Hell to Heaven. Kylie Chan

wall had a bank of lifts to go to a different section of floors. All of the fittings were triangular to fit with the theme, including triangular gardens on the ground around the tower. I walked through Central Plaza, across another small walkway and into the office tower connected to the Convention Centre. I passed a number of international convention attendees, their large identity cards strung around their necks. They were loudly discussing some sort of plastics manufacturing in American and French accents.

      I turned right out of the Convention Centre complex and walked across another road to Great Eagle Centre, which sat right on the edge of the water. It and its twin tower, Harbour Centre, had massive advertising signs spanning their first to third floors — they were visible from all over the harbour and featured in any night-time Hong Kong postcard scene. I could see the Star Ferry pulling into the Wan Chai ferry terminal below me, and a few double-decker buses waited in the bus station. I took another overpass to the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre, then an escalator down to the ground. I’d walked more than a kilometre without touching the ground.

      The Hong Kong Exhibition Centre had a large open area on its ground floor and a rectangular fountain with dragon-head spouts. Behind the fountain stood a replica of Beijing’s Nine Dragon Wall, the gate to the Celestial Palace.

      I didn’t immediately approach the wall; instead, I went to the roadside, where two large bronze statues of qilin stood facing the traffic. Known as kirin in Japan, they were Celestial creatures with the body of a horse, the head of a lion, the horns of a deer and the feet of a goat; most interestingly to me, they were also covered in scales like a reptile. Westerners often referred to them as Chinese unicorns, and although their appearance was not very unicorn-like, their nature was similar. They were divine creatures of pure light, fleeting and rare, not even composed of yang or yin but somehow transcendent of universal essence. It was regarded as a blessing to see a qilin. I never had, and knew that only very few of my Celestial acquaintances had ever seen one.

      I turned away from the qilin and walked up to the Nine Dragon Wall. As I approached, the wall grew from two to four metres high and spread to twice as wide. The marble balustrade guarding the front of the wall descended into the ground and the sounds of human life around me ceased. The dragons came to life and writhed to the centre of the wall to greet me.

      I reached into the large Sogo shopping bag that I’d brought with me and pulled out a range of local snacks. I waved one of the boxes. ‘Strawberry pocky is who?’

      ‘Me!’ said a gold dragon; it whipped its head out of the wall and took the box of pocky in its mouth. The lid opened and all of the iced biscuit sticks flew into its mouth at the same time. The box disappeared.

      ‘Damn, you’re greedy,’ I said.

      ‘Any more in there?’ the dragon said, eyeing the Sogo bag.

      I raised a box of tiny hollow koala-shaped biscuits filled with icing. ‘Koalas?’

      ‘Chocolate?’ one of the purple dragons said.

      ‘Mine!’ another dragon said, and snatched the box out of my hand, then slithered to the end of the wall to enjoy the biscuits in peace.

      I raised another couple of boxes. ‘I have strawberry and vanilla koalas here …’ They floated out of my hand to two more dragons. I checked inside the bag. ‘Chiu Chow iced mini biscuits …’

      ‘No way,’ a blue dragon said, staring wide-eyed at me. ‘Really?’

      ‘Give them to him, he’s from Swatow,’ said a purple dragon through a mouthful of koala.

      I passed the Chiu Chow biscuits to the blue dragon and checked the bag again. ‘I feel like Santa at Christmas. I have … barbecue beef, spicy pork, Portuguese egg tarts …’