by May Q. Wong
Going to school was a joy for Ah Thloo. It gave her something to look forward to, somewhere to get away to, because the atmosphere at home with her mother-in-law was hostile. The house they shared was a single, large, rectangular room, built in haste by her husband’s venerated but long-departed father. The space was divided by pieces of furniture. Ah Thloo’s marriage bed was in one corner behind the thliew jiang, folding privacy screen. It was further surrounded by the chest of drawers, dressing table, and washstand that had been part of her dowry.
Her mother-in-law slept behind her own bedroom furniture in the opposite corner with Ah Moydoy. A lazy girl, Ah Moydoy preferred to stay in and around the house and gossip with anyone who would listen rather than do her share of the work in the fields.
The cooking area occupied another corner. It was set up with the daaw, cooking hearth, a water reservoir, and a food preparation table, on top of which was a large wooden chopping board and cleaver. A small dining table, surrounded by four simple, wooden chairs, took up the remaining space, and constituted the communal living area.
When Ah Thloo did not immediately produce a grandchild, she felt the bite of her mother-in-law’s disdain. The old woman and Ah Moydoy were like the two forks of a viper’s tongue. Ah Thloo was treated like a slave, but school and her teacher were her salvation.
Ah Fonge Dange was the thlange saang, teacher, of the school in Nga Yieow. The village, about a twenty-minute walk from Longe Gonge Lay, was large enough to have a full-time, one-room schoolhouse, with permanent desks, chairs, and a blackboard. It wasn’t unusual to have students of various ages at different levels of learning, but at nineteen, Ah Thloo stood out as a beginner.
Ah Fonge Dange taught the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The students had to buy sets of books, one for each subject. In addition, they learned about the history of China. He kept the students informed of current events by teaching them how to read a newspaper. One day the teacher introduced the class to some writings by a man named Mao, who had been organizing unions in Hunan Province, on the northern border of Guangdong. Mao wrote about a “class struggle” between peasants and their oppressive landlords, who imposed heavy rents and taxes and high interest rates, and used exploitive labour practices, aided and abetted by corrupt officials. Ah Thloo thought back to her years with her fellow cowherds, recalling their abject poverty in comparison to the great wealth of people like the woman whose garden they had raided. What her teacher talked about in class opened her eyes to the world beyond the boundaries of the market towns.
The students learned to read and write the same way they learned arithmetic, by rote. Each day the teacher selected a passage from a book and read it through while the students followed the text with their fingers. At home that night, they would niem see, memorize the text, and prepare to mak see, write the piece from memory, the next day. They also had to be ready to be called on to stand up for an oral recitation.
Applying her mind to the task of learning was a challenge Ah Thloo loved. It took all her concentration to keep up with the class. She already knew she had a good head for numbers, and she soon caught up in the other subjects with children who had been in school for many more years.
In 1931, the teacher had much tragic news to report. That summer, the Yangtze River flooded, killing more than one hundred and forty-five thousand people, while fourteen million refugees were left stranded. In the fall, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, which threatened the sovereignty of China. In 1933, the name of Mao again came up in discussion, this time associated with the Chinese Communist Party, which was being attacked by the government.
At home, when Ah Thloo was nagged by her mother-in-law, or confronted by her sister-in-law, she would recall something new she had learned that day and mull it over. Hard labour and trivial tasks could be endured when her mind was occupied elsewhere, and eventually she devised a plan to buffer herself even more securely.
Ah Thloo’s new home, the nonge toon, rural hamlet, of Longe Gonge Lay, an offshoot of the much larger village of Cha Liang about a ten-minute walk away, had been built by a group of brothers named Wong. A number had made their money working in Montreal, Canada. The second brother, Wong Oy Lan, known as Ah Ngay Gonge, or Second Elder Uncle, had invited his distant relative, Wong Gay Sieng, Ah Dang’s adoptive father, to build there as well, when his family abandoned their ancestral house and village after being targeted by bandits. Unfortunately for his wife, on that trip Ah Gay Sieng stayed in China only long enough to build a small house for her and their son. When he returned home for the last time, he was too sick from cancer to even initiate an expansion of their house before he died.
