smiles and bowing heads; and wishes for him to have good health and a long life. Shopkeepers offer ‘Perhaps a small gift for your young charges?’ but Zhang refuse and bow his head in respect. This is how we travel the length and breadth of Chinatown.
    Afterwards, Zhang say we must go get something to eat. So we go down a little alley off Barry Street and open a gate into a yard with a lot of Chinamen just standing there, and we go up a couple of wooden steps on to a narrow veranda and open a door where this big room is full of men playing mah-jongg, and shuffling the tiles and making a racket. We walk ’cross the room and Zhang open another door, and that is when the smell hit me. This heavy, sweet, pungent smell.
    The room big like the mah-jongg room, and it got a lot of platforms that them laying on with the wooden pillow under their head. There is Chinese men and white men as well. Well-dressed white men, some of them even in the Queen’s uniform. And the little lamps is burning, and they laying on their side with the long pipe puffing over it. Or they just laying there on their back with their eyes wide open. I hear plenty of stories about opium but I never actually see anybody smoking it before. And what I notice is how all of the smokers look half dead and sweaty, and how the men preparing the pipes and serving the tea wearing the changshan that Zhang don’t like, and how quiet the place is. Quiet.
    Then we go through into the next room and that is where they got the food. Wooden tables and benches, and steaming rice and a red-hot wok, and steamed pork buns and pickled cabbage. And a open window looking out on to the back of the yard with a wooden shutter prop up with a long piece of old wood. And catching that bit of air is nice because the other two rooms don’t have no windows.
    After we finish eating and walking back to Matthews Lane I notice how Zhang look sorta proud the way him coming through Chinatown, puffing out his chest and holding his head high. He say, ‘Back in old days the Negroes steal and burn and loot Chinese shops. But things get better. Chinatown get safe and happy.’
    After that it was just one thing after another. Do this, do that. Go here, go there. Ma do this, Xiuquan do that. Me run and fetch, help this man, collect from that shop. It was like Zhang was settling everybody into their place. Fixing them into their routine.
    Every day, except Sunday, Ma make saltfish fritters with the help of a girl named Tilly. Then Tilly take the fritters for sale in Chinatown. Later she come back, and she and Ma pick duck feathers to make pillows to sell.
    Zhang teach us tai chi although Xiuquan already know some from our father. We do it every morning. From the beginning – Grasp Bird’s Tail, White Stork Cools Its Wings, Brush Knee and Twist Step, Carry Tiger to Mountain. To the end – Shoot Tiger with Bow, Strike, Parry, Punch, Apparent Close-up and Conclusion.
    Zhang tell us ’bout Sun Tzu and how more than two thousand years ago he formulate a strategy to plan and conduct military operations. And how Mao Zedong still take lessons from Sun Tzu’s writing, and how important it is for us to learn the ‘Art of War’.
    Every evening after dinner, Zhang teach us English.
    And what we have to do is just help him. Just help Zhang look after Chinatown.
     
    Then one day I doing my chores and meet pushcart boy. I recognise him from that first day when we land. Him follow me all up Barry Street, every stop I make. I go in the shop, him there. I come out, him there, leaning up against some post, or examining piece of old wood, or just kicking the dirt with his hands in him pocket. Not look at me. But I know is me him waiting for. I help Mr Chin and Mr Chung and Mr Lee. I shift barrels, sweep floors, collect Zhang’s pai-ke-p’iao gambling money, but no matter