At breakfast the next morning, Por Por winces and rubs her lower back. ‘I must have strained myself while fighting that ghost last night,’ she says, stretching painfully. ‘I’ll need some acupuncture before we go to Bao Mansion. There’s a clinic on the way.’

The sky is saturated with clouds and the canals have gone a milky green. They seem to change colour all the time from grey to green to pink and gold. We walk down the narrow streets towards the centre of town. Nearly everybody we pass knows Por Por and says hello to her. I guess it’s because our family has been here for such a long time. Just thinking that my ancestors would have walked this same path five hundred years ago is amazing to me. I can feel their shadows everywhere – in the buildings, in the stones that I’m walking on, along the canals, gliding across bridges. I hear their voices, too, as if bits of conversation are floating in the air. They’re not ghosts. I know what a ghost feels and looks like now. No, these are fragments of memory that hang around like old autumn leaves collecting in dusty corners. I’m glad the government is preserving ancient towns like the Isle of Clouds. Because if the buildings were pulled down and new ones put up, where would these memories go? They would have to exist in people’s minds. But then people die and memories die along with them.

The acupuncture clinic is attached to a small hospital. Hanging on the wall of the clinic is a drawing of a naked man with dots and lines all over his body. Por Por says they show the acupuncture points.

The doctor is a short man with a big smile. He wears a white clinic coat and asks Por Por to take her shoes off and lie down on the bed. I sit on a chair in the corner. I feel squirmy inside already. I hate needles – even if they’re going into someone else’s arm. I can’t even watch them on TV.

The doctor presses certain spots on Por Por’s leg then rubs alcohol on them and pushes a needle in. Each needle is about four centimetres long and looks like a thread of silver cotton. The doctor puts more needles on her other leg and on her back and neck.

‘Does it hurt, Por Por?’ I ask, looking at her through half-closed eyes.

‘I can’t feel the needles going in because they are so thin. But I do feel a dull ache. That means the doctor has hit the right spot.’ She smiles. I stand up and look more closely. Por Por is right. The needles are thin, they even bend.

When Por Por has about ten needles sticking out of her, the acupuncturist attaches some wires to the ends and connects them to a machine. I can see the needles gently pulsating.

‘I’ll probably be another half an hour or so. Why don’t you go outside and walk around the shops for a while? Take some money from my purse and get yourself something to eat.’

‘All right,’ I say. ‘Do you want something too, Por Por?’

‘No, I’m fine.’

I rush out of the clinic, eager to explore on my own. On either side of the narrow lane are two-storey wooden buildings with shops on the lower floor and tiny rooms up above. They are beautiful, with carved wooden windows and pillars. The shops open right out onto the street and don’t have glass fronts like the shops in Australia. I’ve noticed that at night, when the shops close, the owners put up wooden panels across the front.

Each shop sells something different and unusual. There’s a shop where everything’s made out of silver – teapots, jugs, bowls, even chopsticks. Another sells Chinese painting equipment. A lady is sitting out the front making paintbrushes; a baby is asleep on her back, wrapped in a blue-and-orange cloth tied around her waist. I watch as she bundles together soft white hairs. She tells me they are the hairs of a goat. ‘Feel them,’ she says, brushing the hairs against my cheek. They are silky soft. ‘These brushes are good for calligraphy or painting landscapes.’ She ties the hairs together with fine black thread then glues it into a shaft of bamboo. Next she wets the hairs of the brush with watery glue and smooths them down so that they are perfectly straight with a point at the end.

‘This protects them until they are ready to be used for the first time.’ The baby wakes up and she reaches over her shoulder and pats its downy black head. ‘Before you use a brand new brush for the first time you must soak the hairs in water.’

Just for fun I buy one made out of white goat hair, for Jess, and one made from the hairs of a squirrel for Bronte.