The hamlet consisted of nine houses, built in pairs, lined up in five rows. Between each row and each two-house block was a lane; each house had a front and back door leading out to the main lanes. Across the lane from one door of Ah Tew May’s house was where Ah Ngay Gonge’s wife and two of his three daughters lived. His eldest daughter, Ah Ngan, had married even before her youngest sister was born and lived in a village an hour’s walk away. She was the same age as Ah Thloo, and they came to know each other later, when Ah Ngan came back to her family’s home during Kong Jien, the War of Resistance against the Japanese.
The middle daughter, Ah Lien, became Ah Thloo’s best friend in the hamlet during this time and they attended school together. The youngest daughter, Ah Aie, was not even two years old when Ah Thloo moved to the hamlet, but she soon became one of the “girls.” The families produced many boys, all cousins to Ah Lien and Ah Aie, but the hamlet was too small to have a nui oak. Ah Thloo helped the village and herself by inviting the sisters to study and sleep with her, creating a nui oak. At school she was a star student; the girls looked to her for help and they enjoyed each other’s company. They also provided a buffer between Ah Thloo and her spiteful relatives.
Meanwhile, she put her new knowledge to effective use. Ah Dang wrote regularly and always enclosed a money order. She was proud of being able to correspond with him and to manage their financial affairs on her own at the bank in the market town. While he could not always send much money, she was grateful for his financial support. She was very aware of the women around her who lived in poverty, neglected and abandoned by their husbands who were abroad. As the years went by, she started to feel more comfortable about her own husband and their marriage.
• • •
AH DANG: MONTREAL, 1930–1934
When Ah Dang returned to Vancouver on July 14, 1930, he continued to use the immigration receipt under the name of Wong Guey Dang. Some things were not worth changing.
But the city was very different; the Depression had hit hard in British Columbia. Its economy was so dependent on natural resources that when commodity prices for lumber and minerals plummeted, the suffering was widespread.
Layoffs had begun in Vancouver sawmills in 1929, and government agencies responded only reluctantly to Chinese requests for aid. Traditional self-help agencies in Vancouver’s Chinatown, such as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), could not meet the demand from the growing numbers of unemployed Chinese. Local Chinese restaurants supplied meals to the needy. By 1931, 80 per cent of Chinatown residents were idle. Some resorted to begging. It was cheaper to buy them passage back to China than to support them, and as the Depression progressed, the BC government paid for a few hundred men to return to China, stipulating they not come back to Canada for a minimum of two years.
Not long after Ah Dang’s return to Vancouver from China, he received a life-changing letter from Ah Ngay Gonge, who owned a laundry business in Eastern Canada. Ah Dang had maintained contact with him and looked up to him as a surrogate father after Ah Gay Sieng went back to China and died. Now, Ah Ngay Gonge became Ah Dang’s benefactor too. He invited Ah Dang to join him in Montreal because, while the city had not escaped the Depression, more job opportunities existed for Hong Ngange, Chinese people, there.
Ah Dang was ready for a change and this was probably
a prudent move. As it was, Ah Ngay Gonge had not left him much choice in the matter; in his letter, he had included a one-way train ticket on the Canadian Pacific Railway from Vancouver to Montreal.
The train left Vancouver in the evening. Unfortunately, it went through the Rocky Mountains in the dark of night. The closest Ah Dang had been to that area was when he had worked in the southeastern BC town of Salmo. He had only heard about the vast mountain range, with peaks so high they never lost their hats of ice and snow, and was disappointed that he would not be able to see them on this journey. Peering out into the growing darkness, he could perceive little outside the window of his bunk. Although the rhythmic click-clacking of the tracks and the undulating motion was making him tired, he felt the need for one last pee.
Balancing his way along the swaying car in the dimly lit hallway toward the washroom, he accidentally bumped into a Chinese porter.
“Pardon me,” Ah Dang said in Chinese. “I was looking down and didn’t see you coming.”
“No, sir, it was my all fault,” responded the porter in a similar dialect. “I apologize for my clumsiness.”
“What’s your family name?” Ah Dang asked.
“My name is Li. I am from Toisan,” replied the porter, understanding that the man had wanted to know where his family was from in China.
