NO PLACE LIKE HOME RIGHT AFTER TIFFIN, at one in the afternoon, I am tiptoeing out of the backyard when an ear-piercing

shriek shatters the siesta stillness. I should have known that Jie-jie, Yi-jies busy-body of a daughter-in-law, would be standing watch. And now as if on signal, like a treeful of summer cicadas, they all join in Yi-jie, her son Ah Qin, her granddaughter Ah Kuan, and surely half the servant population of Edinburgh Road. Talk about Cantonese opera, and me center stage! Not a hope in Hades can I escape the ordeal of tea at Dicky Marshs. Why me? Why must it always be me? Why not send Joss? I plead with Tai-tai. Count yourself lucky, Desmond, that of all the boys in the concession you are the one Mrs Marsh has singled out to be Dickys companion. Do I need to keep reminding you that Mr Marsh is taipan of ICI? Like it or not, youre going to the Marshs today. And I dont want you looking like a ragamufn. Pull up your socks. Havent you got garters? And youd better remember your manners. Always refuse a second helping. Always say thank you when you leave. Why did I have to thank them when I was the one making the sacrice? Every second of my freedom was precious to me. Besides, Dicky wasnt one of us. He spoke a different form of English. Even if he hadnt that lisp, I would have found him hard to follow. And what an alien world his home! Though the Marshes must have employed servants, I never set eyes on a single one. It was always Mrs Marsh who received me at the door. Sure of one thing, though, Dicky had no amah.
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His mother was his amah strange! She was the one who served tea, and tea in the Marsh household wasnt just bread and margarine and jam; it was a full blown meal sh and potatoes and pudding, the sort of thing you ate with knife and fork. Whats more, they put a glass of milk in front of you. Milk! Ugh! With my Chinese palate I had to force myself to drink it. Why wouldnt the Marshes know that dairy products of any kind are abhorred across the length and breadth of China? After tea, Dicky would get out his working model steam engine and set about amazing me with his grown-ups knowledge of the thing. He not only knew the name of each individual component, he knew its function. He could make the engine puff and blow and pump at eyeboggling speed, even induce it to sound off its whistle. Sometimes hed call his father to show him some new thing hed got the engine to do, and the two would put their heads together in man-to-man talk. When it came time to go poor Dicky had to prepare himself for bed while it was still light outside his mother would escort me to the door. And when, under Tai-tais strict reminder, I asked if Dicky could come to our place for chow, she would look the other way and mumble something about Dicky having to accompany Mr Marsh to the Country Club, or something of the kind. On the road home, dribbling a pebble along the curb, I breathed with relief, for who at Madison Square Garden would do the honors as Mrs Marsh unfailingly did: read aloud a story from Chums or Tiger Tim or tell about such wondrous things as the chimps tea party at London Zoo? And thank heavens Dicky wouldnt be joining us at the table. How could I ever forget the look of disgust on Bobby Jansons face when Gui Xiang came marching triumphantly in with the tureen of steaming jiaozis, native dumplings? Do you really eat that stuff? Bobby asked. And it was obvious from the way he asked that he had never ever done so. Come to think of it, Id never seen him, nor, for that matter, any other of our American pals enjoying a street snack. How tragic never to have savored tang gwr toffee apples on a stick honey sweet yet tart enough to prickle your nose; or jian bing guozis aromatic fritters wrapped
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in wafer thin crepes, served sizzling hot off a portable griddle! But then they were not cheap those fritters twenty cents big money! Big money? Yes, big money, the collective name for the ten-, twenty-ve-, and fty-cent notes in use. We always knew where we stood with big money. Ten ten-cent notes were always worth one dollar. Not so with small money, the copper and silver coins, whose value constantly changed. The jianbing guozi you bought for twenty cents big money might cost anywhere between nineteen and twenty-three cents small money. We never knew why that was; we simply accepted it as a fact of life. We learned early about big and small money. Too bad that part of the sign is cut off from this 1928 photo of us kids in Victoria Park. It surely must have said that it cost 20 cents small money to get into some special enclosure. But back to Dicky. When he, ever inquisitive, ever

