World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) Read Online Free PDF

European could respectably live, and where I had been living until now—not for respectability, but because I had not been able to find anywhere cheaper. And I told her about the other residents: about the bridge players whose sessions began at eleven o’clock every morning in the lounge and continued all day; about the sad wistful wives who said, “Of course we’re spoiled out here,” but really wished themselves back in Sutton; about the feuding middle-aged ladies, and about the garrulous ladies who laid in wait for you, trapped you, and then turned their flow of talk onto you like a hose; and about how I had taken to entering by the kitchens to reach my room without being caught. It sounded quite funny when I told it, but really wasn’t. I had become almost desperate; for by now a whole month of my year had gone by and I had still not settled to work, I had done nothing. At first Hong Kong, with its teeming, jostling populace, its atmosphere tingling with activity and excitement, had been too stimulating, too confusing; the impressions had whirled in my head too swiftly to record. “I must let it take shape,” I had thought. “I’ll be all right in a week or two.” But nothing had taken shape; I had been able to find no center of interest, no point of beginning; and I had begun to wonder in dismay if I should have chucked up rubber planting at all. Then I had begun to understand. My work had always depended on sympathetic feeling, on a sense of identity with the people I sketched or drew; and here I was a mere spectator in the streets, making my occasional sorties from another world. A great wall divided me from the Chinese—how could it be otherwise, living in Sunset Lodge? And thus I had begun another room hunt—for I had given up once in despair—and again taken trams from district to district, trudged from street to street, only to be reminded again everywhere, by the swarming pedestrians, by the quantities of washing hung out overhead, that this was the most overcrowded city in the world. Only a few years ago, at the end of the war, the population had been barely half a million; but since the revolution in China, from which the refugees had come flocking across the border in their hordes, it had swollen to two and a half million, and some thought to three million by now—who could tell? And when the first corners had packed themselves into every available room—each divided into ten, fifteen, twenty “bed-spaces”—there had been nothing left for the remainder but the empty sites and the hillsides, and such shanties as they could build from threadbare sacking, flattened tins, and treasured gleanings of wood. And if indeed any room did become vacant now it would be let at an inflated rental that no legislation could restrain. And so for a second time I had found nothing within my means, and dispirited and footsore had once more given up; and it was only Mrs. Ma’s advertisement that had brought me out again this afternoon.
    I put down the little decorated cup and said, “It was delicious tea. You were very kind.”
    â€œNot at all, not at all,” she tittered politely. “The tea was very poor.”
    â€œNo, it was delicious.” I rose to go.
    â€œI hope you are not really going down to Wanchai?” she said anxiously, coming to the door. “It is too noisy—too dirty. The people in Wanchai are so poor, you will get such a bad impression of the Chinese. You won’t go?”
    â€œWell, perhaps not.”
    But I did go nevertheless—descending the escarpment by the long steep flights of steps that dropped straight down into the oldest part of Wanchai: into the teeming alleyways with the litter-filled gutters, the pavement vendors, the street stalls, the excitement and bustle. The sun slanted brilliantly down, making deeply contrasting patterns of light and shade and giving the overhead washing the