Alice stumbled onto the coastline and emptied her stomach, letting the contents mingle with sea water and sand. For a period of time, Alice had actually nearly believed that silly superstition about women being unlucky on over sea journeys. Alice sighed. She had finally made it to China after a hectic, stressful boat ride. After all this time of dreaming and wishing about China, she made it, yet now she wanted to be at home in London again, with her mother, her sister Margaret, and everyone else she knew. Alice looked at her surroundings. She glanced back at the ship and saw big sweaty men carrying loads to shore. Alice looked the other way, and saw a few Chinese folk gathering around to see the new band of foreigners that had arrived. To Alice, they all looked vaguely similar – all with hair as black as the midnight sky and bottomless black eyes. They were all muttering and whispering a language that Alice didn't understand a word of. Again, she cursed herself for not familiarising herself with the language beforehand.
Alice found herself staring at all the Chinese locals, who were staring back at her. A voice uttered her name, snapping her out of her trance.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Alice turned to face Lord Ascot beaming at her. She smiled back.
"It's just as I imagined! With the rich culture and all the wonderful people here, we must get a good result with our trade!" She was excited.
"Well before you do any thinking about business, we should be meeting our guides by now." Lord Ascot frowned, pulling out his pocket watch and squinting at it. According to their plan, there would be some English speaking locals who would meet the British travellers and escort them to their accommodation as soon as they arrived.
A man's voice came from within the crowd of villagers. Soon, the man managed to squeeze himself out of the crowd, which was still growing.
The Chinese man was tall and you could tell he was muscular even though he wore a Western style business suit and a red necktie.
"Mr Ascot?" He said, and shook the Lord's hand. "I'm Fangwu Jiang. My family will be hosting you during your stay in Hong Kong." This Fangwu man spoke great English, still with a hint of Chinese accent.
"Thank you, Mr Jiang. We shall be heading over now. You are almost an hour late!" Lord Ascot pointed to his pocket watch. Fangwu invited him through the crowd and into a carriage, clearly taking no notice at all of Alice, who was left standing outside the carriage until another man helped her up. Fangwu looked to see who had come into the carriage.
"Mr Ascot, this is…"
"This is Alice Kingsleigh, my apprentice."
Fangwu smiled warmly at Alice. Then he resumed his conversation with Lord Ascot about accommodation and trade companies. This is going to being a long journey. Alice sighed and leaned her head against the window frame of the carriage, soon nodding off with the sound of endless droning of the men's voices in her head and the bounce of the horse-drawn carriage.