by May Q. Wong
Ah Lai, growing up as she did through the war years, knew about working hard for scraps of food and the fear of her small hamlet being invaded by the Japanese. She also grew up with the certainty of her grandmother’s devotion and her parents’ love for her.
During the war with Japan, it was a rare event, but whenever the blue, self-sealing airmail envelopes from abroad, addressed in English and Chinese, arrived at their door, her mother would study the message first and then call her daughter to her side. Ah Lai was required to listen to her father’s words as if they were commandments from on high.
You must work hard.
You must obey your mother.
You must mind your grandmother.
Do not waste the hard-earned money Ah Yea sends you.
Not surprisingly, he was very consistent. In a world of uncertainty, she was comforted by this and had memorized his words. Although he had never written, “I love you, daughter,” she knew, simply by the fact that he sent instructions, that she was in his thoughts. She was part of him.
She was tall for a girl; she had probably inherited her height from her maternal grandmother, whom she called Ah Hoo, Mother’s Mother. She had a dimple when she smiled, but she seldom did in those years. She was often hungry, and tired from working in the fields. Her eyes were big, honest, and frank. She observed everything but said little.
In a hamlet dominated by young boys, Ah Lai was the eldest of the girls. When she was young, they all played together, dug and built things in the dirt, tossed coins, climbed trees, and jumped ditches, all under the careful scrutiny of her paternal grandmother, whom she called Ah Ngange, Father’s Mother. She had to be home every day by midafternoon.
Not long after Ah Dang returned to Canada, Ah Thloo bought a sandoy, hillock, little more than a bump in the land, not far from the hamlet. Ah Thloo, her mother-in-law, and even Ah Moydoy, had to work, planting staples like yams, soybeans, red beans, sorghum, and squash. Water had to be toted up in wooden buckets on a carrying-pole. It was arduous work.
They built a small hut there, where they could rest, sheltered from the sun, and eat their lunch. They also dug a secret cavern away from the hut, as a safe hiding place, and when the crops were almost ready for harvesting, Ah Thloo and her mother-in-law took turns sleeping there overnight, with a gun by their side. While Ah Lai was very young, one of the women had to stay home with her, as neither of them trusted Ah Moydoy to take care of the child on her own.
A typical day started just before sunrise. By the time Ah Lai was five or six, she was working in the vegetable garden with the women. Mostly, she chan taw, weeded, between the plants, and haw taw, gathered hay. When she was older, she also harvested fresh, sharp-edged weeds from the pond for pig feed; the scars from that task would not fade for decades. Back at home in the evenings, the adults occupied themselves with food preparation. Afterwards, they might take advantage of the early evening light to mend their rags. Ah Lai fed the livestock and swept the floors. With animals living in the house, the floors were often wet and slippery from their droppings.
During the war, Ah Thloo received no mail from Canada. She had no more cash, and inflationary prices made it impossible to buy anything, even rice. For a time, she got rice from her mother’s farm, in exchange for working in the older woman’s fields. They had two rice harvests a year. For some reason, the arrangement broke down and Ah Thloo was no longer welcomed. Ah Lai was only a child but she was very astute and was appalled when she realized, Ah Hoo actually looks down on Ah Ma because she is so poor!
Long after the war, Ah Thloo learned that Ah Dang had actually sent a total amount of fifty thousand yuan (more than three thousand dollars) in remittances over this period; not a penny ever reached her. The money must have gone somewhere. It could have been intercepted by the KMT government, which desperately needed cash; the Japanese might have stopped any foreign mail in an attempt to control intelligence; or the postman could have just pocketed it. Corruption was widespread. So was inefficiency. The country’s infrastructure was in chaos and the postal service was not exempt.
Ah Thloo had no choice but to sell most of the gold jewellery from her wedding. With it, she bought seed. She made an agreement with Ah Ngay Gonge’s wife and son-in-law, Ah Siew Sook, to share the seeds, supplies, work, and harvests. Ah Thloo’s household also shared every meal they had with his family, until Gai Fong, the 1949 Revolution.
