Young Chinese ladies from Hong Kong

Holland, Amsterdam,
14 june 2010.

With Holland just having had a difficult 2-0 win over Denmark in the World Soccer Games in South Africa, I cycle back to the Anne Frank House through streets covered in the color orange, our royal color though meaningless to me, back to my Plekkie, back to my profitable Mandala-selling place opposite the endless long queue, people from all over the place waiting to see the hiding place of a jewish girl long since dead but worth waiting for under a reasonable hot sun, two hours and eight fifity in Euros just to see a fewe dusty rooms in the world famous Achterhuis....

But I am lucky today selling a shitload of games to a group of young Chinese ladies from Hong Kong, making jokes with them, me the Gwailo who spend six weeks in Kowloon, a sort of Susie Wong story with me the Western Painter, lodging in a dumphouse hotel where the ladies working the late nights streets and bars of Kowloon whould come to my room at all possible hours to crash in front of my small TV to watch Chinese movies, talk shows from mainland China, talking a mix of different Chinese dialects, young Asian ladies originating from various parts of the Kingdom of the Yellow Man, farmer girls who shared their young lives with me but who had very little education, city girls who confessed incest rape by father, uncles and older brothers with a smile so typical for Southeast Asia...I inmortalised them in my many sketchbooks, brought them Chinese beer and ate friend chicken legs with them which we bought ouside in dimly lit streets and alleys...

I remember how I would take the ferry every friday afternoon for gambling weekends in Macau, I even remember the salty air blowing over the ferry's deck while it would manouer itself in between the waiting cargo ships and Chinese jonks, the cacaphony of sounds so arch-typical of any given city in Southeast Asia...

I am brought back from my mental images of the apst by the questioning voice of these Asian girls if maybe, maybe, maybe I would consider bringing the price back to three Euro a game since they are on a thight budget and wanna buy many...

Haaaa, the memories alone are worth the two Euros I lose on each game they buy, the memories of six weeks on Brittish/Chinese territory but long since gone...the dumphouse hotel I stayed has been replaced by other rat-invested whorehouses/hotels the world over but where I somehow felt at place, surrounded by undereducated impoverished ladies of the night selling their young and nubile bodies to any passing male, drunk or not, willing to show them a well-fed wallet in his pockets and a hardon in his pants...