by Andrew Kwong
Every day my school bus went along Boundary Street past La Salle College, which was run by the De La Salle Brothers, and I watched the La Salle boys in their smart black school jackets. They attracted admiring looks from many people, especially schoolgirls. I began imagining myself attending La Salle College. One day I mentioned my ambition to Ping, aware that she knew a La Salle old boy who might be able to advise me. From him I soon found out the school had six classes in each Form, and Form I had two classes that were reserved for boys from their own La Salle Primary School, while the rest were filled by boys who’d sat an annual public entry examination – several thousand boys battled it out for the 160 places available. Transferring from other schools to prestigious ones like La Salle was rare. The information was like a predawn star, twinkling.
I could see the big dome of the majestic La Salle College sandstone building through the window of the double-decker bus I travelled on. It stood there on top of a diminutive hill, gleaming in the island sun, a distinctive local landmark among the growing number of apartment blocks that surrounded it.
My aspiration to be a La Salle boy soon became something of an obsession. One afternoon I rang and made an appointment to see the principal, Brother Casimir. I presented myself at his office in my navy school jacket and neatly pressed grey trousers at four o’clock that same day. He soon appeared through the large door to his office, a robust middle-aged man with a big waist and a crop of thinning hair that swung across his prominent forehead. He wore a long white robe and a bright green cloth sash whose square ends hung down to his knees. My first impression was that he appeared saintly.
He cupped his large hands together in front of him and looked at me with deep-set eyes. Then he spoke in a gentle voice: ‘What can I do for you, young man?’
Young man? He calls me a young man. I didn’t think I was big and strong like a man yet, for I was still small for my age despite my recently improved diet. My confidence was boosted by his friendliness. I felt his blue eyes piercing me, but that impression was softened by the delicate scent of sandalwood eau de cologne that religious ministers wore in subtropical Hong Kong. For reasons I still don’t understand he stirred up an unusual sense of reassurance, or courage, inside me and I felt at ease in that moment. I turned away from his gaze, bowed and mumbled the English lines I had rehearsed for weeks: ‘Brother, I sincerely want to be a student here. I have done very well in my studies, and here are my report cards . . .’
I dug into my schoolbag to fetch the reports. But he didn’t seem interested and turned to look at his large desk covered in piles of files and began to fiddle with some papers. A large portrait of Saint Jean-Baptiste de La Salle looked down from one wall. Not a trace of island breeze came through the two large windows facing Boundary Street below and I grew increasingly nervous.
‘Sorry, young man, we don’t have a vacancy,’ he said. Then, without another word, he ushered me out of his office and down the vast long hallway to the front door of the school building.
I tried to suppress the hot lump expanding and rising into my throat, something I hadn’t experienced since leaving home on the small bus, not even when I was being smuggled into Hong Kong. It grew, but I was able to keep it down by taking deep breaths.
I dragged myself towards the steps leading down to Boundary Street. The lump was now heavy under my ribs, churning like those whitecaps on the Wonder River that morning when I refused to dive in. How I wished that it would just burst and let me cry.
I didn’t want to leave. At the top of the steps I sat down, oblivious to the fact that evening was arriving. I looked back at the school building with its huge round columns, its large dome and its grand sandstone façade with big windows. The pillars were losing their sheen as the sun set behind the cityscape. I watched the sunlight wane on the dome.
Maybe I was wasting my time and being too ambitious, I thought. Maybe I was overconfident. Perhaps I should be content with what I had and grateful for what I had achieved so far. Suddenly I felt drained of the enthusiasm that I had nurtured for weeks before coming to see the principal.
I didn’t care how long I sat there. I didn’t care that night was falling and Baba and Ping would begin to worry. Although I had experienced many rejections, this one was hard to accept.
The humidity had not subsided as it normally did. I sweated in my school blazer and felt lonely. I thought of my friends back in China who struggled to find food and stay alive. I should be thankful. Perhaps I’m not meant to attend this famous school. Perhaps I need to accept my situation as it is, and just be grateful for what I’ve achieved so far . . .
