by Andrew Kwong
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, foreign student admissions to university courses were limited by a rather strict quota system. In the case of medicine, foreign students could make up only 5 per cent of the new faculty admissions at the University of Sydney, and 10 per cent at the University of New South Wales, the only two medical schools in the state at the time. Many foreign students, especially those from Asia worked very hard to get into medicine, either as their own goal, or to fulfil the wishes of their parents, as was the case with Victor, the part-time apprentice jockey. (When his parents came for his graduation some years later, they discovered he was graduating from accountancy instead. He’d managed to keep that from them until then.)
Needless to say competition was intense among overseas students for places in sought-after courses like medicine and engineering. At Holy Cross College, Asian students usually attempted challenging subjects like First Level Science and Mathematics in order to obtain higher scores. But they also had to pass the English exam.
In the last term holiday of Sixth Form, in 1970, one of my roommates Chalit, a Thai boy, returned to school with a big Holden car and a driver’s licence. We were all excited for him and some were envious. From then on, from our large window facing the front lawn of the college, we could see the majestic Holden sedan standing on the far side of the turning circle in a space designated by the school especially for Chalit’s car.
Chalit spent a lot of time hanging around his car, checking it and dusting it. The first thing he did when he woke in the morning was to rush to the window and make sure it was still there, as he also did before going to bed. As a Buddhist, Chalit recited chants daily before our pre-breakfast morning prayers at the school chapel; now he had his car to pray for as well. But he was not allowed to take the car out for a run without permission. On Saturdays he would offer to take half the soccer team to games so that he could practise driving the Big Mom, as he called it.
On the morning of the first exam, in October 1970, I couldn’t eat the boiled eggs I usually enjoyed for breakfast. I was already petrified by the thought of flunking my First Level English paper. Even my favourite Shakespeare plays now all seemed to be muddled in my head. And passing this paper was vital for my future.
Six of us boarders got into Big Mom, heading for the same exam. But then Chalit’s pale face began to sweat when he couldn’t start the car. David said it was a cool morning and the engine was just cold. Chalit tried again and I started to perspire as each attempt to turn over the engine failed. Looking at my watch didn’t help; the anguish building inside me was now worse than it had been when I’d stood on the platform preparing to swim across the Wonder River.
Mrs Miu’s stern face began hovering over me. I closed my eyes and tried to picture Mama’s face, hoping to draw strength from her, just as I had done when we had parted at the Shiqi bus station. No, I must not fail, I promised myself.
It was nearly nine o’clock, time for the paper to begin. Big Mom still wouldn’t budge. My mouth was by now completely dry. Then, thank God, Brother Benedict appeared with two other members of staff and we all got out and did a push-start with only Chalit in the heavy car. It took off. Then there was another wait that felt like hours before Big Mom was warmed up enough, and returned to pick us up.
We arrived at the examination hall at North Ryde High School, late and trembling with distress. Fortunately, the kind examiner decided to allow us an extra half-hour to make up for our lost time.
For a long while I sat there in the large hall, just staring at the exam paper. My brain was numb. It took a lot of coaxing and reasoning with myself before my confidence came back to me. Then I dived into a question on Hamlet, which I knew so well, and from that point on it all flowed smoothly.
I was more relaxed in the subsequent exams, even in First Level Maths and Science. At the end of the exam period, to celebrate the completion of high school, a group of us boys chose to ‘rumble’ a couple of girls’ schools nearby with flour bombs. Missing our graduation dinner was our punishment.
*
I was quietly pleased that school was finally over for me, even though we had now to endure the long wait for our exam results. What I needed to do in the meantime was find myself a job for the vacation, to alleviate the financial burden on Baba and Ping. During that time, I moved into a share house with another student, Ka-kit Lau, who came from Malaysia. He’d left Holy Cross and gone to live with his sister, who was studying at the University of New South Wales in Kensington. Through talking to other foreign students, I was delighted to learn that it was possible to work part-time while studying, though they acknowledged it was particularly tough if you were doing medicine.
Soon after, I found a job as a casual waiter at the Mandarin Club in downtown Sydney, in the Chinatown precinct. It seemed they had a big party booked for New Year’s Eve 1970 and were short of waiters, so I was brought in to assist the bartenders. That night, almost intoxicated on the melodious tunes of the well-known band the Yin and Yang Duo, I began my first job as a waiter in a large up-market restaurant. I thought I looked rather smart with my white shirt, black trousers and black bow tie. As the guests partied into the evening, the drinks waiters were run off their feet. I tried to help and attempted to open a bottle of champagne for the first time in my life, to ensure partygoers had ample fizzy drinks within their reach. The cork popped off with a reassuring sound, prompting cheers from the happy revellers, but the straw-coloured liquid then gushed out so fast that many of them got soaked.
I was mortified and wished I could disappear into a hole in the ground. Fortunately, they just laughed more and said, ‘No problem son. Happy New Year!’ So friendly, and so Australian.