I hear a soft tink tink tink coming from the shop next door and move on. In this shop are all kinds of brass locks in cabinets and hanging on the walls. They shine so brightly they seem to glow. They aren’t ordinary locks like you would use for locking your suitcase, or padlocking a gate. They fit on the front of cupboards and chests.

Mama has one on the camphorwood chest in the hallway but I’ve never seen locks as beautiful as these before. They’re shaped like pagodas and butterflies and flowers. There’s even one of the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House.

A man is sitting in the back of the shop working with a tiny hammer. He smiles when I come in and shows me the lock he’s making for a customer’s front door. It’s a crane flying through clouds. It’s lovely and costs a lot of money. I say goodbye and walk further down the alley where there’s a covered walkway along the canal.

I can speak Chinese better than I can read it, but I instantly recognise the two characters on a restaurant sign up a little way. They say tang yuan, my most favourite dessert in the whole wide world – well, except for pavlova and crème brulee and chocolate-ripple cake and souffle. Tang yuan are glutinous rice balls filled with either black sesame, peanut or red bean paste. Black sesame are my favourite. Mama used to say black sesame makes your hair strong and shiny.

I go into the tiny café. All the tables and chairs are miniature like the ones we used to sit on in kindergarten. I sit with my knees almost touching my chin and watch a lady make the tang yuan. After she rolls them into balls, she drops them in boiling water. They only take a few minutes to cook.

I bite into the chewy white ball and my mouth fills with the sweetness of the black sesame paste. Delicious!

I’m gazing out across the canal, savouring the texture and flavour, when I see her. A girl wearing a rainbow scarf. Ting Ting. She’s standing in one of those large water taxis.

I burn my mouth as I gulp down my last tang yuan, then I stand up and pay the lady. I keep the boat in sight as I race out of the shop and along the canal. I don’t want Ting Ting to see me, so I keep well back. Then the boat turns a corner into a larger canal and out of sight.

It takes me five minutes to reach the same spot. I’m puffing hard. I look down the canal, but now there are three water taxis all going in the same direction. Then they split off into two canals.

Which one is she on? My eyes dart from one to the other. But it’s no use. I’ve lost her.

I walk back to the clinic. Por Por has finished her treatment and is in the waiting room reading a newspaper.

‘I think I saw Ting Ting just now,’ I say, still out of breath.

‘Good,’ Por Por says. ‘At least she’s here.’ She stands up.

‘Do you feel better, Por Por?’ I ask, helping her put on her jacket.

Before Por Por can answer, we hear a man calling her name.

She looks back into the crowded treatment room. Three rough-looking men are sitting next to each other on stools, with their shirts off.

The man who is being treated by the doctor raises his hand. ‘I need to speak with you, Mrs Bao.’

I follow Por Por into the back room. The man’s dark brown skin is thick like leather and the doctor is hitting his shoulder with something that looks like a little hammer with tiny needles sticking out of it.

Por Por and the man speak to each other in the Isle of Clouds’ dialect, so I don’t know what they’re talking about. There’s a flash of flame and a smacking sound as the doctor rapidly places glass globes over the man’s back and shoulders. They stick on all by themselves and I see the man’s skin swelling up inside the glass like huge boils!

My mouth drops open.

The doctor looks at me and smiles. ‘Do you understand Chinese?’ he asks.

I nod.

‘Well, these men are porters. They have to carry very heavy loads on their shoulders. The suction pulls out blood that has stagnated from the weight of the yoke.’ He pulls away one of the cups – it’s half-full of a black liquid like old blood! Eeeuw, disgusting. The doctor wipes the blood away with a towel.

I hear Por Por thank the man. I say goodbye to the doctor and we leave the clinic. But I notice that Por Por’s face has gone pale.

‘What’s wrong?’ I say.

‘They were tearing down the walls of the old prison and they found my father’s diary.’ Her eyes are full of tears. ‘I must go and get it now.’

I don’t know what to say so I walk in silence beside her. I feel shadows lurking in doorways, on balconies and rooftops. They are the ghosts of the past, watching and waiting.