7.Yet what began to emerge, as I poked my way through remembrances, was a narrative thread that pulled me along actual streets and districts on long, uncertain walks, and rides on public transport, at all hours of the night and day. Sometimes, these journeys had a destination: to see a forgotten locale, to discover a new and unknown area, to visit a friend, to go to a club or restaurant, to swim or run, to research a detail for fiction. More often than not, I perched in tea shops, restaurants, bars, or cafes that I stumbled upon, trying to come to grips with what was happening to my city, measuring my life here in numerous bowls of noodles and congee, cups of coffee and tea, glasses of wine and other spirits, knowing that T.S. Eliot's coffee spoons could not, would not, should not suffice. Similarly, I obsessively eavesdropped conversations on board buses, trams, minibuses, and in the carriages of the MTR and KCR (the Kowloon Canton Railway). Where have you come from, where are you going to, I wanted to ask strangers, as if their answers could reveal the meaning of these isles – located in the Landrone chain of the South China Seas – as well as the identity of a people who are not easily classified as "Chinese," despite the ethnicity of the overwhelming majority. 有無師兄幫我寫個summary?THX!! |