By Richard W. Wise
©2005
"Too many people, too much noise", he thought as he shuffled along the walkway through the pier building. Shops lined the quay and Chu was drawn along like a water borne pebble in the brisk current of people in a hurry.
Chu had not been in Hong Kong in fifteen years. There had been no need and he did not like to travel. "But, now"! Chu patted the football sized bulge in the canvas satchel that sat beside him on the hard wooden bench. Looping one arm though the shoulder strap, Chu composed himself, folded his hands in his lap and gazed and the scene before him.
Shuddering from the engine's vibration like some great awakening beast, the ferry nosed out into the harbor. Hong Kong is the busiest port in Asia. As Chu watched in fascination, all manner of watercraft criss-crossed the harbor and the
oily gray water boiled like a filthy stew in a giant cauldron. Crossing the ferry's bow, broad beamed tugboats, whistles screaming, shouldered their way through the greasy chop. To Chu's right, a freighter worked its deck crane, a giant insect, its spidery arms plucking truck-size morsels from an attending barge and stacking them neatly on its deck like boxes on a supermarket shelf. To his left the sinister profile of a British Corvette skulked at anchor. In the midst of all this activity a lone fisherman stood balanced on the stern of his battered sampan. His slender oar dipped rhythmically in the water as he slowly sculled his frail craft along the edge of the harbor.
For Chu the fisherman's presence injected a tiny note of harmony, which contrasted, sharply with the ragged tempo of modern commerce. "This", he thought, "is no place for a civilized man".
T. V. Fong stifled a yawn, his head ached from too much whiskey and he had slept badly. The neat rows of figures in the account book broke ranks and snake-danced across the page. Raising his head he squinted out onto Canton Street. It was quite early; the market would not begin for an hour.
Fong had worked here throughout his youth. It was his duty to work in the family jade shop from the time he was eight years old. He had begun by running errands for the old masters. At first he had loved watching the master carvers pump the ancient foot-treadle lathes as they worked the intricate designs into the
stone. Despite his youth, they had soon grown suspicious of him, thinking that Fong, the owner's son, was trying to ferret out their secrets. His curiosity was met first with silence then abuse.There are two types of jade, Jadeite and Nephrite. For over five thousand years, Nephrite has been mined and carved in China and for millennia was the only jade known. At it’s finest this type of jade is a diaphanous white sometimes with flecks of green. In the 13th century a new type of jade that westerners call Jadeite began to trickle into China. It was not until the 18th century when the Chinese emperor Quinlong extended his rule into northern Burma that the source of Jadeite was discovered. The Chinese called this new emerald green type of jade te t'sui, "kingfisher's feather". Jadeite is so valuable that it is rarely carved. It is rather cut into cabochons, bangles and beads. A pure green translucent cabochon of the finest old mine jadeite can be worth over a million dollars.
Unconsciously, Fong began massaging his right shoulder as he remembered the pain of working hour after hour with mortar and pestle grinding the scrap jade into powder to be mixed by the other apprentices into a paste to provide grit for the slim bamboo drills used to carve the jade. Fong was not a forgiving man; he had not forgotten this treatment in thirty-five years. "Back in the workshop, Chin, the toothless old fool, still works in the old way but, now he works for me, yes, and much has changed. Now the steady clak-clak of the foot treadle has been drowned out by the whine of the diamond saw and the buzz of electricity". Fong
himself had introduced these innovations. Quality suffered but production had increased. "Now", the thought made him smile with satisfaction, "there are few secrets and most are mine."Fong had changed too. Now in his forties, still slim with an oval face, his hair receded straight back along the curve of his skull leaving the jet-black sides intact. Combined with his thick arched eyebrows of the same color, he looked more like a Samurai warrior than a Chinese jade merchant. Now head of the family he was, nonetheless, the most successful jade merchant in the crown colony.
It was just past 11:00am. Chu Shen Hi shuffled painfully along Kowloon's Canton Street. He had allowed himself the luxury of a cab ride from the ferry dock buy had ordered the cab to stop at the end of the street. Now he wished that he had taken the cab the whole way. "Pride", he thought, shaking his head.
Gritting his teeth, Chu hobbled to a spot alongside the façade of a small bakery on the far of the cross-shaped intersection the formed the center of the jade market. Opposite, a growing number of traders milled about waiting for the market to gather momentum. Chu squatted, unwrapped his bundle, spread out the cloth, placed the boulder in the center of it, rocked back on his haunches and waited.
END THIRD INSTALLMENT
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