On the MTR, Jasmine read from her app: Duk Ling junk. Built in 1955 in Macau. The last authentic junk in Hong Kong.

‘Good morning, I was expecting you,’ said the crew man. He reached for the lever above the door of capsule eight and clamped it shut.

Only five more days before the summer holidays ended. Jasmine imagined a wall chart with her name and a gold star for her history project. Everything had gone so well and had been so exciting. What were the last four letters of the secret message IHOPEYOUHADSOM? She couldn’t wait to find out.

The ferris wheel shone silver in the sun, its long white spokes spinning the capsules to another adventure. Like a giant white cockroach, a tent crouched nearby. Jasmine hadn’t noticed it before.

Rainclouds filled a gloomy sky. ‘Good morning,’ said Mr. Crew Man. Jasmine waited patiently for the capsule as Gramps plastered mosquito repellent on her arms and legs.

‘The ferris wheel spins you there?’ Ma blinked in disbelief.

Gramps shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s a mystery,’ he said, and laughed. Pa turned a page of his newspaper. It was the Saturday before school began. Jasmine couldn’t wait for term to start. But her history project still had ten empty pages.

Jasmine wanted to explore the passageway under Connaught Road which led to the Noonday Gun so she and Gramps caught the MTR to Causeway Bay rather than teleport by ferris wheel.

A black-bearded pirate with a cleaver chased Jasmine into wakefulness. She’d been run, run, running along a beach but he was catching up on her. She could feel his breath on her neck. ‘Help! Gramps!’ she cried.

Gramps was down in the dumps again, blaming his aching knees on the rain. How could Jasmine make him happy? ‘Guess where we’re going today?’ she said.

Gramps pulled the hair of his mole and shrugged.

Just before summer break, Teacher Tam, Jasmine’s history teacher, told her about a magical history tour he’d planned for her. Two weeks later Nai Nai went to heaven and Gong Gong Gramps moved in. To cheer him up one rainy day, Jasmine told him that the tour included eighteen sites and the first stop was the Hong Kong ferris wheel. ‘At each place there’ll be a clue to the next site, and one letter of a mystery message,’ she said.

‘I think Teacher Tam wants to remind us to remember the dead. That’s why he chose another war memorial,’ said Gramps. He was boiling Chinese medicine for his aching bones. Jasmine’s bedroom, the bathroom, the whole flat, stank of it.

‘This place has special memories for me,’ said Gramps. ‘It was 1972. I’d arrived from Guangdong, wearing only shorts and flip flops.’ Gramps closed his eyes and breathed deeply. ‘Mmm, that smell of roasting chicken wings. But they were twenty cents and I only had five.’

Gramps put his hat on as the sun melted behind a hazy mountain. Jasmine clicked into a map app to find Duddell Street. Ding. Her phone beeped. It was Mum. ‘Don’t make Gramps too tired, History Girl,’ she’d texted. No worries, Jasmine texted back, running to catch him up.

Blue, that was the missing word! Jasmine closed her eyes to summon all things blue: an exercise book, a crayon, a t-shirt. But it had to be a building, something her history teacher would want her to include in her project.

Jasmine and Gramps travelled to Central by MTR. On the way she read about St John’s Cathedral: Built between 1847 and 1849. Shaped like a cross. One of the oldest cathedrals in Asia.

Landing with a bump, Gramps and Jasmine found themselves in front of a banyan tree in Lam Tsuen. Hundreds of wishing slips fluttered in the breeze. Jasmine ran to a stall to buy one. Its red card was attached to piece of string and a plastic orange. She found her pen and wrote: I wish I could eat -