The times between harvests were the most difficult. Even cooking oil had to be used sparingly. Through careful conservation, their single barrel of cooking oil lasted several years, almost to the end of the eight-year war with Japan. Each autumn, Ah Lai harvested bamboo, which she cut into strips. Occasionally, she would weave the strips into baskets, but most of the time, the bamboo would be bundled tightly with straw and sold in the market town of Vak Sa Hui.
One day, after selling something in the market, Ah Lai found herself standing in front of a stall selling faan, cooked rice, and just staring, mesmerized by the smell, her mouth drooling, and hoping her mother would spend a few of their newly earned coins on the simple food. Instead, without a word, her mother gently guided her away from the temptation. Both walked away, crying silently. Both were starving, but only Ah Thloo understood they did not have enough money. On another occasion, Ah Thloo did buy a small bowl of rice, and smiling wanly, she watched as her daughter ate it all, every last grain.
They had no kerosene or oil for lighting, so they made their own torches by shaving the bamboo stems into fine pieces, bundling them onto the end of foot-long rods, and dipping the bamboo end into boiled pine resin. The resulting light was smoky and smelly, but it was better than being left in the dark.
• • •
AH LAI: CHINA, 1945
When Ah Lai was on her mission to petition her maternal grandmother for raw rice, just enough to tide the family over until the harvest, three weeks later, she saw not only the house filled to the rafters with bags of the grain, but she also noticed a whole cooked chicken on the kitchen table, cut up and ready to eat. The smell was unforgettable, but just looking at it made her empty guts twist in pain and grumble in protest. She took these sights as positive signs.
But she must have misinterpreted them. Ah Lai could not remember who told her “No,” because her grandmother, her younger uncle, and his wife were all in the room. As soon as she understood they weren’t going to give her anything, her face burned so hot she could not hear another word. She ran out of the house and into her mother’s arms, and all she could do was sob.
Mother and daughter left just as they had come—empty-handed. And heavy-hearted. Ah Lai had not even been offered a chicken leg. It was a humiliation and a foo, bitter disappointment, borne by Ah Thloo for the rest of her life. All the fear, starvation, and deprivation they had suffered throughout that period were nothing compared to what had just happened. They had been totally abandoned by Ah Thloo’s own family.
But Ah Thloo was undaunted. A person has to have jee hay, to take personal responsibility, and that is what she did. She organized everyone in the hamlet to harvest some of the unripened grains and pound them down to make a watery jook, gruel, to eat. They also scrounged the countryside for edible greens, eating whatever they could find.
Throughout the war with Japan, the Communists continued to build their peasant-based support by encouraging economic production, making sure their soldiers were friendly and helpful, providing organized transportation, and recruiting farmer activists to become new leaders. They worked out plans for land reform and land redistribution—plans that would eventually affect Ah Thloo.
The common front between the KMT and the CCP lasted until 1940. The KMT took a deliberately passive approach toward fighting the foreign invaders and again concentrated on attacking the CCP, whose efforts were focused on ousting the Japanese.
Japan then looked for other parts of the world to dominate and, in conjunction with Germany and Italy, fought in the Second World War. Because of its ongoing war with Jap
an, China was considered an Allied member. When the Axis lost the war in 1945, Japan capitulated to China.
• • •
AH DANG: MONTREAL, 1945–1947
V-J Day! Victory! Against Japan! The enemy had finally surrendered, and not only to the Allies, but to China as well! What a time to rejoice!
