by May Q. Wong
A very few were businessmen, diplomats, or students. Ah Gay Sieng seems to have had business acumen, as his photographs invariably show him in Western business garb—a suit, tie, and leather brogues—rather than labourers’ clothing. A clue to the authenticity of the clothes is that they fit him, making it unlikely he had borrowed or rented them just for posing in pictures.
He also had kinship ties that provided access to financial resources. In China, he could afford to abandon the family house that had been burned by bandits to start over with a large lot in a new hamlet. To ensure family continuity, he was able to buy a son. He did not go into debt to pay the Canadian head tax required of Chinese immigrants.
Wong Gay Sieng, Ah Dang’s adoptive father, circa 1920s.
UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER
Ah Dang was respectful with Ah Gay Sieng. Here was a man on whom he could rely: someone who was self-sufficient and successful, who didn’t need opium to forget his failures, who made his own luck. He seemed to epitomize his name, Gay Sieng, which meant “Remembering Constancy.”
While Ah Gay Sieng spent much of Ah Dang’s growing-up years away, working in Canada, the boy did not feel deserted. His father faithfully supported the family, sending remittance cheques back regularly, although many other Gim San law abandoned their families after they left China. He insisted the boy attend school. He wrote letters to his son, telling him stories of the wonders of the distant land as an incentive for him to continue his studies and to prepare him for a life away from the hamlet.
In 1921, when Ah Dang was eighteen years old, he too left for Canada. He finally had the chance to observe his father closely and learn how to be an honourable man, but the time they spent together was cut cruelly short. Just a few years after welcoming his son to Canada, Ah Gay Sieng took his final trip back to China. Only in his fourth decade of life, he had been diagnosed with throat cancer. Back home, sensing he had little time left, he wrote to his son, requesting him to return to China to choose a bride. Sadly, Ah Gay Sieng did not live to see this final wish fulfilled. Ah Dang was now the keeper of the family line.
[W]eeding their fields by hand, crawling between their crops on their hands and knees with the sun roasting their backs and the mud soaking their limbs—[was] a truly pitiable fate . . .
—Francesca Bray, The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies
TWO
Hai Ngao Nui—Cowherd Girl
AH THLOO: CHINA, 1921
“Hurry up! Move, you stubborn old bull! Time to go home. It’s my turn to eat.” The buffalo didn’t move, despite the tug on its nose and the bare heels beating rhythmically on its flank. Ten-year-old Ah Thloo fearlessly straddled its back. She was a small girl, but for her age and size, she was strong. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The bamboo switch she held in her other hand slapped the animal’s rump, urging it to stop grazing and start walking. However, none of her kicks or slaps hurt the animal. She would never do anything to jeopardize the health of the buffalo, for it was her family’s most valuable asset.
• • •
AH THLOO’S FAMILY: CHINA, 1877–1925
Ah Thloo always said she came from humble beginnings. “My parents were just farming peasants and I was a hai ngao nui, cowherd girl.”
Her family had grown rice and vegetables on leased lands for generations. Of her parents, it was her mother, whom she called Ah Ma, who was the farmer, responsible for the fields, overseeing seasonal helpers, and toiling on the land herself. The family also kept chickens, geese, ducks, and pigs.
It was her father, whom she called Ah Yea, who was the exception. Unlike most of their neighbours in the large, rural village of Ngao Loo How in Guangdong Province, Ah Thloo’s father, Jiang Poy Lim, had been educated and did not actually work the land. He was born in the third year of Emperor Guangxu’s reign, in 1877, on the seventh day of the eleventh month of the lunar calendar. An experienced architect and builder, he often lived on-site at construction projects in neighbouring towns and villages. Well known around the county for his skill as well as his honesty in business dealings, he prospered for a time. He insisted on being paid in tien, cash; he provided an allowance to his wife to purchase necessities and left the running of the household to his mother and the farming to his wife and children.
With prudent money management, Ah Poy Lim’s wife invested in land, but these were only small, scattered plots, worked on by the household’s members. Thus, the Jiang family was never known as aye jee, landlords. Ah Poy Lim’s work brought in cash, but like the cobbler’s children who are the last to get shoes, his family had to make do with limited space in their home. He just never got around to expanding his own, three-room house.
