Memoirs of an Ice-Cream Lady (Part 31)
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.
Best Hidden Secret
Compared to Hong Kong’s other outlying islands, Lamma used to be unknown to most overseas tourists or even to local people. Tourists went to Lantau Island to visit the Big Buddha statue, and the locals flocked to Cheung Chau Island for seafood or the Bun Festival.
Few people made Lamma their first choice to visit, although they may have heard about the place. It’s where a famous movie actor, Chow Yun-fat, the star of director Ang Lee’s blockbuster, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, was born and raised.
Perhaps Lamma resembled a reclusive person who enjoys avoiding crowds and dislikes popularity. Then one spring a notorious virus walloped the city and sent everyone running away from noisy mahjong tables and karaoke bars toward tranquil Lamma.
An Outbreak
The sickness first called “atypical influenza” appeared on the Chinese mainland where government officials tried to cover it up. Later the World Health Organization named it Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and described the virus as highly contagious through the air and human contact.
By whatever name, SARS had a huge impact on Hong Kong’s economy and its citizens’ daily lives in 2003. Along the streets of commercial districts like Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay, where landlords never before experienced difficulty finding tenants, many shops and restaurants had to close and the premises stayed vacant for months. Shops that remained open went quiet like monasteries.
In Chinese restaurants, the usual scenes of customers fighting for tables at busy lunch-times vanished. “We have more tables than customers!” a restaurant manager said helplessly.
Everyone turned paranoid about being infected by the virus because its source was unknown and initially no cure had been found. Local people of all ages had to routinely wash their hands for at least a minute each time and to cover their mouths and noses with masks of the sort normally worn by surgeons. If anyone forgot to cover his or her face when coughing or sneezing, then everyone nearby would bounce away as if fearing the leprosy of ancient times.
Goddess Blesses Lamma?
“You can’t see the end of the queue at the ferry pier in Central! It took me two hours to return from the city,” complained a long-time Lamma resident annoyed to see so many tourists going to the serene island.
“Ha-Ha-Ha! Thanks to SARS! Never before did I earn so much money in a day!” cheered a lady restaurateur on Lamma as she counted stacks of banknotes.
“Nearly 300 Hong Kong people have died from the virus. If I had to rely on SARS to make money, then I’d wish it never happened,” Emily mused.
In Emily’s shop, she hurriedly scooped ice cream like a doggy crazily digging in sand at the beach. With her back constantly bent over the freezers, she almost couldn’t find time to take the customers’ money or give change. Friends who came in turns to help on the Easter holidays that year became exhausted, one after another.
A customer told Emily that he had been lined up on the hillsides when hiking. Then he showed photos to prove it.
Suddenly, Lamma Islanders hid in their homes to avoid the huge crowds as people poured in from city districts. Much of the time, the Main Street on Lamma looked busier than Nathan Road, the so-called “Golden Mile” in urban Hong Kong.
Some Lamma people credited Tin Hau, the goddess who “oversees” the welfare of fishermen, with protecting Lamma from the SARS devastation. Not a single case happened there.
But did Lamma really avoid the damage that SARS did to Hong Kong? In Emily's case, it remained too early to tell.
Coming Soon:
SARS Takes Its Terrible Toll (more Memoirs of an Ice-Cream Lady)
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