Memoirs of an Ice-Cream Lady (Part 16)
By Emily Ho
Editor’s Note: The author runs an ice-cream parlor on Hong Kong’s Lamma Island. When time allows, she draws caricatures and writes. The following are semi-autobiographical anecdotes blending fact and fiction.
Illegal Island
Emily isn’t sure if Lamma Island is another “home of the free, land of the brave”, but it’s certainly an island of irregularities.
Most Hong Kong people consider Lamma too remote as a place to live. Maybe the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (so named since the British handover to China in 1997) agrees. Its policies hardly reach the place.
Some people operate unlicensed food stalls for decades. Patrons smoke in restaurants where smoking is banned. Illegal immigrants work at construction sites. Landlords dump industrial waste on government land. Southeast Asian domestic helpers work in bars. Chinese housewives gamble at illegal mah-jong parlors. Western residents do drugs with their friends at beach parties. No one worries until troubles erupt.
Emily wonders: If all the irregularities were cleaned up, would half the residents then be unwilling to live on Lamma?
Most civilized places have regularities on nearly everything -- from haircuts to pedicures. There, people have more protection, but lose some freedoms to do what they want, even / especially harmful things.
Maybe Lamma is too civilized for regularities.
Change Happens
In Hong Kong, change unfolds daily, almost hourly. For the place to “remain unchanged for 50 years”, as promised by former Chinese leader Deng Xiao-peng, isn’t possible. The same applies to coastal cities on the Chinese mainland.
Even local people get lost in Hong Kong as old buildings (in use for only 20 years or so) are demolished and replaced by taller ones. Within two more decades, a new generation of even taller buildings will rise. No wonder that Hong Kong has so many of the world’s tallest skyscrapers and that chain stores replace small shops as only the tycoons and listed companies can afford the skyrocketing rents.
On Lamma Island, change moves much more slowly. For the foreseeable future, private enterprises and the government plan no big construction projects.
But Emily has witnessed some changes since starting the ice-cream shop. For one thing, the children among her first customers have grown into teenagers. Earlier, they’d stop at her shop when heading home or going to the playground. Sadly, few of these teenagers still bother to greet Emily.
Once they looked so cute and innocent. Now that they’re “grown-ups”, some of the boys try to copy their idol, the rapper Enemiem, with his foul language. Some of the girls imitate sexy icon Christina Aguilera by putting more than half-a-pack of make-up onto their slightly-larger-than-ostrich-egg faces. Heavy metallic earrings dangle on their ears, and they dress in clothes as miniscule as someone else’s swimwear.
Emily also has witnessed young couples getting married and starting families (that sounds sweet), but sometimes they split up too (which sounds a little bitter). But at times when Emily holds a tiny, but soft-like-marshmallows, baby as the parents enjoy a leisurely ice-cream cone in her shop, she realizes that time flies and changes are good after all.
So when Emily hurries to the ferry pier on her way to the city, she sometimes wishes that she could hail a taxi on Lamma. That’d be a huge change!
Coming soon:
Customers Ask the Oddest Things
(more Memoirs of an Ice-Cream Lady)
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