The business district is crowded with men and women in suits. They take their lunch breaks in little alleys. My dad talks about one of my many possible futures, and in this one, I live in Hong Kong. J could teach at one of the universities. I could get a job writing at a newspaper or in an ad agency or wherever—I am very capable, according to him. Maybe I could even go back to school and then teach, and then J and I could become university professors. Academia is safe; it will always be there. I’ve heard this so many times in my life that I instinctually say, Okay. But then the more he considers this hypothetical, the more intricate it becomes, to the point where he’s detailing the customs process for shipping the dog and the cat.
“No,” I say. “I wouldn’t want to deal with that.”
“It’s not a big deal,” he says. “People move all the time and bring their pets.”
“Okay, well, I don’t think he would want to move here anyway. He doesn’t like crowded cities.”
“It will grow on him. He’ll love all the food. Your bonehead loves Chinese food. Even more than you do! Ha ha. The science departments at University of Hong Kong are ranked very high. Look up the rankings next time you’re at the coffee shop, and tell him.”
“We’re not moving here, okay? And we definitely wouldn’t move here together. I don’t even know if I still want to be with him. We’re having problems. I can’t even think about something like that, so please just stop, okay?”
“Stop shouting. People are looking. They all understand English here.”
He is right. Our lunch neighbors glance disapprovingly at me, a grown woman throwing a fit at her old dad. A shame.
A teenage boy behind the register mumbles something and smiles sheepishly.
“What did he say?” I ask.
My dad says something back to the boy, to which the boy responds and shrugs.
They talk some more. I grow impatient.
“What did he say?”
“He says you look like an actress.”
“What did you say back to him?”
“I asked him which actress, but he didn’t have anybody in particular in mind. He says you look like somebody who could be in a movie.”
“Tell him thanks. I’ve never heard that before.”
“I get it all the time, here and back in the States,” he says. “Your uncle was a famous actor here. He was part of the Hong Kong Rat Pack, that’s what they called themselves. It might be people are able to see some resemblance. For me, it’s that I’m very cool, and they think that I must be an actor by my demeanor. That’s the word, right? Demeanor? For how someone behaves and holds themselves?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
That night, my nerves frayed from his company, after he is finally tired, I go out alone. (“Be careful,” he says. “Watch your surroundings. You could get mugged, or worse. Call the hotel if anything happens. I’ll wake up.”) I say I’ll be fine, even though I am nervous to walk around without him, despite knowing that plenty of travelers do this, including a white acquaintance of mine who recently posted photos on Instagram of her #solovacay to HK! But that is a different story. There is no accommodation to my foreignness. Nothing marks me as different—I even dress Chinese, my dad says, after I buy and won’t take off a puffy blue jacket from a street vendor. (“People can tell I’m not from here, by my leather jacket and cowboy boots,” he said. “You blend in. You look like everyone else.”)
I walk out of the hotel. The chandeliers in the tearoom across the street glimmer through the windows. I test myself by walking around this quieter block. I put on the face of someone who has somewhere to go. I survive. I relax a little. I go toward Mong Kok, toward the businesses and shops, the bustling narrow streets crowded with people. I push my way through.
Inside a cosmetics store, where I think I will find products made for a face like mine, there are large billboards for skin brightening, lightening, whitening creams. In them, the models look like ghostly dolls. I pick up items from bins, spray and smell perfumes, try product samples on the backs of my hands. The actions of consumerism are familiar; I become one with the other buyers. I pick out an eyeliner and lipstick, wait in the long line, and once the transaction has taken place, feel like I’ve accomplished a major feat. Blending in can feel good, or at least satisfyingly comfortable.
At Portland Street, a fixture in Hong Kong movies and now the city’s most popular red-light district. We came during the day, when it was quiet and shut down, but at night it is entirely different. The neon lights cast a bright, chaotic topography above the people below. I consider walking down the hill, experiencing what it has to offer, going through the doors to be like the men and women inside. I wonder what men like Hippolytus thought of this place, the particular use Chinese women could have. Then a man bumps into me from behind. He scowls, mumbles something, and walks off. I stare at his back as he goes down the street and into a building. I turn back.
