A Cowherd in Paradise

by May Q. Wong

  The mounting pride and excitement of the masses of people around the family was infectious. It was hard not to be caught up in the chanting and waving as the parade progressed down the wide avenue. Everyone was waiting for a glimpse of Chairman Mao, whose appearances were tightly controlled and orchestrated. Above the crowd was a sea of waving hands, holding dog-eared copies of Quotations of Chairman Mao, the holy book, from which phrases and even whole chapters could be recited like incantations.

  Chandelier in Banquet Hall of Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, 1966.

  ROBERT WONG, CHINA

  Ah Thloo and the youngsters joined the chanting, “May Chairman Mao live ten thousand years, ten thousand, ten thousand years!” They were urging him to come onto the balcony of Tiananmen Gate to grace them with an appearance. Suddenly, there he was, and although the Wongs were far away, they knew who it was, because the crowd roared, swayed, and jumped in overwhelming passion. Wave after wave of deafening, joyful, worshipful human voices rushed over them, around them, and through them.

  When the family returned to the hotel later that afternoon, Ah Wei and Ah May were physically and mentally exhausted. Their bodies had been squeezed and twisted by the frenzied throngs, their ears rang, and their backs, legs, and feet hurt from standing all day. They needed hot baths and naps.

  But Ah Thloo did not show any signs of fatigue. She was as excited as if she were lit from inside. She had seen the prosperity the Communists had created, the adoration of the chairman by the people, and the show of military force that declared China to be a great nation once again.

  She told her children, “Nah, see! See how great Chairman Mao is! He liberated the Chinese from foreign domination. We can hold our heads high no matter where we are in the world. We no longer have to be ashamed of being Chinese. Our family owes him so much. Your sister could not have become a doctor. Your grandmother can now look forward to a restful old age, without having to scramble for food and kindling every day.”

  Ah Thloo had apparently forgotten the long lineups in Donghu for tightly rationed food and commodities the family in Canada had considered ordinary. Many decades later, after she had read about the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution and learned of the dangers faced by her older daughter and her family, she developed a more realistic opinion of Mao. But at the time, she was extremely proud to be Chinese and to be in China with her children.

  So it was incredible that Mr. Wong had invitations for all the adults in the tour group to celebrate the evening’s festivities at the Great Hall of the People. The building had impressive dimensions, with a frontage that extended more than three hundred and thirty-five metres, or two city blocks. Inside, the floor space measured more than five hundred and sixty thousand square metres. Its meeting hall had more than ten thousand seats, and the banquet room, where Ah Thloo and Ah Wei ate, could accommodate five thousand people.

  Ah May was too young, so she had to stay behind, where she reluctantly joined the few other youngsters in the tour group for a special dinner prepared by the hotel’s restaurant. When Ah Thloo came back much later that evening, she recounted every detail of the banquet to her daughter. “Ooy ! We were in the very same room with Premier Zhou Enlai! Of course, we didn’t sit together, but we were served the same food—everything was the same as the premier’s. He was so handsome. Even though we sat far away, I could tell he looked just like his pictures in the China News Magazine.”

  Ah Thloo stopped and smiled at this point, an enigmatic look that Ah May did not understand. Shaking her head she added, “Did you see the van that came to the hotel to pick us up? It dropped us right at the front door, behind the guards. We felt like movie stars on TV!”

  The banquet hall was filled with round tables, each covered with a starched white tablecloth and set for twelve people. Everything glittered, lit by the large ceiling chandeliers—red stars surrounded by golden sunflower petals. Ah Thloo had listened politely to the myriad speeches but could not recall what was said; after each speaker, she did remember the sound made by thousands of clapping hands and described it to Ah May as pock, pock, pock, pock—like a hailstorm on a hot summer day.

  The food was never ending. As soon as the guests had started tasting one course, another plate was delivered to the table. Ah Thloo’s favourite dish was the Peking duck, which she described with relish. “At first, we were presented with the delicate pieces of golden brown, crispy skin. We ate it with tender green scallions, all folded in small thin pancakes spread with sweet hoisin sauce. Then came the moist pieces of meat, wrapped in fresh lettuce leaves, while the inner organs were sautéed in a spicy sauce and presented separately. The bones were used to prepare a broth; nothing I have ever tasted can compare to the flavour of that marvellous soup!

  “I got a special feeling from the fireworks. We Chinese invented fireworks, but when I was young, only the empress, landlords, and foreigners could use them. Chairman Mao made it possible for everyone to enjoy them. Even though our table was all from overseas, we were treated like guests of the highest honour!”

  When Ah Thloo and the children returned to Wuhan, the schools were still closed and would continue to be for several years. For a while, within the Donghu community, they were cocooned from the outside world. News was tightly controlled, but people were getting nervous.

  In Montreal, news of the Red Guard rallies, the rampages, and the destruction was leaking out. The reports indicated that all foreigners, or people with relatives in foreign countries, were being mistreated. The minister and others at the church, who had been against the family going to China in the first place, were strongly pressuring Ah Dang to get them out of the country.

