A Cowherd in Paradise

by May Q. Wong

  A few years later, he returned to Ogilvy’s, walked deliberately to the men’s fine clothing section, and bought a cashmere sweater. With cash. Just to show them he could.

  • • •

  AH THLOO AND AH DANG: CHINA, 1934–1935

  In October 1934, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai led the Communist Red Army troops on a ten-thousand-kilometre trek from Jiangxi Province in the south to create a stronghold in Shaanxi in the north. They were fleeing Kuomintang attacks. One hundred thousand people started the trek but only four thousand completed it. Known as the Long March, the dangerous journey, which ended in October 1936, built the reputations of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping, as well as many of the country’s subsequent leaders.

  In the same month in 1934, Ah Dang left Canada for China to visit his family. He had saved his money and it was time to show off his wealth by expanding the house for his mother and his wife. His intention was to add on to the existing, single-room structure by building around and up. He would ask his father-in-law, Ah Poy Lim, to help. With his building skills and local knowledge, the older man could draw up the plans, find appropriately skilled labourers, and obtain the finest materials, all at the best prices.

  Ah Dang arrived in the hamlet exactly four years, four months, and four days after he had left. The word for four, thlay, is a bad word in Chinese—it sounds like thlay, the word for dead. For Ah Thloo, November 5, 1934, felt a bit like death, for on that day, she lost her freedom.

  When Ah Dang arrived, he immediately changed the living arrangements. At least, he tried to. While it was relatively easy to move Ah Tew May and Ah Moydoy across the lane, into his benefactor’s house, he did not have the same level of cooperation from his wife. He never asked why the two neighbour girls were sharing his marriage bed with Ah Thloo; he just acted.

  As before, Ah Dang used the strap. Again, Ah Thloo fought back, and this time, she lashed back with her tongue as well. Living in the house with Ah Tew May and Ah Moydoy had taught her how to hurt with words. She had buried away all the snide remarks they had made about him over the years, all the secrets about him as a boy, and she dredged them up to use against him. As before, he was stopped short by her ferocity—and now by her words.

  After that, Ah Thloo was even more adamant that the girls stay with her; she needed them to protect her from her husband. He gave up, temporarily. He had other things to attend to and soon forgot the incident.

  Ah Dang asked his father-in-law to quickly build a small, temporary shelter for himself and Ah Thloo while work continued on the main house. He also agreed to have his elder brother-in-law, the artist Ah Gim Yoke, decorate the house with tiles and paintings. The two got along well, and Ah Dang was glad to help improve his brother-in-law’s precarious financial situation. Their congenial relationship led them to have a photograph taken together.

  Ah Dang (on the right) and artistic brother-in-law Ah Gim Yoke, 1935.

  UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER STUDIO, CHINA

  Ah Dang’s house is the closest one on the right side of the lane, 1986.

  ROBERT WONG, CHINA

  Kitchen hearth, 1986.

  ROBERT WONG, CHINA

  Neighbours share a meal in the main room. Ah Lai is second on the right, writing, 1986.

  ROBERT WONG, CHINA

  Household shrine, 1986.

  ROBERT WONG, CHINA

  One of the bedrooms, 1986.

  ROBERT WONG, CHINA

  Building materials and labour were cheap. The Depression had reached China, especially in the manufacturing sector; in Shanghai alone, more than one million people were out of work. In the countryside, if cash was not available, one could at least work for a bowl of rice at the end of the day. Labour cost only half a yuan (seventeen cents) per day per person. A three hundred-pound bag of cement was less than one and a half yuan (fifty cents). Ten thousand bricks could be bought for only one hundred yuan (thirty dollars). Ah Dang’s father-in-law oversaw the building and kept a meticulous list of materials in a string-bound, rice-paper booklet.

  The small house was completed in a matter of days, and somehow, Ah Dang was able to coax Ah Thloo into living there with him. There was no room for the sisters; they had to return to their own home.