In the middle of the night, my phone buzzes, notifying me of a memory from one year ago: Northstar, December 2012. The algorithms have created an album and video of our trip to Tahoe, a series of photos of J smiling over a plate of food, of me proudly holding a snowball, of steam rising from our legs in a hot tub, of our faces pressed together, flecks of white dotting our hair and eyelashes. The soundtrack to the video is of violin and piano, with long, low notes that crescendo into high, quick notes, and it almost makes me cry, until I see that the music is literally titled “sentimental.” I change it to “chill,” and a quick beat drops, with a woman’s voice oohing and ahhing in Auto-Tune. I watch the video of my life one year ago to each soundtrack—gentle, happy, uplifting, epic, extreme, dreamy, club—and each evokes a different atmosphere to my—or the phone’s—memory. I can’t decide which one feels the most true.
My dad lets me pick the next restaurant, so I choose a sushi place that shows up with high ratings on TripAdvisor. When we get there, the service is slow, my dad’s sake tastes wrong (according to him), and he complains the whole time. “What kind of place did you choose? None of these new restaurants know anything about good service. This fish doesn’t look fresh. You shouldn’t eat so much raw fish; you can get worms. Where’s the waiter? I’m going to give him a piece of my mind. We’ve been waiting here for fucking half an hour for the check.”
The trick now is to stop speaking. To go absolutely mute.
“My grandmother on my mother’s side, the best woman I’ve ever known, made a big fucking scene, so big, the whole neighborhood was there at our apartment. Have you ever watched that movie called The Ten Commandments? Uh, what’s the actor’s name, an old actor, he’s gone now, he was always in these biblical movies, acted as Moses. I try to think of his name. You can look it up later and tell me . . .
“So my grandmother is yelling and then the police came. They have these neighborhood police taking care of all these things, they know everybody and their dirty laundry, even back in those days. First, of course, she burst out like a lot of women do, going wild for a while, then she calmed down and finally she said, very loudly, ‘Let my people go.’ Back then I didn’t understand what that meant, now I think back and that’s exactly what Moses said to the pharaoh because there were a lot of Jewish slaves in Egypt at the time. In other words, she said, I will stay, but let my people, my family, go. My uncle was a political prisoner. Stubbornness. He was in jail for five-year terms, the first, second, third time. He spent more time in jail as a mature man than he was outside of jail. This was my mother’s younger brother. I don’t know if he’s still alive. Every time I see Didi, somehow he comes to mind, my grandmother’s son, the one in prison. Then it also comes to my mind, it’s because they are both the same sign, doggies. Not just looks, also how they are inside, their nature.
“The same year Zhou Enlai died and Mao Zedong died, then that summer there was a big earthquake in Tangshan between Beijing and Manchuria territory, a huge earthquake. Basically the whole city was gone. They could not possibly rebuild, so what t
hey did was bulldoze everything. Nineteen seventy-six. That year my grandmother died, then Mao died on September ninth, all that happened in the same year, and then my uncle was let go and he went back to Shanghai to collect my grandmother’s ashes and a few belongings. I don’t know how much was left after the Cultural Revolution. My grandmother was born in the year of the rooster, 1909, so when she died in 1976 she was not that old, she was sixty-seven or something. Around my age right now. But she suffered a lot, she had cancer, well, she was smoker, that did not help . . .
“Look up the actor from the movie, he’s an old actor, I don’t know if he’s alive anymore. But my grandmother said the same thing as Moses: Let my people go! And then soon after, me and my brother got our exit visas to escape the Cultural Revolution in China and go to Macau.”
Is it possible to die of emotional overdose and jet lag?
At the Hong Kong Museum of History, I ask if he’d mind if I walked off alone.
