The third member of today’s Mahjong table is Towkay Ong. As the morning progresses, the game is heating up and the stakes are high. The clicking of the tiles gets faster and louder, almost drowning out the songs from Sakura.
Ong is a quiet, inoffensive man with four wives, and like everyone else in the club, he is rich. His one vice is his fixation with Japanese girls – and there are plenty of those across the street in the brothels of Concubine Lane. It was he that chose Sakura to come across from the Lane and entertain the members. Like many Japanese girls in Ipoh between the two World Wars, she has many ways of entertaining men.