  Ah Thloo was relieved to live apart from Ah Tew May, the devil she knew, but it was like jumping from the wok into the fire, to live with this strange, volatile man by herself. Still, he was calmer now and was solicitous with her. Once more, duty called and she complied. They maintained a relatively harmonious household, and the goddess Kuan Yin, “One Who Sees and Hears the Cry from the Human World,” blessed them with a peace offering: Ah Thloo became pregnant. When Ah Dang learned of this, he made sure she had the best medical care money could buy from the surrounding market towns. He asked his mother to cook nourishing broths, and the pregnancy proceeded with ease.

  The main house was built in record time; it was large, more spacious than any other house Ah Dang would ever live in. It was deliberately plain from the outside, with grey brick walls and thick, iron-reinforced wooden doors. All the windows on the first floor of the two-storey building were secured with vertical iron bars, and the house was attached on one side to its neighbour. All this was done to discourage bandits and other invaders.

  The ground floor was divided into three sections. The front door opened into the first section, which had two rooms. One was a cooking area. The other was a storage room, with two windows to let in light and air. In the corner by the door, a bamboo ladder climbed upstairs.

  From the kitchen, a doorway led into the original hiang aie, main room. A large opening, cut in the ceiling, made this room bright and gave it a feeling of airiness. Upstairs, a banister with green dowelling and a red railing surrounded the opening. Emerald-green and white decorative tiles, designed by Ah Gim Yoke, lined the balcony and the rest of the ceiling. He also created large paintings, of birds and scenery, on the walls above eye level in the downstairs room.

  At one end of the room, on the other side of the wall from the kitchen, was a reservoir. Water, drawn from the communal well and carried by wooden buckets suspended at either end of a bamboo pole, was stored here. A dining table stood next to it and a staircase at one end of the room led to the second floor.

  Not only people used this room—chickens, geese, pigs, and even calves lived there as well. It was not the most sanitary arrangement, but when bandits roamed the area, inside the house was the safest place for the animals. On the other side of the hiang aie was the third section, again divided into two rooms, used mainly for storage.

  There were four rooms on the second floor—two on either side of the landing. Ah Dang and Ah Thloo had a room on one side of the balcony while Ah Tew May and Ah Moydoy slept in a room on the other side. The other two rooms were for storage, where large ceramic urns kept rice and other foodstuffs dry and safely away from hungry rodents and insects. The upstairs rooms were particularly handy during the flood season, when the ground floor could fill with brackish water partway up the stairs. A portable coal-burning stove served as the cooker whenever the family had to live upstairs. To the left of the stairs stood the indoor ancestral shrine and at the far end of the house, facing the communal bamboo garden, was an open deck, part of which was enclosed as a lookout area and safe room.

  No bathrooms were built into the house, as no infrastructure existed in the small hamlet for plumbing, for either incoming water or outgoing waste. The hamlet’s well did not provide enough water to allow for baths; those people who did wash made do with sponge baths, using a small basin. The communal toilet was at one end of the hamlet, under a shelter built of woven bamboo. It consisted of a very large ceramic pot, standing about four feet high, accessed by brick steps. Night soil was still the main source of fertilizer.

  Ah Dang and Ah Thloo had a few months to move in all the furniture, which had been stored in various neighbouring houses, before their first child was born. Although the midwife had an excellent reputation, when she came to help Ah T
hloo deliver the baby, Ah Dang insisted she wash her hands with soap he had brought from Canada and in hot water that had been boiled. He also insisted that the sheets and blankets for the birth and baby swaddling be washed with hot, soapy water. He had learned the importance of hygiene in the home of his white employers in Montreal.

  The first child was born on the twenty-eighth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, in 1935. Ah Thloo, thinking her husband might be disappointed with a female, was ready to defend the child’s life with her own, but she was pleasantly surprised to learn that he had been concerned only for the health of the baby, not its sex. Whenever he held the infant, his face lit up with delight. He smiled broadly and his eyes sparkled. Another piece of the puzzle that makes up this man, the father of our daughter, Ah Thloo thought.

