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We were poorer then, during the four decades before and after the second war, even though wealth lined some of the lanes, avenues, streets, and roads of TST. We came to TST because of that wealth and the men who haunted the district, trolling for love, gluttonous with desire. But we were happier then because any money is better than being impoverished. After all, we were young and pretty enough, smart and hungry enough, sad and desperate enough to go away and stay away in TST, far from the shanties or villages or homes of our birth. Those homes where love was absent and our desire for more translated into lust for a future that could be our own. We came in droves during war and peacetime, hunting out a perch to land on for what passed as a lifetime.
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Jason Y. Ng (Hong Kong Noir)