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tighter. ‘Ask Daddy. I’ll be okay now, Emma, you go to sleep. I’m sorry I made you come in. Go to sleep, and we’ll have fun tomorrow, you and me. I’m glad you came to look after me. We’ll have fun.’
    ‘Yes, we will,’ I said, still stroking the covers. ‘I can stay here until you fall asleep.’
    ‘Ask Daddy,’ she said, almost a whisper, then her breathing softened and deepened into sleep.
    A taxi pulled into the lay-by outside the temple the next afternoon and April stepped out holding a large plastic shopping bag. She saw me and waved. ‘What’s in the bag?’ I said.
    ‘Stuff for the ancestors. So they bless my marriage and make it good. I’ll put it in front of the tablets.’ ‘The ancestral tablets?’ She nodded a reply.
    I stopped at the front gate to the temple and grinned. The wrought-iron fence and gate had swastikas worked into the metalwork. They were the reverse direction from the Nazi swastika, but still recognisable, picked out in red paint against the black fence.
    I pointed at one. ‘In the West, that’s a symbol of Nazi Germany and sort of…’ I searched for the word. ‘Bad.’
    April looked at the fence, bewildered. ‘What is?’ I outlined the swastika on the gate with my finger. ‘This symbol.’
    She shook her head. ‘It’s just good luck.’
    ‘Do you know anything about the Nazi regime in Germany? Hitler?’
    She hesitated, thinking, then said, ‘Hitler was a great European General, right? He conquered most of Europe.’
    I suppressed the laugh. ‘That’s one way of describing him. He tried to kill a whole race of people.’
    She shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about that. We didn’t do much European history in school.’
    ‘Didn’t you go to school in Australia?’
    ‘No, I went to Australia to study IT at university, then got citizenship, then took my parents out there after Tiananmen.’
    She pressed the intercom button next to the gate and it unlocked for us. We went inside.
    The temple sat on top of the Pokfulam hill, overlooking the steeply terraced cemetery that led down to the sea below us. A few highrises were scattered at the base of the hill, mostly inhabited by expatriates who didn’t care about the bad fung shui of living near the cemetery.
    April led me past the main hall and towards the steps down to the tablet rooms.
    ‘What’s in the main hall?’ I said, pointing towards three huge statues inside.
    ‘The Three Big Gods,’ April said. ‘You know, the gods in charge of everything.’
    ‘This is a Taoist temple, right?’
    She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Just a temple.’
    ‘But the Three Big Gods are Taoist?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ April said. ‘They’re just the big Gods, but they’re different from the Buddha, so I suppose they are.’ She moved closer and whispered, ‘It’s all just old people’s superstition anyway, but it’s important toworship the ancestors, otherwise they get mad at you and you get bad luck. And I want good luck for my marriage.’
    We went down the steep steps to the tablet rooms at the back of the temple. Dark green and brown mosaic tiles covered the floor and walls, with a bare painted concrete ceiling. A family sat on grimy vinyl couches to one side, folding squares of gold paper into the shape of ancient gold bars and stuffing them into paper sacks.
    ‘Funeral,’ April whispered, and passed the people without glancing at them again.
    The rest of the offerings were ready for the funeral in the main hall of the tablet rooms. A house stood in the middle of the hall, about two metres high, made of flimsy bamboo bracing and covered with paper. It had three storeys, with tiny air conditioners in the windows and a mah jong table in one room. A male and a female servant and a guard dog stood in the front garden. Next to the house was a Mercedes, with a driver made of paper, and stacked next to the car was a variety of day-to-day necessities, all made out of paper: a portable stereo, a mobile