  Ah Tew May was also transformed by the baby. At first, she derided Ah Thloo for giving birth to a mere girl, but Ah Thloo reminded the older woman of her own children. Also, children have a way of melting even the hardest of jade-cold hearts. After so many years, here was a baby to care for, to amuse, and to entertain. Ah Tew May seemed to forget herself; her tongue lost its sharpness. The words she spoke to the baby were sweet, and she carried on in the same tone when she was speaking to Ah Thloo. With the baby, her attitude was one of tenderness. With her daughter-in-law, Ah Tew May was now solicitous, always offering to help whenever the baby needed cleaning or wanted to be picked up. However, with her adoptive son, she still struggled to bite her tongue. Now and again, Ah Dang and Ah Thloo thought they saw Ah Tew May’s mouth twitch upwards at the corners, especially when she was engaged with the baby.

  During the baby’s gat how, the one-month ceremony, she was named Lai Quen, “Most Beautiful.” After the child underwent the traditional hair-cutting ceremony, she was officially presented to the world to receive gifts. With the completion of his house and the start of his family, Ah Dang could have made plans to leave, but he stayed two more months after the celebration.

  Although he had been away from Canada for only thirteen months, as if to hurry his return he was surrounded by bad omens. Both the Yangtze and Yellow rivers flooded, while in thirteen other provinces in China, droughts caused devastating crop failures. Ah Dang worried about the dreaded possibility of the Japanese arriving in the south. The Communist Red Army was still making its way north. If actual war broke out, he could be stuck in the country, of no use to his family. At least if he was in Canada, he could work and send remittances.

  He had not bought any land. Ah Thloo leased a plot of land to grow vegetables and she had used his remittances carefully to purchase rice, as well as some chickens and pigs to raise for market. She was always able to negotiate a price that included a large chunk of fresh meat to bring home, so the family had not gone hungry over the past few years. He was proud of her.

  Before departing, he entrusted Ah Thloo with the remainder of his funds, hoping it was enough to outlast whatever happened, until he could send more money. Cursing the Chinese generals and Japanese invaders for endangering the lives of his family, and the Canadian government for keeping him apart from them, he made a reluctant departure.

  This time, their separation was even longer.

  A woman’s duties are to cook the five grains, heat the wine, look after her parents-in-laws, make clothes and that is all!

  —Liu Hsiang, Biographies of Admirable Women

  SEVEN

  Abandoned Heroine

  AH LAI: CHINA, 1945

  When Ah Lai, Ah Thloo’s daughter, was ten, the War of Resistance Against Japan, or Kong Jien as it was called in Chinese, had been raging for eight long years, bringing terror and deprivation. Her mother had run out of money and had no way to earn it. The fields had been planted, but when the harvest was still twenty days away, the whole hamlet was dangerously short of food. Ah Lai was to plead with Ah Hoo, Mother’s Mother, for a loan of mai, raw rice, to tide them over, just till the harvest. It was a great risk—Ah Hoo had turned them away before, when they had offered their labour; now, they had nothing to give in exchange. Standing outside the door, Ah Thloo urged Ah Lai forward into her former family home.

  It was a big responsibility, and the little girl trembled as she was pushed inside, but as soon as she looked around the house and saw the walls lined up to the rafters with bags of rice, she felt a flood of relief. They have so much; why wouldn’t they share? Of course I will be successful with my mission! so Ah Lai thought.

  • • •

  AH THLOO AND AH LAI: CHINA, 1936–1945

  The women were once again left on their own to defend themselves in China.

  A view from the lookout balcony, 1986.

  ROBERT WONG, CHINA

  A year after Ah Dang returned to Canada, General Jiang of the Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist government negotiated a ceasefire with Zhou Enlai in the civil war with the Chinese Communists. This was just in time because seven months later the Japanese invaded China. When Nanjing fell to the Japanese, the government relocated its capital to Chongqing. The Communists were headquartered in Yenan. For a time, from these separate bases, the two factions came together in a formal, if fragile, united front to strategize and fight their common enemy.

