A little background about myself: I’m Chinese-Canadian, born and bred. Where I come from, I’m (for the most part) a minority. And so, coming to a place where I was part of the majority was a shock, as was how few my encounters with other ethnicities were.
This is one such encounter.
One afternoon, I was walking along the streets of Central. When it began to pour with rain, I ducked into the footbridges on my way to Central MTR Station towards my next appointment. As I turned the last corner towards the escalator, I saw a Filipina woman at the bottom of the stairs, mumbling quietly into her phone and sobbing.
It felt wrong for me to keep walking, and so I waited until she got off the phone. By this time, she was staring at me, puzzled, and she didn’t seem to understand my English at first.
“I noticed you were crying,” I said, and noticing that the rain was coming down more heavily, invited her for a coffee at a nearby coffee shop. It took a couple of tries before she reluctantly followed me – and more oddly, looked warily at the police officers standing in front of the building. On our way up, she glanced at me several times, but never when I caught her eye.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her eyes downcast.
