THE WALLED CITY
There has always been a particular smell that pervaded Hong Kong’s Walled City at night. Distinctive. A signature “fragrance” thought by those who lived there or those who had passed through, to be unlike any other in the world. A mixture of diesel fumes merged with the sharp pungent odors of vinegar and garlic from open air shops and the sweet overpowering scent of peanut cooking oil from the10,000 charcoal stovesthat warmed the night air. All of the smells were carried in and out of small, hot rooms crammed next to each other, filled with men, women and small children who added the fragrances of their own bodies to the mix. The smell of the Walled City went everywhere.
Over time, the persistent alchemy of the scent and the City itself became fused together. Years later, decades later, the memory of it might return in an instant. An unforgettable experience. Countless places around the world resisted change. But Hong Kong’s Walled City remained inimitable among them by simply refusing to acknowledge that the possibility of change even existed.
Laid out in a labyrinthine cluster of intersecting alleyways, dead-end streets so narrow that buildings touched together at the rooftop, the Walled City extended itself like the spines of a living creature drawn out of the waters of Victoria Bay, pushing its way up onto the land until the entire jumbled mass of habitation spread out then disappeared into the far reaches of the New Territories.
There had never been an exact understanding concerning how and when the Walled City had begun. It seemed to have always been there. Always growing as areas along Victoria Bay were filled in by the constant flow of refuse produced by the inhabitants of Kowloon and Hong Kong. Small shacks, rickety affairs had emerged out of the debris. In a short time, most of these structures collapsed in on themselves. And then new ones grew from their wreckage. There had never been a plan for the Walled City. It was just the way it was.
With practiced, patient eyes, the older man watched his young assistant, Wan-chu, as he moved quickly and efficiently along a row of narrow tables lined with Chinese cooking woks, funnels, filter paper, and past large enamel pots and glass containers. The young man, he observed, had paid attention and learned well. A good student. He had gone through this same painstaking routine hundreds of times, perhaps thousands of times before – measuring, adding, boiling, testing, filtering, and purifying. Done over and over again. All in the pursuit of perfection, converting what had started as the dripping sap from a bright red poppy flower, into pure white heroin.
As basic chemistry, the procedure was relatively simple – until the very last step, the most profitable part of the process, as well as the most dangerous. This final step required considerable experience, patience, and steady hands. All well and good, the old man thought to himself, a wry smile on his lips. He still possessed the experience, the patience and at least one steady hand.
Decades ago, when still a young man, he’d been called Cho Yun-li. But, now, after decades spent training dozens of assistants to run these clandestine labs, he’d become a legend in Hong Kong’s heroin empire. And so, he had been given a new name. He was simply called “Huàxué jia” –“The Chemist.”
Before, as Cho Yun-li, he’d been just another of the poor, small frightened boys in a village teeming with other small poor boys, all of them competing for food scraps thrown out along the banks of a shallow, polluted stream that ran dirty brown in winter and then dried up and stank in summer. The one thing of beauty that he remembered from those years were the swarms of butterflies that arrived for only a few days each spring. They sat, hundreds of them, on the muddy riverbank, sucking at the moisture. Their translucent wings, lit by the morning sun, appeared glowing and golden as they moved gently back and forth. When the butterflies departed, all that was left was the dirty brown mud.
The Chemist cast a wistful glance at the empty sleeve of his starched white lab coat, the fabric carefully folded and pinned at the shoulder. It was a rueful and constant reminder of the crude back-alley laboratory in Shanghai where he’d begun his new life as a lowly xuetu – an apprentice. He remembered that, for just a mere instant, his mind had wandered from the task. He never remembered precisely why. The idle thought of a pretty girl? The butterflies? Whatever it had been had allowed the small glass flask filled with snowflake white crystals of pure heroin bathed in its volatile ether bath to slip out of his fingers. He’d made a desperate grab to catch it, but he had been too slow.
Glass shards from the exploding mixture had destroyed his hand, slashed and burnt the side of his face. The experience and burst of excruciating pain had transformed him. Laxity, inattention for even an instant to any detail, no matter how trivial, he considered to be shameful.
Consequently, in the years since, The Chemist had applied a harsh discipline on every new assistant he’d trained. He made sure they possessed an unwavering attentiveness to the smallest, most boring details involved in the time-consuming procedure. All of it, to ensure that his own ‘instant’ would never again be repeated.
* * *
The place that The Chemist presently occupied within the Walled City was situated on the second floor of a non-descript wooden warehouse building, above an open-front restaurant that catered to dock workers,rickshaw drivers and any of the other late-night denizens that moved through the back streets and alleyways. By lab standards, it was modest in size but well-appointed, containing everything needed for his work. In an adjoining side room, the finished product was pressed into small bricks imprinted with the numbers 999. It was a source of pride for The Chemist as well as a source of inestimable wealth and thus power for his employer.