“Sure,” he says. “I already know all of this Hong Kong history. I don’t need to see it again.”
To have a break from him is a huge relief. I go through slowly, reading plaques, taking photos.
The Boat Dwellers segregated themselves from land-based people. . . . When on shore they were extremely careful not to get into trouble with the land inhabitants.
. . . Bun mountains (bun towers) . . . are erected for the Bun Festival on Cheung Chau Island. . . . People climbed the towers and made a grab for the “lucky” buns, which were said to bring protection and good fortune. Unfortunately, a tower collapsed during the scramble in 1978, causing many injuries, and the practice was suspended.
To provide temporary housing for these “coolie” laborers in transit, many cramped and unsanitary lodgings sprang up in Hong Kong, being widely referred to as “pigsties.”
Hong Kong’s cultural life was significantly enriched by the flourishing screen industry in the 1960s and 1970s as evidenced by the professional production of Cantonese and Mandarin movies of different genres that catered to the varying tastes of the populace.
When the technique of perming hair was introduced in Shanghai, the city’s hairdressing trade flourished. After World War II, many Shanghainese barbers settled in Hong Kong and established Shanghainese-style barbershops.
Hours later, when I am done, I find him asleep, his chin on his chest and his mouth open, in a lobby chair. Seeing him there, tired and vulnerable, floods me with guilt.
“Daddy, wake up,” I say, tapping him. “Let’s take a cab back to the hotel so you can nap.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he says, jolting up. “No cab. The bus costs practically nothing.”
“I’ll pay for it,” I say.
“No. It’s a waste of money. And you don’t even have a job right now.”
He knows which words leave the worst sting.
The cigarettes here come with labels like SMOKING KILLS and SMOKERS DIE YOUNGER and SMOKING CAUSES MOUTH CANCER and QUITTING WILL IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH, accompanied by gruesome images. This does not appear to have any effect whatsoever on the people in line with their many cartons.
Back in Zhuhai, an ad on TV:
A Chinese woman doing laundry. A black man with paint on his face comes into her home and whistles at her and winks. She curls her finger to gesture him over. They are standing close, face-to-face. When he moves in toward her she pops a laundry detergent capsule into his mouth, then shoves him into her washing machine, headfirst. The camera pans to containers of the laundry detergent while noises of a full, clanky machine play in the background. Pan back to the washing machine, now quiet, presumably done with its cleaning cycle. The lid opens and out of the machine rises a pale Chinese man. The woman looks googly-eyed at him, almost swooning. The Chinese man winks. They live happily ever after.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Oh, typical Chinese racist stuff,” says my dad.
“I never had any problems with black people in America,” he says. “Always got along great. I get along with anybody, though, unless I don’t want to. You know your daddy. Wherever I go, I fit in. Without the black community we’d have no civil rights movement. Asians in America followed their lead. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We wouldn’t have what we have today without the black movements. We owe a lot to them. Remember that.”
I nod and nod, happy to hear it.
“So many Chinese and other Asians in America today don’t even know history. They just want money. Money, money, money.”
“Okay . . .” I say. “Not all of them, though.”
“A lot of them. Point is, these new Chinese, they don’t know shit. Have you heard of Peter Yew?”
“No.”