But then I remembered what Baba had often said: ‘Our destiny is in our hands . . . and we don’t give up . . . We must steer our own boat.’
The lights were all out now at the school, except the one in Brother Casimir’s office. He was clearly working on into the night, and he had left his curtains open, as if he knew I was still outside and wanted to lend me some light. I suddenly became aware that if it hadn’t been for that light from the headmaster’s office, I would have been in complete darkness.
Then I thought of the many stories Baba used to tell us. One that stood out for me was how a young monkey from Journey to the West kept returning to the Master to beg to be accepted as his student, so that he could become as wise as a human. The Master would say to him, ‘You are only a monkey, how can you ever be as clever as a man?’ Many days went by and the Master kept saying the same thing. The young monkey went away each time disappointed. One day the Master told him exactly the same thing again, but this time before he finished, he tapped on the monkey’s head three times, turned his back on the monkey and walked towards his house with his hands clasped behind him. At exactly three o’clock the next morning, the young monkey was at the back door of the Master’s house, where the wise man was waiting to admit him as his student. Later, the young monkey would master the power of magic, and he became so wise and intelligent that his peers made him the Monkey King.
That’s what I will do. I will be persistent like the young monkey until I’ve got myself into La Salle College. I stood up and headed down the steps to Boundary Street to catch a bus home. I couldn’t take my eyes off the school until it disappeared into the darkening night. I’ll come back tomorrow, I promised myself, and headed home.
Baba knew that I was upset. He took me out for a walk.
‘There is a champion in every field. Champions come from anywhere,’ he reminded me. ‘As long as you can make a success of your life one day, does it matter if you don’t graduate from La Salle College?’
For the first time in my life I disagreed with Baba, but I didn’t reply.
The next day after school, I made another appointment to see Brother Casimir. In two subsequent interviews, he confirmed that there was not a single vacancy available. But he didn’t say it was impossible, and he didn’t try to quell my enthusiasm. Although he didn’t tap me on my head like the Master did to the young monkey, a faint hope rose inside me. It was like the tiny flicker I saw in Mama’s eyes each time she handed in her visa application to the District Head; like the quiet rumble of distant drumbeats across the Wonder River that kept returning, year after year, to remind us to stay positive. It was the feeling I sensed from Baba at the bus stop when I was leaving Shiqi for the last time, and felt myself when I was being smuggled into Hong Kong. Hope was always there, and now it was churning inside me, refusing to settle.
For the ensuing three weeks I sat outside Brother Casimir’s office every day after school. While I waited, I read Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Teachers, staff and students walked past, and much to my surprise, as the days went by, some of them even smiled at me. Initially I was embarrassed, not knowing if they were laughing at me, and I suspected that everyone would be talking about the strange boy sitting outside the headmaster’s office. But, little by little, I became more confident, and soon I started to smile back at them and even chatted with some of them.
Some days Brot
her Casimir was not around; other days he would walk past me as if I wasn’t there. Later I found out he had instructed the front desk not to offer me any more appointments.
Four weeks had now gone by. I continued to return to La Salle College every day after school, sitting outside Brother Casimir’s office and reading Hamlet for the umpteenth time. I kept reminding myself to be patient and focused, and not to give up. Anger consumes energy, as Deng had said; and now it could smother inspiration. I had to guard against that while accepting that maybe there isn’t always a solution to everything in life.
Finally, on a Friday afternoon, five weeks after I had first met Brother Casimir, his door swung open. He invited me into his office.
‘What do you want young man?’ he asked in the same gentle voice. This time, however, with his hands resting on his hips, he stared straight into my eyes. I looked back and saw his blue eyes glint. I felt comfortable. I felt like reaching out to hug him as if he were one of my uncles.