I went to see the head bartender to get another bottle of replacement champagne for the guests and found him adding extra empty bottles to the tally for each table.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, noticing my confused stare. ‘They’re too drunk to even remember how many bottles they drank. You’ll get a share of it in your tip.’
This left me in a quandary. The pay was good at the club, and was a big help towards my goal of becoming self-sufficient. But I wasn’t happy to be taking advantage of tipsy customers. The next day I went to see the owner of a small Chinese café, Sun Sung in Kensington, and settled for a waiter’s job with lower pay, but a slightly higher rate for the weekend shift, plus a free meal before and after work.
I didn’t need my First Level Maths to work out that even on a weekly income of $13.50 for one weekday and two weekend evenings’ work, I’d be able to pay my rent and buy lunches for the week. I took the free after-work meal home and had it the following day for dinner. That left only one evening meal a week to be covered, and the solution to that was easy: I could just skip one meal a week; it wouldn’t hurt much after my experience of the famine in Shiqi. Yes, I thought, it is doable!
So I happily went to work taking orders from customers at the Sun Sung Café. I was always given extra shifts during term vacations and felt fortunate that I was able to work towards my goal. I wrote to Baba and told him not to send me any money for my education unless I specifically requested it. I was concerned about him, as he had taken an extra teaching job at an evening school to try to support me, as well as Mama and the girls in Shiqi. Ping had decided to leave Hong Kong. After saving hard while working at Cathay Pacific Airlines, she had chosen to move to Hawaii to stay with Grandmother Young and pursue further education.
Nevertheless, Baba remained strong and never stopped encouraging me. ‘Focus on your studies and aim high,’ he said in each of his letters. ‘The moon will shine again for us one day.’
*
Finally, the day in mid-January came when the successful HSC university entrance candidate list was to be published. A few friends and I followed our senior fellow students’ advice and went to Martin Place at midnight to wait for the next day’s Sydney Morning Herald to appear at the one and only all-night news stand. I jumped straight to the medical school announ
cements and there it was: my name on the University of New South Wales Medical School list! I read it several times to make sure it was true.
I remember watching the minutes tick by while waiting for the time when Baba would return from his evening class, as we were three hours ahead of Hong Kong. From a public phone at the GPO in Martin Place, an international call could be arranged via an operator, albeit for a fee equivalent to the pay for an evening’s work.
‘Baba,’ I shouted, loud enough for him to hear over the hissing noises on the line. ‘I have made it into medicine.’
‘What? Ha! Medicine!’ There followed a long pause, and I knew he was sobbing with joy. When he recovered, his first words were: ‘Your Mama will be very proud of you.’ Then, aware that I had to keep the call short, he finished by saying, ‘I’m so happy for you . . . so proud of you . . . There will be challenges ahead . . . but, remember, they’ll only make you a better person. Work hard, my son. My love and thoughts are always with you.’
There was no international telephone connection to Shiqi, so I wrote to tell Mama the great news. I could just imagine how overjoyed she and my sisters would be, and I was more than certain that she would soon be sharing the good tidings with Sixth Aunt and Eighth Uncle, my cousins and friends and neighbours. My news would cheer them up. I could also imagine a positively glowing Mama in the third lounge room, giving thanks to the ancestors and other gods for this blessing.
*
In February that year, on the day when new medical students had to register at the university, I lined up with the other freshers. There were bright and cheerful faces all around me: boys and girls, just out of school, oozing energy and vigour. And beyond lay the handsome buildings and appealing lawns and gardens of the university campus. This is my utopia, I thought, while laughing to myself, and all the hard work is worth it.
‘Hello, my name is Robert.’ I turned round to find a young man thrusting his hand towards me. A pair of smiling eyes shone out from a youthful face rimmed by curly dark hair and a large beard.
‘I’m Andrew,’ I said, gripping his hand firmly. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’
Before long, and much to my delight, I found out that Robert Lewin and I were in the same class for tutorials and small group learning sessions. Over the next three pre-medical years we would attend lectures and laboratory work together and become the best of friends, so much so that I sometimes dodged waiting tables on Friday evenings so that I could go to the Lewin family home in Northbridge for dinner. There I was able to savour the sense of a secure home that I had so sorely missed. Moreover, the family’s easy acceptance of me, a young Asian man, reinforced my desire to become a citizen of a society that already seemed to me forward-thinking, diversified and yet cohesive.
The Lewins were Jewish, and Dr Lewin, Robert’s father, was a GP who practised in Leichhardt, in western Sydney. He worked long hours and was often late for the Friday Sabbath dinner. When he arrived home, Mrs Lewin would bring out the food and we men would each don a yarmulke to show humility and respect to God.
Dr Lewin said prayers in Hebrew to offer gratitude; sometimes Robert did also. I enjoyed listening to the language, even though I didn’t understand it. It reminded me of my Shiqi dialect: melodious and gentle, if not entirely musical.
The long prayers usually intensified my hunger pains as I waited to tuck into the great variety of delicious food on the table. I would try to be patient, while recalling Third Aunt’s lessons in table manners.
Dr Lewin always ended his prayers with: ‘a time to bring goodwill and peace to all’. Then he would declare, ‘Let’s share the feast.’