“You need to do more research! Ah! Those gizmos. What are they for? Okay, Peter Yew. This was a few years after I’d gotten to New York. In 1973 or 1974 or 1975, one of those. There was a car accident in Chinatown between a white lady and a Chinese kid, and the cops get there and start beating on the Chinese kid. And this Peter, he sees the cop beating on the kid and he tries to stop it. And you know what happens? The cop starts beating on him! Chinatown wasn’t too happy about that. They complained to the NYPD. Nobody listened. A lot of groups got together and started organizing a big march to city hall. They were protesting police brutality against Asian Americans in New York. This was around the same time that lots of Asians were getting together and calling themselves Asian American, instead of Chinese or Vietnamese or Japanese. You’ve heard of Vincent Chin? Okay. So you know something you should know. All these people were organizing in Chinatown for a long time because of bad police treatment in their neighborhoods, so when Peter Yew gets beat up, it sparks a big protest, and I marched, you know, I walked to city hall with all of them. I knew a couple of police officers, too, from the camera shop, so I asked them for information. How many officers would they have at city hall? How were they preparing? They were buddies of mine. And see, this black cop I knew, he told me, ‘Be careful,’ and he gave me this brown paper bag. Guess what was inside? A piece. What, you don’t believe me? It’s true. And you know what I did? I gave that information straight to the organizers. I kept the gun for myself, though, ha! Luckily I didn’t need to use it. The captain at the time, I don’t remember his name, but he was greased real well. Took all the red envelopes, still didn’t do shit for Chinatown. After the protest, he was removed. Probably transferred to a crappy position, to who knows where. The cops that beat up on the guy got indicted for assault. It made a difference back then. All these Chinese today, they don’t know. They live in their bubbles. They don’t know history. You need to know your history.”
“Another problem is all these lazy immigrants. All these Chinese taking advantage of the system, like my cousin’s mom, taking disability money for years, for what? She never worked once. She didn’t even try to learn English. You think she knows any of this history? There are a lot of them like that. I’m just proud that even when things got bad, I never took handouts. Never. Then you have people coming from these places just to terrorize America, so yeah, do I think we need some stronger immigration laws? Maybe we do.”
“What? That makes no sense. How can you say that when you came illegally, too? How can you—”
“I’ve lived through a lot. I have more experience. I’ve lived this long, haven’t I? I worked hard. I wanted to be American. Remember, you’re American first.”
The year was 1971. He jumped ship with fifty dollars in his pocket and little English on his tongue. Of course it sounds like your stereotypical immigrant story. There he is, walking to the Seamen’s Church Institute, asking for a room and a job, and since there is a small window of post-anti-Chinese-immigration era and pre-anti-all-immigration era, they accept him, offer him a room for ten dollars per night, and write down the address for the office where he can pick up his social security card—what he needs to be able to work—the next day. That easy!
An email from J: hi, I’m looking up coats for you. It’s get
ting so cold here and I think you could use a warm one. Let me know if you like any of these, or if you don’t want a coat.
I like all of the coats, but I don’t say so, because I still don’t know whether I will need one.
In China these days, the children behave terribly, my dad has concluded after two years of living there.
“They scream and cry when they don’t get what they want,” he says. “And the parents just spoil them, acting like their servants. This country’s going to have a lot of trouble when these kids grow up.”
We go to a market. First floor: fish. Second floor: dried goods and vegetables. Third floor: clothing and accessories. Three little girls on fake Razor scooters zoom by us, nearly running over our feet and knocking our ankles.
“Where’re their parents?” I ask.
“Probably store owners here. These kids think this market is their home. They don’t pay attention.”
As we walk along the corridors, I can hear the girls approaching behind us again, the sound of their scooter wheels bumping against the uneven tiles. This time as they zoom by, my dad points at them and says, “Stop it! Stop it right now! You slow down!” in English. The girls slow down and stare, open-mouthed. Then they recover. They giggle. They follow us for a while, which I point out.
“They’re fine. They’re going slow now. They just need somebody to tell them what’s okay and not okay,” he says.
As we look at some scarves, the girls approach. The leader of the crew has pigtails and missing front teeth. She looks up and smiles. Her friends beside her smile, too, their young faces sweet and mischievous. Pigtails leader asks where we’ve come from, in a demanding, clear voice. (After a week of watching Chinese TV and listening to my dad talk to people, I can understand her, albeit simple, sentence, as though the Chinese really was dormant somewhere inside me, now revived through immersion.) I am surprised the girls aren’t scared of my dad after he scolded them. And too, I am surprised at my father’s calm.
Meiguo, he says, smiling.
Days of Distraction Page 26