Winfred Wong: Son of the Tank Man

He resumed, “that I will never act to undermine the sovereignty of this state, and I will never try, aid, assist, abet, or encourage someone from this state to do so,” then he stared at me, prompting me to speak.

“That I will never act to undermine the sovereignty of this state, and I will never try, aid, assist, abet, or encourage someone from this state to do so,” I recited.

“Now sign.” He airily tossed the document holder onto the desk, and this stirred up my suspicion as I never knew a document had to be signed before entering and had never expected one.

Scrupulously, I scanned through the A4-sized document with a government watermark on it, which was written in a language I couldn’t comprehend, probably their mother tongue. It was a three-page document with no blank space on every page, even the headers and footers were used, and I flipped through it quickly, barely reading.

“What is this? I can’t read this. Do you have an English version?” I asked, flipping through it back and forth.

But there wasn’t a reply. He remained silent. And as the silence went on for so long that I had to direct a gaze of wonderment on him, he slowly placed the pen he had been holding in his hand the whole time on the desk, then interlocked all his fingers and gawked at me, with a snigger on his solemn-looking face. And we spent the next two minutes looking at each other purposefully in disbelief. He never talked. But that suffocating two minutes were long enough for me to understand there wasn’t an English version and there was no chance I would be allowed into the country if I refused to sign.

How was I supposed to put my name on a document that I couldn’t even read? I didn’t know, but I eventually signed it after a short vacillation in a pensive mood and put it back onto the desk. I knew it was foolish not to refuse it, but I couldn’t bear the risk of having no access to the country and being sent back by the authorities.

He seemed glad when the document holder reached the desk. “You’re good to go,” he said.

“Thank you.”

And after being further pestered by another stony-faced officer asking me the purpose of my visit right behind the clearance point, I strolled through a wide corridor carpeted in a gloomy shade of gray to the arrival hall, which looked much more shabby than I’d imagined, with already worn off paint and dull-brownish iron stains everywhere. It did give me a bad first impression on this place, but at that time I hadn’t really cared much about what kind of a condition the airport was in, probably because my mind was still filled with that false enthusiasm that made everything look a lot better in my eyes than it actually was. Anyway, the first thing I had done then was to find a map or someone to tell me where the nearest hotel was, so I headed to the information center located in the middle of the hall, which, I remember, was the first thing I saw, and maybe the only thing as well.

“Hey mister, can you please tell me where the nearest hotel is?” I asked the staff, wearing a black suit with an eye-catching but old-fashioned red tie that looked incongruous with the blue shirt he wore underneath, sitting leisurely on a short, hard bench situated behind a foldable plastic desk.

Reluctantly, the man withered me with a swift glance, jumped to his feet, turned to me and said in a firm tone, using signs and gestures to make himself understood, the ends of his tie dangling, “No, no, no.”

I bet he wasn’t answering my question, so I asked again in a different way, “Ho – tel.”

“No, no hottow,” he repeated in an even firmer tone, and my hope ebbed away. “No.”

Gazing at his waving arms, the opportunity of overcoming this insurmountable language barrier looked bleak, thus, I left slightly agitatedly and headed to a small booth covered with a large white cloth that had come into view just now. It looked like a SIM retail dealer selling SIM cards, judging by a banner holding up by a petite lady behind the booth saying “Telecoms”, though I was pretty sure the banner wasn’t up in the air when I first looked around and that’s why I said the information center was the only thing there.

“Good afternoon, madam, do you speak English?” I questioned.

“Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you with anything?” she replied deferentially with her naturally pouted lips parting into an enchanting smile, her black and smooth long hairs finding a way to curl behind her ears, her voice not as sexy as Oli’s but was sweet in her own way, but the most attractive thing on her had to be the watch, which looked like a red version of ‘fe-fee’, on her right wrist, and I bet she always smiled at customers.

“Perfect. I need a top-up card for my mobile phone.”

“For prepaid top-up cards, we only sell a $100 card that is valid for a year.” She put down the banner on the ground, hauled open a drawer under the booth, rummaged about every corner of the drawer before successfully fishing out a credit-card-size package and gave it to me.

“Great, thank you, just exactly what I need.” I gladly received the package, pulled out my wallet from my trousers pocket, removed a hundred dollar banknote and handed it to her when there was a short announcement in the background, probably broadcast of weather information, made in their language.

“Thanks,” she smiled, bent down to grab the poles of the banner and held it up again.

“By the way, do you know where I can buy a radio? I forgot to bring mine.”

“A radio!? The last time I saw a radio was about ten years ago.”

“Never mind.”

Then, promptly and a bit clumsily, I removed the original SIM card from my phone out, nearly dropped it onto the ground but managed to catch it midair, unwrapped the package and inserted the new one, and as it detected a SIM service, I got a prompt on my phone and tapped yes for confirmation. It was clear that the connection had been established when a 6GS symbol revealed itself on the top right corner of the screen.

So I tapped the screen to launch an app that was supposed to show me the locations of all the nearest hotels, but it failed to initialize properly as a message saying “Database connection failed” popped up. I tried again twice, but to no avail, the same message just kept popping up, and therefore, I hazarded a guess that the culprit was the stability of the connection, which was not as reliable as it seemed to be, especially in an indoor environment.

In order to test out my theory, I headed for the exit, walked out through an automatic door expecting nothing more than some fresh air, but then choked abruptly and hectically shielded my mouth and eyes with my hands at once when I found out the entire area around was actually engulfed in mist-like smoke and felt a never-before-experienced irritative, stinging sensation in my eyes, which was beyond doubt – judging by the tiny particles that were continuously grazing my eyes – a manifestation of the catastrophic consequence of decades of unbridled air contamination, though the insane amount of smoke had for a second made me wonder if it was the airport on fire or not.

And so, I had my eyes shut for about a whole minute, praying the air quality in other parts of the country would be finer, until it gradually got used to the poor environment. Then at the moment when I thought it was okay to open my eyes, a petrifying shriek from somewhere to my left caught my full attention.

Instinctively, I looked to that direction and saw a bolting man, with a headband adorned with a feather of a white pigeon fastened to his forehead, being chased by two fierce-looking police officers with batons in their hands. And unfortunately, I found myself standing in their way.

“走開呀!” (Out of my way!) the man yelled despairingly, then motioned me to get out of his way frantically and unwisely slowed down at the moment he set eyes on me with a delicate gaze that zapped into me then through me, as if he knew me, I was certain it was the first time I saw him though.