Sharing, togetherness, kindness and peace: it was no different from what my family had been struggling to achieve and maintain, even while being punished for their ‘counter-revolutionary’ views. Now I was in such a fortunate position, I would do all in my power to attain a better future for my whole family. It was difficult not to be envious of Australian families, from Coonabarabran to Northbridge. But it steeled my determination to one day establish my own home and family in this new land I had discovered and chosen.
CHAPTER 34
During the long university summer holidays, many of my friends went on vacation to refresh themselves, but I worked full time as a nurse at Concord Repatriation Hospital, now Concord General Hospital. Combined with my restaurant job in the evenings, that enabled me to pay my university fees and even buy a twenty-year-old VW Beetle. It was my first car. I shared it with Peter Wong, a classmate from Holy Cross College, who was also studying medicine at the University of New South Wales.
Everything seemed to be going well and it was great that I could now drive myself to and from the hospital and the restaurant. Around this time, Peter and I moved into nearby rooms rented from the Szalay family, on Doncaster Avenue, Kensington. One evening when Peter was at work and I was studying at home in Kensington, there was a knock on the front door.
It was the police.
They informed me, the owner of the VW Beetle, that I had committed a hit-and-run traffic offence, injuring a twenty-four-thousand-dollar race horse. With that amount of money at the time, you could buy not one, but two two-bedroom apartments in the seaside suburb of Coogee. It nearly sent me into a convulsion, until I got Peter on the phone and he explained to the officers what had happened.
On his way to work, he had parked the car outside Kensington Post Office while he went to post a letter. When he came out, he saw that the VW was damaged, and covered in horseshoe imprints. A witness told him that a stablehand had been trying to walk his horse between the VW and another parked car, when the VW’s sharp rear bumper snagged on the horse’s leg and it went mad with pain and trampled the car. We had to obtain the assistance of the university’s student legal service to make sure no charges were laid.
And that wasn’t the end of the VW saga. We had the car repaired and were proud that it looked like new again, at least on the outside. But one afternoon Peter was driving us to work and, as we stopped to turn right, a large Valiant station-wagon smashed into the rear of our VW. The passenger seat collapsed and I turned to find the other car’s front light a mere few inches away from my head. The other driver was rushing his wife to hospital for the imminent delivery of their first baby. Just imagine the chaos.
The second year of medicine, which began at the start of 1972, was extremely challenging, being the time when students had to demonstrate their mastery of two of the fundamental topics, anatomy and biochemistry. A large number of students flunked and had to repeat the year, but I couldn’t afford to fail, so I kept my head down and worked hard.
On the evenings when I wasn’t working to earn my keep, I stayed back after finishing the day’s lectures, dissection classes and laboratory work to study at the UNSW Medical Library. On 21 February I was in the library’s TV room watching the ABC news, as I often did for a break. The headline news that evening stirred up great emotions in me. As Beijing braced itself against the cold northern winds the US president’s Air Force One jet touched down at the city’s airport. On the screen the sun started to shine on the stubborn icicles on the eaves of the People’s Palace in Tiananmen Square, and you could see the ice beginning to melt. Before President Nixon reached the bottom of the stairs from his plane, he was extending his hand in earnest towards China’s Premier Zhou En-lai.
At that moment my eyes welled with tears as the implications of the event for world peace, and for my long-suffering family left behind in China, slowly dawned on me. As the two leaders grasped each other’s hands, hope sprang again for Mama and my sisters. That historic handshake changed the world I lived in and the fate of my family.
Since my arrival in Australia, I had been closely monitoring any changes in the country’s immigration policies. Gough Whitlam’s first visit to China in 1971, when he was still leader of the opposition, had been a positive development, as was the Labor Party’s promise to abandon the White Australia policy, which it would fulfil after forming a new gove
rnment in 1972.
The thought that Mama might be allowed to leave Shiqi to come and live with me was now within the realms of possibility. But first I had to become financially able to support her, in case I got the opportunity to sponsor her. To do that, I myself had to meet the requirements for Australian residency: a tertiary degree and gainful employment. So, I kept reminding myself to be patient.
The medical course was tough. By the end of Med II, nearly half of our original class of 350 had failed and some students had dropped out altogether. I felt blessed that I’d managed to proceed to Med III. On hearing this news, Ying wrote to congratulate me, while at the same time reminding me to write home more often.
‘Mama waits at the entrance to the street for your mail – the same way she used to wait for Grandmother’s living allowance from Hong Kong,’ she wrote. ‘She worries about you and can’t sleep when she doesn’t hear anything. She only smiles when your news arrives, and then she is so happy that she can’t sleep for a few more nights. But it brings a glow to her face. There are many sojourners returning to visit their families and we’d love to see you home one day in Shiqi. Things are changing and it is safe to come home for a visit now. Maybe when you’ve finished your study, but that’s four more years to go. Such a long time to wait . . . I’d also like you to meet my boyfriend, Hao-ming.’ I was delighted for Ying but still worried about Mama.