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persistent, demanded to know why we needed two kinds of money, I parried with the rst thing that came to mind: small money was handy to have down in the pants pocket, big money was safer up in the shirt pocket. I was on rmer ground when he asked what the words meant of my rendition of Huo Jia, a common back alley jingle. Hed sung for me the rst verse of The Miller of Dee; it was only fair that I should respond. The Huo household has a plump baby, Who daily refuses his rice, And daily refuses his tea, Madame says, Dont blame me If he insists on suckling at the breast. Dicky turned red. But how much redder if Id given him one of those others from my repertoire, especially that rhyming one popular with kitchen scullions: Master, Master, whats for today? Fried eggs? Or steak perhaps? Or what about some nice croquettes, Shaped like my whopping great THING? We picked up those naughty rhymes long before we knew their meaning. We called each other Warlord Fling Schit Hai or Hu Flung Dung only half-suspecting why it drew such ribald laughter from the older boys. No wonder Dicky wasnt allowed to mix with the gang. No wonder he could never join us on our dragony hunts, exhilarating moments in the elds stalking those shimmering masters of ight spectacular reds, vivid golden-browns, brilliant blue-greens. And he was never around when we went after cicadas perched high up in the treetops. Waste of time, way out of reach, a lot of people would tell us. But then they knew nothing of that cunning Chinese device a lump of gummy sap (sap from cherry trees worked best) xed to the tip of a bamboo pole which could be inched right up to where those singing marvels of
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nature thought themselves safe. And what about our own little trick of touching a certain spot on a cicadas midriff to start it screeching into song? Better not touch the wrong spot or it would pee that white stuff all over your ngers, giving you warts for sure.

And crickets! Would Dicky ever know that three-tailers were female, which, like at heads and pale skins, were useless in the ring; that it was only the two-tailers, the males, especially the shiny black ones with round heads, that were game for a ght? But even those had to be sufciently riled. The secret was to place two in a clay pot, then proceed to tickle their tails with the brous strand left on a blade of grass after stripping it from its stem. Only one variety of grass would do, mind you, only it produced a strand as springy as a crickets antenna. Boy, how those gladiators resented their backsides tickled! Theyd circle the pot chirping in outrage until they came face to face. No stopping them after that. Theyd rise on their hind legs and gouge away with their powerful mandibles until one conceded leaving the other chirping in triumph. Naturally, we all dreamed of capturing a super cricket, one we could bring to the alley where the big stakes were wagered. No law against dreaming wild dreams of champion crickets and giant dragonies and far away places across wide oceans. Bobby Janson needed only mention that he was off home to New York, where, before the summer was out, hed be up in the bleachers watching Babe Ruth in action, and wed be transported with him to Yankee Stadium. And just to hear Charlie Hislop boast that once home he was going to be taken to the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, why, wed be there alongside him gaping in wonder at those legendary bearskins and redcoats. Curiously enough, it wasnt just the Dicky Marshes and Bobby Jansons and Charlie Hislops of this world who referred to the land of their fathers as home. We all did, never mind that for most of us third generation
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colonials all ties with the old country had long been severed. The day Dicky and I said our nal good-byes he was going home to school must have happened during Zhong Yang Kite Festival, for there we were in the Min Yuan with our butteries and hawks and goldsh and ghters strung out in a row sixty to eighty feet above our heads. We were relaxed yet vigilant for there was always some thoroughgoing rogue who had ground glass glued to the top few feet of his line, which, if he could cross it with yours, good-bye kite! Not the end of the world, because with their simple construction rice paper glued to split bamboo frames kites were cheap to replace. But there was always the bother of learning a new ones quirks, of getting it nicely balanced, so that by merely presenting it to a breeze it would go straight up. I recognized them right away, Mr Marsh and Dicky, entering the grounds lugging one of those great big cumbersome European box kites. Were they thinking of ying the thing? Apparently so. Dicky stood holding the contraption upright while his dad, drawing the line taught from about twenty yards away, shouted one-two-three let go, then off he sprinted like a wild man. The unwieldy box went up about two feet before ploughing into the ground. On the next go, all it did was skid along the cinder track. For about half an hour they persevered, then the unbelievable they actually got the thing airborne. Twenty feet up it arced wildly to the right, to the left, then spiraled into a nose-dive. Crash-bang! I turned to Murat. Hang on to my line. Thats Dicky Marsh. Im going to say hello. From close up I was even more amazed that they expected the thing to y. Its framework was of solid doweling, thick as my nger; its covering, a coarse canvas-like material. Dicky greeted me with a smile then turned to his father. Daddy, you remember Desmond. He comes to tea at our house. The gentleman stared at me with burning eyes. Glad to meet you, boy. He offered his hand. I blushed crimson. I didnt know which hand to extend.
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Excuse me laddie while I x this beastly frame. Its cracked, you know. He went on with his whipping, winding the cord in perfect rings, just as illustrated in Scouting for Boys. Beautifully mended, he tested the piece against his knee. Crack! Confound it! Cant it be xed, Daddy? Fraid not. Going to complain to Harvey & Dodds. Write them soon as I get to the ofce. Raise the very dickens. Come on, wed better be on our way. Good-bye Desmond, Dicky lisped. Im going to school in England. Bedford Prep. Im going to hate it there. No, youre not. Youre going to like it. Then the man switched his attention on me. What about you, laddie? Your parents are not by any chance sending you to Bedford, are they? I gulped in astonishment. No sir. Going to St Louis College, sir. And where is that, may I ask? In the French Concession, sir. In the French Concession? Here in Tientsin? His mustache bristled, and his nostrils pinched as if theyd taken in a disagreeable smell.

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