‘Brother Casimir,’ I said, loud and clear, ‘I would like to be one of the students at La Salle College. I need more challenges.’
‘Our standard is very high here, son,’ Brother Casimir said as he removed his glasses from his prominent nose. ‘You may not be able to keep up.’ He then turned, placed his hands behind his back, and walked over to the large window that looked out over the steps where I had often sat during the past weeks. He stood there for many minutes. I kept thinking of the Monkey King and the Master.
All of a sudden Brother Casimir spun to face me, hands clasped in front of him now, and said, ‘You are a pain. I’ll put you in Form II, but for one semester’s trial only. You’ll have to leave if you can’t keep up. This makes you the forty-first student in the class.’
‘Oh, thank you so much! Thank you, thank you, Brother Casimir.’ I grabbed his large hand with both of mine, and couldn’t stop shaking it. I accepted the deal without hesitation, even though it meant repeating a year and being older than my classmates, maybe even the whole form. Behind those blue eyes, something glinted and my own vision blurred.
It was the best Friday afternoon of my life since leaving Shiqi. I could hardly wait for Baba and Ping to come home from work. For the first time since the three of us had moved in together, we went out to celebrate in a local Shanghai restaurant.
*
Ping thought I looked superb in my black school blazer the following Monday, and it was a very proud moment going to school on the bus with students from other schools staring at me and admiring my distinctive uniform.
I had hardly any problem adapting to the new school, for I was already familiar with many faces there. I promptly became involved in many sporting clubs and societies. They included geography, photography and stamp collecting clubs, but my favourite was the fencing club. I even joined the catechism study group and was soon baptised as Andrew, a name that made me feel more at home at La Salle College, where nearly all the boys had English names.
However, I was soon brought down to earth. In my first monthly tests, I was shocked to find myself close to the bottom of my class, Form IIF. Brother Casimir came into the classroom to give out the results, as he did with all other classes. One by one, we went up to him when called. He looked at my report card and was clearly less than impressed, but he was kind enough not to mention the deal we had made.
‘You’ll have to work harder, son,’ he muttered as he took off his glasses and stared at me.
I immediately reassessed my many extra-curricular activities and resigned from all societies except the fencing club. Serious study was needed.
Three months later I made it to twenty-third in the class of forty-one. Brother Casimir was still not happy with my result. It was not until after the annual examination, when I got to seventh place, that he actually smiled at me. He even stopped in the middle of giving out the report cards to say a few words to me, a rare honour.
‘Have you heard of the race between the hare and the tortoise?’ he asked.
‘No, Brother,’ I said in front of the class. Everyone burst out laughing. All the children in Hong Kong knew the hare and the tortoise story from their kindergarten years.
Brother Casimir told me the story that day, then said to the entire class, ‘Work consistently with diligence and you’ll get to where you want to be.’
With much gratitude and respect, I began to consider Brother Casimir one of my guardian angels.
CHAPTER 27
From Ying and Mama’s regular mail, we learnt with great interest that Ying’s friendship with Ho-bun had blossomed over time and the two of them were now engaged. Most of Ho-bun’s family lived in Hong Kong, but the authorities had rejected his many applications for an exit visa. Baba said that the money his relatives sent regularly to support him was the real reason for the refusal: China didn’t want to lose any foreign funds.
In early 1966, a trusted friend brought us news that Ying and Ho-bun were planning to make their own way out of China together. We worried for their safety as we waited with excitement and patience for their arrival.
When the news of Ho-bun’s appearance in Hong Kong reached Baba, he was joyous. It was a memorable day for us and we met up in a café as soon as we could.
A fit young man, standing head and shoulders above most southern Chinese in Hong Kong, Ho-bun looked fresh in his new white shirt. His suntan marked him out as a newly arrived mainlander. But there was no sign of Ying.
‘Why isn’t she with you? What has happened to my daughter?’ Baba quizzed Ho-bun before we’d even sat down.
