Spyder Web

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‘Thank you,’ Lin Mei said absently as the owner of the restaurant brought her tea and a bowl of noodles with fish.

She had arrived early at the tiny dockside restaurant, the anticipation of word from her brother in Beijing being almost more than she could contain. Since the handover last summer, each new day brought with it the reality of Hong Kong’s transformation from British Crown Colony into a Red Chinese city. Despite Beijing’s assurances that little would change, residents of capitalism’s strongest beachhead on the Chinese mainland still carried a nagging sense of uncertainty about the future.

Like Hong Kong, Lin was as much a part of China as she was of the West, and the delicate balance between those conflicting forces was difficult for both.An attractive young woman in her mid-twenties, she had been fortunate to study in the United States and was soon to marry a young man from San Francisco. On a personal level, Lin Mei’s future was full of promise.

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