遇見威廉士(Original Title: A Man for All Seasons by Frances Liu)

The trip to Hong Kong was not well planned and was only arranged one week before we departed. Because by then I was sure that Susan Lin, a close friend of mine, and her daughters Lu Lu and Ron Ron, would join me and my two girls, Yuli and Eunice.
This was quite a new experience for both Susan and I, as we never bring our children alone to any trip, all the journeys we had were all well scheduled and planned by the better-halves, and we just packed and followed. We do not read maps very well, so as Susan and I were taking the children to the subway or ferries, we sometimes get lost and had to ask for help. Although we received complaints from the kids, “Following you two are scaring!” Susan and I both had fun playing our roles as tour leaders.
On the next day, we decided to take a break and joined half day city tour. During the tour, we took the tramway to Victoria Park to see the harbor view of for both Kawloon and Hong Kong, and to Aberdeen to see the floating boat houses, (H. K. government is placing those boat people in government apartments with very reasonable rent, so this tourist attraction scene will disappear in few years) the tour also took us to shop at Stanley Market, and to the Bayview area where all the millionaires and billionaires live. There were couple of interesting things the tour guide tried to impress us. She showed us where Mr. Tse lives, Tse owns several jewelry factories, we tour one of them later. Outside Tse’s mansion, parked several Royce Rolls and Mercedes, all with license plates for at least two to three numbers in eight, 888, number “8”, in Cantonese pronounces the same as “FA”, which means “prosperity”, although he is already rich, more and more prosperous business is still his goal. Another amusing subject was a four story beautiful mansion, and on each floor, the head of the household placed one of his wives to live there. According to the tour guide, this tycoon divided his time equally to each wife by order of spring; summer, fall and winter, and he called himself “A man for all seasons”.
Our trip concluded with a very pleasant accidental encounter. As we were prepared to walk out of the hotel for our last exploration of the shopping mall nearby, I saw a gentleman was about to leave and the doorman was closing the car door for him. I called his name out loud, “Mr. Williams”, he turned his face toward me, “What the hell are you doing here, Frances?” not exactly the proper language for a gentleman, but obviously he was surprised as I was. Mr. Richard Williams was the boss I worked for thirteen years ago, after his post in Taiwan he was transferred to Greece for 3 years, by then we lost contact each other. I have no idea at all that he is now station in Hong Kong.

This was my three days trip to Hong Kong in late August, 1991.