Ho-bun kept his head bowed. He couldn’t look Baba in the eye. Instead, he fiddled with his glass of water, stirring the ice cubes with a straw, as if looking for a place to hide. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, while fending off the terrifying image of my sister’s body floating in the South China Sea.
Ho-bun was flushed from the base of his neck all the way to his forehead. Sweat trickled down his handsome face. It was quite a while before he was able to recount his daring getaway. His unease made him almost incoherent as, talking to us in our Zhongshan dialect, he tried to find the right words to piece together his story.
‘Ying and I met our guide outside the last town before the prohibited border territory,’ Ho-bun said, voice trembling. ‘The guide was nervous, yet he was supposed to be experienced. There was something strange about him. Ying pulled me aside and said we should be careful.
‘The guide refused to take both of us, and said he would only take us separately. This was not what we had agreed. We were shocked, but decided that your sister Ying should go first.’ Ho-bun raised his heavy eyes and glanced at me, avoiding Baba’s gaze.
‘I was to follow a few days later before the moon became too bright,’ Ho-bun continued. He was now holding his empty glass in both hands. ‘But for reasons I still don’t understand, at the very last moment, Ying refused to leave. She wanted me to take the first opportunity, which had taken a long time to arrange. You know how determined your sister can be. I couldn’t persuade her to do otherwise. The guide was getting restless. He pushed half the agreed fee into Ying’s hand and started to walk away.’
Yes, that’s my sister Ying, I thought to myself.
‘Ying insisted I should go first. Then she turned and walked towards Shiqi. She didn’t look back. I knew she was crying. She didn’t even say goodbye,’ Ho-bun mumbled. ‘The guide and I walked for hours, dodging militia posts on the way. There was a new moon. No stars.’
The small café was crowded. Baba and I leant closer to hear Ho-bun. ‘Insects hummed on, but stopped as we approached. It felt like we were walking in a bubble. The world had shrunk into a sphere that wrapped around us, keeping us safe. I stayed two steps behind the guide. My mouth was dry, but my palms were wet. I clutched two deflated football bladders – my swimming floats – under my worker’s jacket. These were the most important things I had for the journey and I couldn’t afford to lose them.’
Then there was silence. Other cu
stomers in the café seemed to be quiet also. But we were in a bubble of our own.
‘Life is so unfair,’ Ho-bun carried on, after what seemed to be a long pause. Tears now pooled in his eyes. He rubbed the fresh scars on his hands, probably cut by rocks and seashells.
Baba sighed. He lit another cigarette, drawing deep and hard on it – the way he used to do at home when he was in a funny mood. This was the worst I’d ever seen Baba since leaving Shiqi. He tapped the ash into an ashtray, keeping his gaze on the young man.
Ho-bun emptied another glass of iced water in one gulp.
Baba ordered him a 7 Up lemonade with ice.
Ho-bun then told us how the guide had instructed him to swim to the mouth of the river to catch the current. Ten metres before the searchlights hit, he was to dive underwater and not resurface until the lights swung back towards the shore. He was not to use the bladders until then either. The guide also told him to ignore the first light on the horizon immediately to his right, a decoy set up by the authorities, and float in the current until the water became very salty. Then he would notice a brighter and bigger radiance at the two o’clock position along the shoreline. ‘Aim for that one,’ said the guide, ‘and you’ll reach Macau. The tide has now turned – for you too, I hope.’
Looking somewhat relieved now, Ho-bun took a deep breath before finishing his story, ‘I was alone. The tide was going out. Some five hundred metres away the searchlights from both banks had turned the water into a big white sheet. The beams spanned seawards in an arc with decreasing intensity before swinging back to shore. I counted forty or more seconds for each cycle. Crouching there without making a sound, I held my breath as if I were underwater as the lights moved out to the sea, and added ten more seconds. The humming of insects and beetles resumed, only to be silenced as I gasped for breath. I practised several times before I felt confident enough to make the crossing.’