To his family, he was a remote but kindly figure. During the days when he was not on a job, he sat at a teahouse in the neighbouring market town of Vak Sa, passing the time over a pot of tea, exchanging news, and conducting business with other men. He came home just to eat his meals and to sleep.
At dinner, Ah Poy Lim was served first. Only after he had swallowed a final bowl of clear broth, and emitted a loud belch to show his appreciation of the meal, did the rest of the family eat. No one in the family thought this practice was strange; it was just the way things were and always had been.
When Ah Poy Lim came home from his jobs, the house took on a different atmosphere, like that of a festival day. The servant girls, daughters of poor relatives, made sure every corner of the house was spotless and all the rooms were aired. Ah Poy Lim always brought home treats for his dinner and was generous in sharing them with the family. From the kitchen hearth came the pungent smells of dried salted fish, fermented shrimp paste, or pressed goose.
He was a traditionalist in other ways. While he valued education, he saw its benefits only for his sons. His eldest son, Gim Yoke, received a superior education, and Ah Poy Lim was progressive enough to allow the young man to study art at a Western university in distant Shanghai. Ah Thloo would later recall sneaking into her older brother’s room one day and being embarrassed, but fascinated, at discovering drawings he had done of naked women.
When Ah Thloo was born, on the eleventh day of the first month of the lunar calendar, in 1911, the country was just getting over the disastrous effects of the 1907 famine in east-central China, which had extinguished twenty-four million lives. Although the disaster had occurred a thousand kilometres north of the family’s farm, starving refugees drifted south into Guangdong Province and food riots broke out in its capital city, Guangzhou. In addition, political forces were on the brink of toppling the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the child P’u-i, who lived in distant Beijing. A change in the Mandate of Heaven could only bring chaos. When her father named her Tew Thloo, meaning “Autumn Compassion,” he hoped that the chaos would be short-lived. Unfortunately, it was not.
Guangzhou’s newspapers followed the exploits of its star citizen, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who became China’s first president on January 1, 1912. He provided China’s people with their first brief taste of democracy. A month later, Dr. Sun resigned in favour of General Yuan Shikai, the former leader of the Imperial troops, in an attempt to maintain harmony within the country and to protect it against foreign intervention. The general, an experienced military organizer and diplomat, also known as a reformer, was thought to be the right choice as president, but declaring himself president for life, Yuan actually aspired to become the next emperor. Although he never succeeded in crowning himself, he ruled as if he had, through a brief reign of political terror, until his sudden demise in 1916.
Living in Ngao Loo How, a few days’ travel south of Guangzhou, far away from the battlefields and centres of political intrigue in Beijing, Ah Thloo and her family were sheltered from direct danger for much of her childhood. The seasons, more than politics, ruled their daily lives. Surrounded by bamboo forests, fields, and rice paddies, they spent their days coaxing sustenance from the soil.
In the years when the weather gods smiled—rather than cursing people with f
loods or droughts—vegetables, fruits, and sugar cane grew in abundance. Silkworms thrived in mulberry fields. But the most important of all the crops was rice, the symbol of life. At every meal, Ah Thloo and her siblings were reminded of its preciousness and dared not leave a single grain uneaten in their bowls. Their mantra was “one grain of rice is one drop of sweat.”
The rice-growing cycle started with the monsoons, when rainwater made it possible for the fields to be broken up and the soil mixed into a thick, smooth mud. It was helpful to have a water buffalo to pull a plow; otherwise, tilling and churning were done by hand-held tools and stomping feet. Sprouted rice shoots were transplanted by hand into rows in the newly prepared fields.
The shoots grew in standing water, while human-powered irrigation wheels adjusted the water levels. Night soil, the black gold of peasant farmers, fertilized the crop. After a few months, the water was drained away, and the mature stalks were cut by hand and stacked upright in bunches to dry. Then the stalks were threshed, the kernels spread out in the sun, and the husks ground off. Finally, the precious pearls were gathered and stored in airtight ceramic jars. Each step required a large investment of human labour, and everyone in the family was expected to work and contribute to the household’s efforts.
