Hong Kong. I was really tired after finishing a trip that started in Beijing two weeks ago, but I had to spend most of the day on the computer to finish the administration. In the evening I was desperate to get some fresh air and have some fun, so I went to Temple Street to find a face reader. The idea was inspired by a film I had recently seen called Chinese Box with Jeremy Irons and Gong Li, set during the 1997 handover of Hong Kong. I went straight up to the lady who was sitting exactly where the old man in my hotel told me would she would sit and asked her to read my face. She was happy to have a customer, but she didn’t want to draw. She said people just want to talk to her these days, they don’t want her to draw, so she’s out of practice. But I wanted to understand how she worked. She started with a lot of general compliments. “You are a very nice person. You always have a plan and you never let anyone stop you or distract you. And then she began to analyse my face, assigning certain ages and qualities to different parts. “Your ears are big and thick, which means that your parents loved you very much when you were a child. Your forehead is full, so you were very good at school. Your eyebrows are long, which means a good career. Your eyes are beautiful: you will do good business. Your nose is long and straight, between 40 and 50 you will make a lot of money. Upper lips mean the period between 50 and 60, you will do well, chin over 60. Over 60 you have to be careful with water. Especially if you have a bath. And your two moles are a bad sign, they make you spend a lot of money. You should get rid of them. The lines under your eyes show that your children will be great, they will always listen to you”. I made a face of disbelief, so she asked: “How old are you?” When I said 39, she was shocked. “I thought you were 34. But it doesn’t matter. Signs are signs.” “How many children do you think I will have?” I asked, just to take part. She became even more serious, checking my face and then my palm for a while. “Two boys and a girl.” “Wow!” “And your eyes are shining, which means you like to travel.” I couldn’t really deny it, so I just thanked her and left. After I had sat down to write my diary in an open-air restaurant, a huge crab passed under the table. The cook caught it just as it was heading for the road to freedom. I thought for a while about its chances of survival on the streets of Kowloon. Would it be able to leave the urban jungle and ever make it home? I thought about the crab, the prophecy, the parables, being trapped in reality, which is just a loop in the chain.
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