“Eh, what? My family name is Wong, from Hoyping. Ah Bak, Elder Sir, we’re neighbours!” Ah Dang guessed the man was older than his own twenty-nine years.
Ah Dang asked Ah Bak about the Rocky Mountains and his job on the train. Just as their discussion led them to talking about their countrymen who had built the railroad, the train whistle blew.
“Craigellachie. This is where the last spike was hammered in, in 1885,” said Ah Bak. “Did you know, not a single Chinese was invited to attend the ceremony?”
“We Chinese have had bitter lives, eh? I heard that the CCBA collected the bones of more than three hundred corpses and returned them to China for decent burial.”
When Ah Dang got back to his bunk later that evening, he found he couldn’t sleep. There were too many ghosts of his countrymen, whose mortal bones were still waiting to be found and buried properly, wandering the mountains.
• • •
Ah Ngay Gonge welcomed Ah Dang at Montreal’s impressive Windsor Station and offered him a place to stay. His home and laundry business were on St. Hubert Street, not far from the train station. They took the number 150 bus east on Dorchester Boulevard.
To help repay the cost of the train ticket, which Ah Dang insisted on doing, he helped Ah Ngay Gonge with the laundry. He scrubbed the garments on a wood-and-glass washboard until his hands and knuckles were raw from the harsh laundry soap. He learned to mend, starch, iron, fold, stack, wrap, and mark the finished items for each customer. The laundry consisted mostly of men’s white shirts, underwear, and socks. Sometimes, if he was home during the day, he helped out at the counter. During the day he looked for work, mostly in restaurants, but few people were hiring.
Wages for jobs that still existed were low. A full-time electrical technician at the prestigious Marconi Company was paid fourteen dollars a week, while a waitress might work for a few hours a day at forty-five cents per hour. A full meal, consisting of a bowl of soup, two slices of bread with butter, a main course of fish or meat, a spoonful of mashed potato, dessert, and coffee, cost only twenty-five cents, but few people could afford to pay even that amount. Rent for a room was seven dollars a week; a house might rent for twelve dollars a month. Without work and wages, however, many were forced to live rough on the streets or squat in abandoned or condemned buildings. Ah Dang was lucky to be living with Ah Ngay Gonge.
Ah Dang often walked by a large church on Bleury Street that had a noontime soup kitchen. Passing the open door, he saw that the kitchen provided a bowl of soup and two pieces of bread. He had expected to see adults but was shocked to see so many children in the lineup, some clinging listlessly to their mother’s filthy skirts, others sprawling limply on the ground, too hungry and tired to cry. He was reminded of his long-forgotten childhood, before he was reclaimed. His heart ached for the children, but there was nothing he could do to help them.
One of Ah Ngay Gonge’s regular customers noticed Ah Dang’s English. Although he spoke with a strong accent, he was quite fluent. Over the next few weeks, they exchanged a few pleasantries and Ah Dang mentioned his previous work experience; the customer offered him a job as his family’s cook.
Ah Dang was thus reinvented as a domestic servant for a wealthy white family (whose identity is now unknown) who had managed to survive the stock market crash. All his years of cooking in camps throughout BC were finally paying off. After passing a trial period, he was offered a modest monthly wage, most of which he literally socked away, as well as room and board. He stayed with the family until late 1934.
His guide was The Boston Cooking School Cook Book, by Fannie Merritt Farmer, published by McClelland & Stewart. He wrote his name, Wong Guey Dang, in neat script on the inside page, and he bookmarked pages with small, accordioned booklets of cake recipes distributed by Swans Down Cake Flour. He also collected recipes from the newspaper, written on scrap paper. One of these was a recipe for almond bars. Another was a cocktail recipe, calling for limes, rum, and egg whites.
On his days off, he went sightseeing in the city. When he first arrived in Montreal, Ah Ngay Gonge had taken him to Chinatown, which was then clustered along De La Gauchetière Street West, between St. Laurent and Jeanne Mance, and Dorchester Boulevard and De Vitre. There, Ah Dang was introduced to the major Chinese organizations.