The Jiang family’s traditional living arrangements facilitated this; sharing the three-room house were Ah Thloo’s paternal grandmother, parents, older brother and his wife, and two older sisters. Ah Thloo’s mother was a tall, handsome woman. Originally of the Loo family, Ah Shee had been born on the third day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar in 1880. Over her lifetime, Ah Shee bore six children, but only five survived to adulthood. Her first-born, a girl they named Tew Fuy, died young. Her next child, the son, Gim Yoke, on whom everyone doted, was born in 1899. Then followed three daughters: Tew May in 1901, Tew Ngoke in 1905, and Tew Thloo in 1911.
Ah Shee, like her husband, had never been demonstrative with her children; her days, which started before dawn and ended long after sundown, were too filled with physical toil to allow time for play. Of course, she had nursed them when they were younger, carrying them in a via aie, a baby sling, when she went to work in the fields. The carrier, a square piece of fabric with four long cloth straps, secured the baby with its belly on her back while she worked and provided a snug holder in front for the child while she breast-fed. She had nursed her first son for as long as he wanted; she had been young and strong. The rest of the children were weaned after six months and left in the care of their paternal grandmother. When the youngsters were old enough to feed themselves and walk unaided, and were deemed to have enough dexterity to pull weeds, they accompanied her to the fields. Every hand, no matter how small, was needed for the work.
By the time Ah Shee’s youngest and last son, Ngien Choo, was born in 1918, her two eldest children were married. A year later, her third daughter was married off to a man from Southeast Asia. Her son had brought his wife home, and her daughters had gone to live with their respective parents-in-law. The girls had been good helpers around the house and fields, and with them gone, the Jiang family had to sublet their leased lands.
Ah Shee had a caring, if distant, relationship with her daughters. A parent rarely grew too emotionally attached to a daughter because she was destined to belong to another family. If time, distance, and their mothers-in-law allowed, Ah Shee’s daughters were encouraged to come back with the grandchildren to visit once a year during Gwoh Nien, the fifteen-day New Year festival. To celebrate, the extended family took a few afternoons off work and gathered for feasting; no farmer could afford to leave the crops for two whole weeks.
Ah Thloo remembered her sisters bringing gifts of homemade dim sum—small, sweet or savoury dumplings—live geese, fruits, and sweets. Sugar cane stalks were a favourite. Once the hard outer bark was shaved away with a knife, the fibrous tissues of the stalk could be cut into bite-sized rounds for the children. Adults tore chunks directly off the stalk with their teeth and chewed to release the subtly sweet juice, spitting the remains onto the ground. As the day wore on, the broken, dried fibres piled up in front of everyone’s feet. The mounds were then gathered into a bucket and used as pig feed; nothing was wasted.
Ah Thloo’s family was luckier than most, as her father’s earnings had enabled the family to purchase their own water buffalo. Landowners of large holdings had most of the other beasts of burden in the village. Without the animal, Ah Thloo’s family could not have managed the extra fields they owned and would have grown only enough to feed themselves. They would not have had any surplus to trade for luxuries like salt, tea, and tobacco nor could they have afforded to take a few afternoons off to celebrate the holiday. Those who could afford it leased a buffalo, sometimes from their mother.
Ah Thloo also considered herself luckier than most children, for she had a best friend in the family’s water buffalo. She thought often of the day she was introduced to him.
Jiang Tew Ngoke, AKA Ah Thlam Day, in her latter years, 1966.
ROBERT WONG, CHINA
Ah Thloo was only six at the time, but she understood how important the animal was, and approached him reverently and cautiously. He towered over her, but she trusted her elder sister, who showed no fear as she stood between Ah Thloo and the buffalo. After all, Tew Ngoke, whom she called Ah Thlam Day, Third Elder Sister, was his minder, a hai ngao nui. She was also Ah Thloo’s idol.
