“My dear son,
It is six o’clock in the morning on the island of Hong Kong. You are asleep, cradled in my left arm, and I am learning the art of one-handed typing. … When you are older, we will tell you that you were born in Britain’s last Asian colony in the Lunar Year of the Pig, and that when we brought you home the staff of our apartment block gathered to wish you well.
‘It’s a boy, so lucky, so lucky. We Chinese love boys,’ they told us.
One man said you were the first baby to be born in the block in the Year of the Pig. This, he told us, was Feng Shui, in other words a positive sign for the building and everyone who lived there….”
Read the letter here,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/41784.stm