Another person who deeply called out our sympathies was the coolie woman who emptied our garbage, etc., during the last few months before our evacuation from Hong Kong. At this time, we were living in a flat on the ground floor and our side windows looked on a path, which, after many meanderings, led to the Chinese cemetery. Before dawn, light hurrying footsteps could be heard on the path. They were the steps of women carrying broken-up coffins from the cemetery, to sell for firewood at one dollar a catty (about one and one-third pounds). Our coolie woman lived in a tiny shack in the cemetery with her sick husband and her little boy. She looked very old, but she was really quite young, and she was a Christian, and put her trust in God. We used to speak together of these things.
She looked so desperately thin and hungry that we used to save her a bowl of rice porridge every morning for her breakfast. She, on her part, would sometimes bring us some sweet potato vines, which when boiled make good greens.
There were so few cats left in Hong Kong that the rats increased, and we were troubled with them in our kitchen. So we borrowed a trap and soon caught a fine, large rat, which was thrown into the garbage. When the coolie woman spied the rat, she at once asked whether she might have it, to which she received a very ready assent.
Across the road from us lived a Christian colored woman from the West Indies whom we knew. Our coolie woman went over to her, and asked her if she might borrow a pot and cook something on her stove.
“I have my own wood,” she said, “but if I might have the loan of one of your pots?”
The kind West Indian woman supplied her with a pot, and after a short time she noticed the most delicious appetizing smell coming from the stove.
“That smells like meat that you are cooking,” she said. “Wherever did you get any meat?”
“Well,” explained the coolie woman, “Mrs. Koh gave me a very fine rat, and I am just cooking it.”
“And in my pot!” exclaimed the horrified West Indian lady. “Well I will give you that pot for your own, but don’t you ever ask me for any other of my pots for cooking rats!”
And I may add that the coolie woman had several more delicious meals of the same kind.