Just as Ah Thloo’s trembling fingers reached up to touch the yellow bristles around the buffalo’s mouth, he shook his head and snorted. Stepping back to avoid the spray of warm, gooey snot, too late to close her mouth, she fell, sputtering and spitting. “Echhh!”
“Ha! Ha! Ha! He did the same thing the first time I met him! He’s saying, ‘How are you?’” her older sister said, bent over with laughter.
When Ah Thloo picked herself up from the ground after being “greeted” by the water buffalo, she offered him a handful of fresh grass.
“It’s his favourite! You can call him Ah Ngao,” Ah Ngoke approved.
A few days later, Ah Thloo had her first ride. Holding on to the reins, Ah Ngoke gave her a boost onto the buffalo’s broad back.
“Sit right behind the hump on his back. Press your legs tightly on each side. Don’t worry, his horns can’t reach you there, even when he turns his head.”
Stepping onto a stump, the older girl grasped one horn and, using the animal’s shoulder muscles as footholds for her bare feet, climbed on behind her sister. Ah Thloo trembled with excitement, but her delight turned to fear when the animal started to walk and she was thrown off balance. Ah Ngoke caught her and hugged her close, whispering, “You are so brave!”
The buffalo took them along one of the paths circling the rice paddies. By the time they reached their home, Ah Thloo’s body had learned to sway with the buffalo’s movements and she was balancing on her own. The dilemma of how to get off was solved when her sister dismounted first and caught Ah Thloo as she slid off. Although her thighs ached and her legs shook like jelly, she hobbled into the house to announce her triumphant first buffalo ride to her mother and grandmother.
Over the next few weeks, Ah Thloo learned to mount and dismount on her own. If her buttocks became numb while riding, she discovered she could move and shift her body without causing the animal to miss a stride. Her sister taught her the verbal commands and the non-verbal cues: a tug on the reins, a nudge of the thighs, or a flick of the bamboo switch. Ah Thloo learned that despite the buffalo’s size and imposing, sharp, curved horns, it was quite docile around people. Sometimes, her sister just held on to its tail and walked alongside; it knew the way home.
Although they were separated by six years, Ah Thloo and her sister were very similar. Unlike their tall mother and older siblings, both girls were compact. They did things slowly and methodically, speaking quietly, but with hidden strength. That was probably why the water buffalo adjusted so quickly to Ah Thloo. Not long afterwards, her sister told her, “Ah Thloo, you have learned your lessons we
ll. You will now take care of Ah Ngao. Mother needs me to work in the fields.”
Later that year, Ah Ngoke moved to the nui oak, girls’ house, a few lanes from their own home. Ah Thloo was torn between losing her sister’s companionship and looking forward to her new responsibility and its accompanying freedom. The paths of the two sisters naturally diverged, but the bonds they had shared while looking after Ah Ngao served to keep them close.
• • •
AH THLOO: CHINA, 1921
Four years after Ah Thloo’s meeting with Ah Ngao, Ah Ngoke had married and moved away, and her baby brother had been born. In addition to Ah Thloo’s main job as a cowherd, she was responsible for taking care of her brother in the evenings.
Recently, she had joined a small group of other cowherds, all children of landless peasants who were hired to watch their charges in exchange for an evening meal from the respective animals’ owners. Their brief company in the mornings, and occasionally at midday, relieved the monotony of her job. Ah Thloo’s own bull, while castrated, apparently retained some residual testosterone, and when another one came near, an inevitable show of domination occurred. With a member of the opposite sex, the mêlée that ensued could be worse. The animal had to be kept apart from the others; buffalo-minding was a lonely job.
Each morning, after completing her household chores, Ah Thloo ate a meagre meal—often just a cup of hot tea and a small bowl of jook, rice soup, flavoured with leftovers from the previous night’s supper. The children met when they fetched their animals from the communal byre. Unlike Ah Thloo, few of the other children had eaten anything, so they organized garden raids to feed themselves. Ah Thloo knew it was wrong to steal, but she participated to help her companions. Depending on what the children planned to take and whether it required cooking, they each took certain responsibilities on a rotating basis. These jobs included the scout, who suggested the targeted garden and a safe place to gather, the robbers, and the cook, who was also the lookout.