Ah Dang, then working as a waiter at the Lotus Garden Café on Clark Street in Chinatown, joined the crowds on the streets—to celebrate, to grieve, and to breathe a concerted sigh of relief. A few days later he lined up with the five-deep crowd of Chinese and whites to watch a parade. The streets were decorated with British and Chinese flags as well as silk banners and garlands of flowers. A temporary gate was constructed across Lagauchetière Street, hung with a banner proclaiming “V-J Day Celebration by the Chinese Community of Montreal” in both Chinese and English and festooned with flags, ribbons, and lanterns. Later, Ah Dang read that similar parades had been held in Chinatowns across the country, from Victoria, British Columbia, to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
When he heard that postal and telegraph services to China were open once more, his first action was to send a telegram to Ah Thloo. He waited anxiously for her response. Although he was not a religious man, he had been baptized in 1936 and now attended church to ask God to intervene on his behalf. So many people had died, of injuries from the war, torture, suicide, and starvation. He had not heard anything from China in years. Then . . . joy and thanksgiving, they were alive! He immediately wired money, hoping it would be enough; he had been reading about runaway inflation in China.
Throughout the war years, Ah Dang had joined other Chinese Canadians to aid their homeland. They raised funds for every imaginable military purpose, from airplanes to winter uniforms. In addition, until Ah Dang was certain that nothing was getting through, he had tried to send money to his family.
He also bought Canadian Victory Loan Second World War bonds. The combined purchases by the Chinese community, worth ten million dollars, were proportionally larger than those of any other ethnic group. His countrymen also had more tangible ways to help Canada’s war effort. They worked in shipyards and factories and served as air-raid wardens. Farmers made a great effort to produce more food for Canadian troops overseas. And while Ah Dang was too old and too flat-footed to sign up, he’d read that Chinese communities across Canada contributed more than five hundred soldiers to the armed forces, a large proportion of whom were decorated for bravery.
In 1942, Canada and other Western nations negotiated to terminate the Unequal Treaties, to make China an equal partner and a Great Power in the world community. Canada, with a consulate in Nanjing since 1931, established under the auspices of the Japanese, upgraded diplomatic relations in 1943 to ambassador status, independent of Japan. Chinese consulates were opened in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. China was gaining recognition as a sovereign nation.
New commercial agreements were signed between the two countries. Canada was already exporting wheat, flour, timber, clothing, electrical appliances, machinery, and foodstuffs. As China was still engaged in a civil war in 1947, Canada provided a loan of sixty million dollars (US) to China to buy surplus Canadian war equipment.
Chinese Canadians called for equal treatment under Canadian law as an earned right; the United States had repealed its anti-Chinese immigration laws in 1943. In recognition of their patriotism, Chinese servicemen were given the vote by BC after the war.
A number of other factors helped the Chinese gain acceptance in Canada. One was gambling, a double-edged sword. Over the years, while it had brought controversy and grief, it had also enabled the Chinese to raise the monies they did. Some of it even went to good use. Not only did gambling revenues fund the war effort, but the Chinese also built and maintained their own community-support systems. But over time, with the numbers of families increasing, even the Chinese drifted away from gambling, and instead, lottery tickets were sold to raise funds, seemingly a more acceptable form of gambling.
Another important consideration was that Canadian-born Chinese were seen to assimilate. By 1931, 75 per cent of the teenaged population had been born in Canada. In Montreal, they tended to be English speaking and attend church, and more were living in neighbourhoods outside Chinatown than in it.
Moving away from laundries and restaurants, Chinese worked as mechanics and machinists, as well as truck and taxi drivers. They owned small-scale manufacturing enterprises. Even Chinese women were gaining employment—many in the textile industry, but also as secretaries, bookkeepers, and clerks. There was also an emerging professional class of practising architects, engineers, physicians, dentists, and bank managers.
In May 1947, the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 was finally repealed. That same year, BC granted the franchise to all Chinese and East Indians (the Japanese had to wait another year). The Canadian Citizenship Act came into effect as well, defining the right to vote as part of citizenship.
