Felling of excitement he got when he held a piece of history in his hands. But his special love was pottery, the older the better.
Sometimes the university sent him to places where old pottery had been discovered sent him to places where old pottery had been discovered. It was his job to sort out these things. The university would then put the things that were interesting in a museum where they could be shown to the public. But Harry Chen had his own private museum that nobody else knew about. He hated the idea of not keeping some of the old and, something, beautiful things he found. And, if those beautiful things were only small things that nobody but he had seen, who would ever know if they were gone? So he kept them.
He had quite a collection of stolen things now, all carefully hidden in his home. They were mostly small, broken things that were not of much value. Even so, he did have some pots, rings and other favorite things that were extraordinary and lovely to see. He loved them so much he would sometimes, during the warm evenings, lay them all out on the floor to look at. He would examine each piece with love and care. Only he, he was sure, could understand their true value.
He lived alone in an old house which looked over the Singapore River. It was close to the antique shops which sold the old things he loved. He would often look in the shop windows at the beautiful things he could not afford to buy. Not on his salary, it made him angry to think that such things would end up in the home of some fat tourist who could not possibly see their true value as he could.
It wasn’t fair.