WALKING around Hollywood Road with Dan Waters, the cars and the pollution seem to disappear for a moment, as he brings into focus an older and more mysterious landscape.
'Up there in the police station compound, there is a mango tree that is supposed to blossom only during a calamity. The last time was during the 1967 riots,' said Waters, who has lived in Hong Kong for 40 of his 74 years, and has just published a book about his impressions, called Faces of Hong Kong.
'There are tunnels all through these rocks,' he observed, as we walked past the Wyndham Street area ('where the taipans used to keep their mistresses - who were known as pensioners, because they used to be supported from the company payrolls').
Some tunnels - which Waters has actually seen - go from the police station to the magistracy, but there are legends of an entire labyrinth, connecting the Governor's residence to the harbour and to the Museum of Tea Ware in Hong Kong Park, the former residence of the Commander of the British Forces, as escape routes in case of an invasion.
'There are also tunnels that were dug by forced labour under the Japanese,' he says.
Several of Waters' anecdotes are very 'James Clavell': water shortages, pretty girls, foreign devils, ghost beliefs and concubines.