  Guangzhou was occupied by 1938, but the Japanese forces stayed mostly in the city. However, they made occasional forays into the countryside, and whenever that happened, the human alarm system alerted everyone in the fields.

  “Ngake Voin-doy, the Japanese are coming!”

  Ah Lai, at the age of three, was taught to run home quietly or hide in caverns dug into the hillocks and designed to be inconspicuous. Everyone in the surrounding area had heard about the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese, especially during the Rape of Nanjing in 1938, when three hundred thousand men, women, and children were massacred. Stories abounded about live babies being ripped out of their mothers’ bellies and skewered onto Japanese bayonets, children taken as sex slaves, and women gang raped, cruelly mutilated, and callously tossed aside. No one wanted to test the rumours.

  Ah Thloo was prepared to defend her family. Before Ah Dang left, he had bought a rifle and a handgun and had taught her and his mother how to shoot. Together, they had drilled the family on emergency procedures. He had built a small room on the balcony: with openings reinforced by iron bars on all sides, it served as a secure lookout. There was room for a small table, stools, separate buckets for water and night soil, and enough floor space to accommodate several sleeping people. A woven bamboo mat, rolled up when not in use, served as a floor covering and mattress. A mosquito net hung in a corner, waiting to be spread out as needed.

  Ah Thloo had included her neighbour, Ah Chiang Hoo, the wife of Ah Ngay Gonge’s youngest brother, in the security plans. Ah Chiang Hoo was to come across the lane and into the house as soon as she heard the warning calls. Although a number of years older than Ah Thloo, she had a son the same age as Ah Lai. Her husband was in Montreal, smoking away his meagre earnings on his opium pipe. Unlike his elder brother, Ah Ngay Gonge, he was a reluctant worker, a neglectful husband, and an indifferent father. While he had left some money behind for his wife when he had last visited, no one could recall when he had ever sent a remittance from Canada. But no matter her circumstances, his wife was always cheerful. Not the brightest of women, she had no guile, nor a mosquito’s worth of common sense; everyone in the family knew she needed looking after.

  Ah Chiang Hoo and her young son scratched out a living from the kindness of their relatives. She hoarded every scrap, never knowing when it might come in handy, and her house resembled a garbage dump. Her hands and fingernails were deeply etched in black, and she exuded a strong odour, as if the neighbourhood cats and dogs had marked her as part of their territory. Ah Lai was careful never to accept food from this neighbour’s house.

  One night, the alarm was raised. Quietly and efficiently, the people in Ah Thloo’s household attended to their jobs—barring all the windows, gathering food and fresh water, and locking themselves in the saf
e room. Ah Thloo had her weapons ready as she and her mother-in-law walked the perimeter of the lookout, peering out into the gloom, alert to any movement or unusual noise. Ah Chiang Hoo was late, but they were used to that, frustrating as it was; she was just not able to function quickly. They had left the front door unlocked for her.

  Ah Chiang Hoo had heard sounds of hastily closed doors and barring shutters and had eventually surmised that something was going on. As usual, she came to ask Ah Thloo to explain things. Holding her son’s shoulder with one hand, Ah Chiang Hoo waved aloft a kerosene lantern in the other, its bright yellow flame creating a sure target of her head.

  “Ah Thloo, where are you?” she shouted from downstairs in her heavy Hien Gong village accent. “Everything is so dark!”

  Ah Thloo whispered back, “Ah Chiang Hoo, please be quiet. Quickly, come upstairs.” She told Ah Lai to run downstairs to intercept the mother and son before another word could be uttered, extinguish the deadly light, bar the door, and lead them upstairs into the refuge. It was pitch-black in the shuttered house, and the next few minutes were tense as the older woman stubbed her toes on every step up to the second floor, accompanied each time by a loud yelp, then a whispered apology.

  A long, sleepless night was spent in Ah Chiang Hoo’s malodorous company. Every once in a while, she would forget why they were there and try to talk. It was her son’s job to stop her. They were all thankful when the red sky indicated dawn, and a runner from the neighbouring village gave the “all safe” signal, releasing them from their self-imposed captivity.