Memoirs of an Ice-Cream Lady (Part 38)
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.
Have Money, Give Money
Commentators have called the first 10 years of the new millennium a decade of natural and man-made disasters. Sadly, their statements still apply. A devastating earthquake struck Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, just 12 days into 2010.
In 2004, a massive tsunami took more than 230,000 lives in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, parts of India and elsewhere, also making hundreds of thousands of people homeless. In 2008, an earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province claimed nearly 80,000 lives. Some villages were completely buried. Many parents lost their only children when huge pieces of school ceilings collapsed like tofu onto the tiny students.
Hong Kong people regard their city as very “blessed” with no natural disasters for decades and no political turmoil (well, so far). All that truly troubles the locals is a sometimes plummeting stock market and fluctuating real-estate prices.
But when natural disasters happen elsewhere, Hong Kong people get very enthusiastic about the fundraising campaigns set up by charity organizations. Donations by Hong Kong’s seven million people usually rival those from some wealthy countries.
“Those who have money, give money. Those who have strength, give strength.” Such words echo at charity shows as the participants urge the audiences to donate.
Emily has felt proud of such a good “tradition” and being part of it. Although, as an ice-cream lady, she hasn’t had much money to donate when natural disasters struck, she did decide to help the unfortunate through charity organizations like UNICEF, with which she shares beliefs.
But she never expected to come across some of the nastiest people on Lamma who might try to stop her from helping the poor. Emily plans to tell how it happened not just once, but at least twice.
The Tragic Boxing Day
“A magnitude 9.1 earthquake has struck Indonesia’s Aceh Province and triggered a massive tsunami from Indonesia all the way to some coastal parts of eastern India…,” a television news-reader solemnly said. “Although the number of victims remains unknown, experts say it could reach hundreds of thousands.”
Emily listened to this broadcast during a busy afternoon on Boxing Day, 2004. At the time, she held a cup of hot chocolate on a tray ready to serve a customer. When she heard the startling news, her hands slipped, and the chocolate suddenly spilled onto the customer’s lap.
“Oh, my goodness!” exclaimed Emily and the customer together in reaction to the spilled chocolate and to dreadful images on the ice-cream shop’s TV screen.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Emily apologized at once. “Are you okay, sir? Let me get you a towel.” She ran into the kitchen and fetched a hand-towel off a hook.
“I’m fine,” the customer said. “Don’t worry. Luckily I’m wearing thick jeans today.”
Moments later, he added, “I can’t imagine such a tragedy. I mean the tsunami, not the pouring of hot chocolate.” He grinned, still brushing at his stained clothing.
After making sure the customer really was alright and seeing him off, Emily felt relieved. Then she started to think of the catastrophe, probably the biggest natural disaster that she’d heard of happening in her lifetime.
“Horrendous! I hardly can believe it.” Like everyone else, she felt shocked and saddened at the news.
“How can I help the victims? I don’t have much money to donate,” she thought, gazing at a UNICEF* donation box that she’d placed in the shop two months earlier and then at the slow-selling and soon-to-expire ice-cream pints inside the freezers.
“I know what to do,” Emily confidently said.
Note: Since 2004, Emily has sold Christmas cards and gifts for UNICEF, a United Nations charity organization set up to help children worldwide.
Have Strength, Give Strength
“Ice Cream Sale – all takings go to victims of the tsunami,” proclaimed an A4-sized poster that Emily placed on the unofficial community notice-board, a wall near the ferry pier. There, people advertised about everything from yard sales and missing cats to wallets lost in bars.
Soon customers came to buy Emily’s ice cream at a discount and placed the money into a donation box. Within a few days, all the ice cream sold.
“If I hadn’t sold the ice cream before its expiry date, I’d have had to dump it,” Emily thought, feeling content. “Now at least I can give the money to the needy.”
At a nearby shop, the lady proprietor and her staff knitted scarves and hats for the tsunami survivors. Housewives living across the street baked cakes. Some bar-owners sold drinks to raise funds for the same cause. (Emily hopes the customers remembered to pay their tabs after the hangovers.)
Following the tsunami disaster, love flowed across tiny Lamma Island and the rest of Hong Kong. It felt like a seasonal monsoon bringing life to Mother Earth.
“Those who have strength, give strength.” That’s what a respected Cantonese-opera star, speaking in her high-pitched voice, told an audience at a charity show. Then, in her distinctive make-up and shiny costume, she performed a well-known episode from The Dream of the Peony Pavilion.
With thoughts of the tsunami victims, people gathered to help. Was it like a nightmare turning into a dream of hope?
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