With these changes, Ah Dang had more reasons to rejoice, but his joy was short-lived. He learned that in China, the government had passed a Citizenship Law in 1929. Based on the principle of jus sanguinis, it meant that a child born anywhere in the world of a Chinese father was a citizen of China. The applicant had to have written permission from the Chinese minister of the interior before Canada could consider the immigration of his children. Ah Dang had looked forward to the day when he would see his family in the country he had chosen, but the process was delayed yet again.
With the Chinese political situation in disarray, Ah Dang decided to go directly to the source for the necessary documents. As a testament to his love for his family, his tenacity, and his sense of adventure, he braved the battle lines between the Nationalists and Communists to return to Longe Gonge Lay in the spring of 1947.
He landed in Shanghai, which had suffered under Japanese oppression since 1932. The city was in ruins and its streets were filled with orphans, refugees, and beggars who clamoured for coins, reaching out, crying plaintively, exposing their scars and lost limbs, and touching his clothing. When he gave money to one person, others swarmed him.
They all want something from me, but there are just too many. How can I give to this one but not that one? he thought. All he could do was close his ears, harden his heart, and walk away.
• • •
AH LAI: CHINA, 1945–47
Miraculously, a telegram arrived at Ah Lai’s house in 1945. Later, a blue aerogram and a wire of money followed. The letter contained instructions from her father, especially for her!
Now that the war is over, you should go to school.
Some of this money is for you to buy new clothes.
Ah Lai did not know which was more exciting—going to school for the first time or choosing a new piece of fabric. She had watched the boys with envy as they studied their books and walked around reciting texts. Her former playmates called her stupid because she was a girl and couldn’t go to school.
Two new outfits! She had patched, repatched, extended, and re-extended her hand-me-downs over the last eight years. New clothes were a novelty, more like an unforgettable luxury.
Ah Thloo enrolled her daughter in a one-room schoolhouse in the nearby village. Ah Lai was smart, and although she was older than most of the other children, she caught up to her grade in no time. But the children still teased her and followed her home, taunting her, so after six months, she asked her mother to move her to another school farther away.
Ah Ngange woke her up every morning at 5:00 AM, made her breakfast, and accompanied her to the new school. In the afternoon, she came back to walk her granddaughter home. There were no problems with the school children there. Ah Lai excelled and from then on always came first or second in her class. Unfortunately, there was only money enough for two more years of education.
When the Communist troops arrived in the southern countryside in 1946, Ah Thloo saw that they treated the peasant farmers very differently from any other military people. The soldiers were actually helpful. Rather than
plunder and steal, they worked beside her and her neighbours. When they talked about land reform and land redistribution, they explained it in simple terms, though the ideas sounded too good to be true. Still, Ah Thloo was intrigued and was soon recognized as someone with intelligence and ability. Her education helped, as did her reputation as a brave defender of the hamlet. She was given the job of coordinating county land registry and measurements, which involved identifying the owners of each piece of land and determining its size and boundaries. While others on her team surveyed the plots, she checked the accuracy of the information about ownership from the fragmented government records against reports from local villagers. She worked throughout the county of Hoyping, which comprises approximately seventeen hundred square kilometres, and was often required to be away from home for days at a time.
While Ah Thloo was away, Ah Lai became increasingly dependent on Ah Ngange. At the age of twelve she got the measles. Although she was taller than her grandmother by then, for months afterwards, Ah Lai was piggybacked everywhere, as coddled as a baby.
Later that year, she would lose an important part of her childhood.
Should sons be born to him
They will be put to slumber on couches
They will be clad in robes
They will have sceptres to play with
They will be resplendent with knee covers
The future ruler, the prince of the land
—H.J. Hsia, The Fair Sex in China: They Lift Up Half the Sky
EIGHT
Father Rejoices
AH LAI: CHINA, 1947
At twelve, Ah Lai was to meet her father for the first time since she was a baby. She was excited and at the same time very anxious. She had no idea how to act with him—he was her father, the sender of commandments.