The Chemist moved past his lab-coated assistants, pleased to see that their full and undivided attention was fixed on the exacting process of purifying the raw morphine base. It was a time-consuming and methodical procedure. In one large enamel pot, morphine bricks had been crushed into a dusty brown powder, and then mixed with equal parts of water and acetic acid, producing a slushy mixture as well as harsh, pungent telltale vinegar fumes, nam-som as the Thai’s called it, that filled the small lab and spilled out to surrounding buildings on either side. But here in the Walled City, the biting chemical odor was just one more smell among many, all of them combining and then lost in night air.
Following the acetic acid wash, a dirty tan colored heroin base, crude and impure would form. Lesser, more impatient and greedy men would simply dry this brown base, often adding adulterating chemicals to produce a #3 grade “smoking” heroin. It was not something that The Chemist had ever considered doing. It wasn’t his way.
And it wasn’t the way of the Ching Pang, either.
It had been the Ching Pang, called the “Green Gang” by the British, that found him after he’d been left orphaned and alone on the streets of Shanghai. And it had been the Ching Pang that had recognized an intelligence in the young boy and began his education. It had also been the Ching Pang that had rushed him to the doctors who helped save his eyesight after the accident, and then educated him further to become a master in the chemical arts. He owed the Ching Pang a great debt. He owed it his very life.
The Chemist watched with a sense of pride as his young assistant confidently continued to purify and then dry the heroin base that had previously been washed in chloroform and filtered through charcoal. The Chemist nodded in satisfaction as he peered closely at the white distillate that began forming, proof that the morphine base had been good quality and that his instructions had been followed precisely.
Purity and scrupulous attention to detail, these were what made The Chemist’s Hong Kong laboratories the best in the world, easily surpassing those of Marseilles that, in his opinion, turned out an inferior product, lumpy and impure, fit, he believed, only for the mongrel races of Europe.
“You have done well, Wan-chu. Followed my teachings. After tonight, you will be in charge here,” The Chemist told his young assistant.
Wan-chu blushed slightly, “I am honored, Xiao baba – Little Father,” he replied, bowing.
Now, only the last step remained, the most critical and the most dangerous. The heroin base needed to be dissolved in a mixture of alcohol and ether. In preparation, The Chemist knew that his assistant had turned off all of the lab’s gas burners, ensuring that there’d be no chance for an overlooked open flame or random spark to set off the volatile ether gas. But just to be sure, he checked again for himself.
That was his way. It was the reason that he’d remained alive and so many other careless, impatient men had not.
While his assistant steadied the large flask holding the liquid, The Chemist carefully began adding hydrochloric acid to the mixture.
Finished, he set the acid bottle down and whispered hoarsely, “Now, you must swirl the flask slowly. And watch carefully,” he told the young man.
For a long few seconds nothing happened. The liquid remained clear and unchanging. But then, almost imperceptibly at first, small “snowflakes” began forming. Pure white heroin crystals that floated down to cover the bottom of the container, piling up deeper and deeper, whiter and whiter. The Chemist let out the deep breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“It is done. We are finished,” he said quietly.
Sometime later, in the quiet of early morning, he’d be able to rest for a few hours. After that he’d prepare to move to another location. Set up another small laboratory. And begin instructing another eager young assistant, who would then create more of the sought-after snowflake white pure heroin that made the Ching Pang a formidable player in Hong Kong’s Triad syndicates.
Already lost in thought, the whispered rasp of ripping paper and tinkle of breaking glass at first made no sense to his preoccupied mind. Turning his head, The Chemist stared, transfixed as crocks and glassware sitting on the lab shelves and tables around him now seemed to be shattering of their own accord. Glistening Pyrex glass fragments caught the light as they flew through the air. So very strange, he thought. A second later the harsh concussive sounds of rapid gunfire caught up to his ears.
The Chemist continued to stare in stunned amazement as bright splotches of blood smeared the front of his assistant’s white lab coat.
“What? What has happened, xiao baba?” the young man asked plaintively, his face contorted in a look of incredulous surprise that transformed itself into one of infinite sadness as his eyes, then his brain realized that his life was over. Without willing it, his fingers released their grasp on the large flask containing the swirling white snowflakes, allowing it to slip from his grasp.
The last thing The Chemist saw appeared before him as a swarm of lovely golden butterflies, their wings translucent, but much brighter than those he remembered from the muddy riverbanks near his boyhood home. Strange he thought as the “creatures” floated up, growing before his eyes until they filled all of his vision, filled his entire world with their bright glowing light.
Ah, so very, very beautiful, he whispered to himself.
For the length of perhaps a single heartbeat the air remained still – then the entire wooden building, the laboratory and everything in it exploded outward in all directions with a force that obliterated the buildings on either side.
Where the laboratory had been seconds before, nothing remained. Nothing at all.
In the cold swirling air above it all, a cloud mixed with glass particles and blood, splintered wood fragments, and glowing white crystalline powder floated over the emptiness. Then, ever so slowly the cloud expanded, dissipating in the soft breeze that came up from the harbor, until once again, it became part of the night air within The Walled City.
* * *