Explore "My Tahiti" by Robert Dean Frisbie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ah La, son of the venerable Ah Jong, was an abject-appearing little Canton coolie, as crooked-legged as the rest of his countrymen at Tahiti, as mercenary and as full of low cunning. Any afternoon, when business was slack, he could be seen sprawled on the counter of Ah Jong's shop, and heard snoring in gutturals, palatals, and nasal vowels, his face red and puffed, his fly-trap mouth open.
Each evening he mixed his bread dough; then sat with the Chinamen from the rice paddies of Farué Valley, the truck gardens and tobacco plantations, to play dominoes and cards, noisily. And sometimes, on passing his store at night, one would smell a puff of opium, and, if the night was still, hear the wheezing of a bamboo pipe.