As a hand laundry operator, Ah Ngay Gonge was very involved in the Chinese Association of Montreal, an organization similar to Vancouver’s CCBA. One of its activities was to defend operators’ rights and fight the mounting fees imposed by the provincial government. In Quebec, hand laundries were by far the single largest occupation of the Chinese. They worked long hours, for low returns, and were seen as competing against white women who took in laundry. In 1915, a licence cost fifty dollars, but Chinese operators were charged an extra fifty. In 1932, the association held off a proposed hike of one hundred dollars by the municipal government.
Ah Dang joined the Wong Wun Sun society, a clan association; it was a place for members to socialize and exchange news about China and their families. The stories from China brought mixed reactions. On the positive side, the Kuomintang Nationalist government was trying to bring order out of the chaos that had marked the warlord period. Ministries were created to deal with international affairs, such as war and regaining Chinese sovereignty in foreign relations, as well as with domestic issues of finance, education, and justice. But in 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria and established the puppet government of Manchukuo. A year later, the Japanese established a military presence in Shanghai, and while the incident did not lead to war, the Japanese made their way into northern China through demands and negotiations. However, instead of repelling the foreign invaders, General Jiang spent his resources fighting the Chinese Communists, raising great indignation among students and intellectual activists within China and elsewhere.
With growing frustration, Ah Dang watched the advance of the Japanese by reading Chinese newspapers. While Ah Thloo, his mother, and her adopted daughter were relatively safe in the south of China, he felt it would be only a matter of time before the determined Japanese forces overtook the whole country, if Jiang continued to ignore the foreign threat while fighting his personal civil war.
As a diversion from the news of China, Ah Dang looked into activities offered by the churches serving the Chinese population of Montreal. The Chinese Catholic Mission had existed since 1918; its greatest contribution was the mission hospital, run by the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception and funded by the Chinese community. Initially established to deal with the worldwide influenza epidemic, the mission bought a building on Lagauchetière Street West two years later, to serve as a hospital for chronically ill, single men with
no relatives. The mission sisters and doctors volunteered their services. There was also an outpatient dispensary, where Chinese from as far away as Halifax came for treatment. Ah Dang would later donate funds to help build a new hospital on St. Denis Street, away from Chinatown.
The Chinese Presbyterian Mission was started in 1897 by Chan Nam-sing and Joseph Thompson, missionaries from China. Whereas Catholics were more apt to follow dogma, dismissing all ancient Chinese traditions, Pastor Chan was more flexible. He did not pressure the Chinese to abandon ancestor worship, and interestingly, he and his family followed the Chinese lunar calendar and celebrated Chinese New Year; when his son, Paul, was born, they celebrated the child’s one-month birthday by giving out dyed red eggs. He also allowed non-Christian Chinese to be buried in Mount Royal Cemetery. The Presbyterian Church offered Canadian-born Chinese a kindergarten,
a band, a Canadian Girls in Training group, a Chinese school, and a young people’s society.
Montreal started to recover from the Depression in the mid-1930s. Ah Dang watched with fascination the construction projects of the day, including the Jacques Cartier Bridge linking Montreal with Longueuil on the south shore and the Sun Life Assurance Company building on Dominion Square. When it was completed in 1933, it was the tallest building in the Commonwealth. During the Second World War, the Bank of England stored five billion dollars, including gold bullion, there, and the vaults were rumoured to have held the British Crown Jewels. Little did Ah Dang know then that he would own property across the square from the Sun Life building.
In 1932, the city passed a resolution to establish the botanical gardens, which became one of the best-known botanical gardens in the world. It was one of Ah Dang’s favourite places to visit. He also enjoyed spending quiet afternoons sitting by the pond at La Fontaine Park, reading a newspaper or feeding the ducks.
After 1891, when the major department stores moved from the business district of Old Montreal to St. Catherine Street, between Bleury and de la Montagne, that location became the bustling centre for shopping, with Henry Morgan’s, Eaton’s, Simpson’s, and Ogilvy’s. Of these, Ah Dang considered Ogilvy’s the most prestigious, its products the most exclusive. If he could shop there, he would know he had made it. However, he was disappointed to find that as he strolled through their menswear department one day, the sales clerks refused to serve him. It may have been because of his race—he never found out why.