When Will You Return? The New China Inn

One inn, twenty-six people, and one of them is selling them all to the Japanese. On December 8, 1941, the Pacific War broke out. Hong Kong was being bombed from the sky, while Macau, just across a narrow channel, carried on with its casinos and teahouses as usual. In the early hours of that same day, twenty strangers were taken to an inn tucked away in a side lane off Fulong New Street. A doctor, a nurse, a poet, a painter, a teacher, a banker. Among them were an underground Party member, a spy, and someone whose weakness was being held over them. From the day the door closed, Mr. Zheng had half a piece of jade in his hand and a date that could not be written down. The thirteen informants would recognize only that date, but the person who was supposed to set it never came. Half a month later, the street outside the inn was packed with people. Years later, when someone asked what had become of those people, all they could remember was one line: Doctor wasn’t a name. It was a position.