  By then, Ah Lai was pregnant again and would have enjoyed having her mother and her siblings meet the new baby, but she and her husband were resigned to having them return to Canada. Her mother’s behaviour at the market would have targeted her for political scrutiny and perhaps reeducation. It was beginning to be dangerous.

  Ah Thloo and the youngsters left Ah Lai, her growing family, and Ah Ngange in January 1967, less than a year after they had arrived. The tension at the border going out was even worse than when they went in. The Red Guards were everywhere and they had tasted the power of zealotry. The family tried to look nonchalant and when questioned told the guards as little as possible about their relatives in China.

  They stayed in Hong Kong for another few weeks, where they met Ah Ngan Jean’s new baby girl, Susan. On the day they left for Canada, Ah Ngan Jean, other family members, and, surprisingly, their China tour guide, Mr. Wong, were at the airport to see them off.

  All beings and things are in a dynamic state of change and transformation; nothing in the universe is absolutely static or completed; all is in unceasing motion because polarization, the source of being, is without beginning and without end.

  —Hua-Ching Ni, Tao: The Subtle Universal Law and the Integral Way of Life

  THIRTEEN

  Successes and Setbacks

  AH DANG: MONTREAL, 1970

  When most men might have been retired at sixty-eight, Ah Dang was still building on his success as a restaurateur. However, he had one more accomplishment to add to his businessman’s persona—he needed a car. As soon as he completed his driving lessons and got his licence, he bought a brand-new sedan. The car, a rich royal blue, was like a land yacht—long and wide. With two bench seats, it could accommodate six adults comfortably. The trunk, when opened, was like the maw of a hungry dragon at New Year’s.

  Sitting in the driver’s seat, he could see just above the dash; anyone looking into the car from behind saw the crown of a grey fedora and not much else of the driver’s head. He could not quite see the back end of the car, neither in his rear-view mirror nor by turning his head, but he was not worried—hadn’t he learned to use his side mirrors at the driver-training school?

  • • •

  Ah Dang is a proud restaurateur, 1950s.

  UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER, MONTREAL

  A
H THLOO: MONTREAL, 1967–1978

  Ah Thloo, Ah Wei, and Ah May returned to Montreal in February 1967. After the eight-month trip to China, Ah Thloo was pragmatic enough to realize she would not be able to live there. Things had changed too much and the Cultural Revolution was making life for returned foreigners very dangerous; it could be worse if the Red Guards continued to have their way.

  Ah Thloo decided her destiny lay in Canada—her son and younger daughter needed her more than Ah Lai. She had also confirmed with her own eyes that her elder daughter’s tange fong, living conditions, in China were relatively safe, and thereafter, she ceased to cry with fear and guilt. However, Ah Thloo was still feeling uneasy about the difficult question of Ah Lai’s identity papers.

  “Paper sons” and “paper daughters” were children who emigrated bearing someone else’s identity. Returning sojourners and their children who were born overseas might sell their identification papers when they returned to China, if the original holders had decided to stay in China or had died.

  In 1959, one of Ah Dang’s friends had come to him for help. The man wanted to bring his daughter to Canada, but because he was not yet naturalized, he could not sponsor her. He knew Ah Dang had listed his daughter on his citizenship application. The Canadian age limit had been raised to twenty-five and Ah Lai, then twenty-four, was still eligible to immigrate. Ah Dang, knowing how much Ah Thloo still missed their daughter, actually discussed this issue with his wife. They agreed that because Ah Lai had refused to come just a few years earlier, it was unlikely she would change her mind about leaving her grandmother and fiancé so soon. Also, she was still in medical college.

  The papers were going to expire without being used, so Ah Dang reasoned it was a shame to deny his friend a family reunion. His own dream of seeing his whole family together in Canada was now out of reach, but he had tasted the loneliness of forced separation and had the means to prevent the same thing from happening to his friend. True, it was illegal, and if he were caught, he and his family could be in jeopardy. Reluctantly, Ah Dang gave the man the right to use Ah Lai’s identification for his daughter.

  Ah Thloo would have told their daughter, if she had asked, but she did not feel it necessary otherwise, as it might make her feel unwanted or unloved. Fortunately, while Ah Thloo was in China, the issue of Ah Lai’s family going to Canada was never brought up. It was considered unpatriotic in the extreme to even think about leaving the country; applying for an exit visa would have targeted the family for unwanted suspicion and scrutiny. Ah Thloo felt she had dodged a bullet.

  Back in Montreal, the Chinese Presbyterian Church continued to provide social, cultural, and spiritual sustenance for Ah Thloo and her family. With the exception of Ah Dang, who worked, the family still spent every weekend there. Ah Thloo threw herself into the work of the Women’s Missionary Society (WMS). In addition to her responsibilities as the kitchen organizer for the church’s annual tea, she sang in the women’s choir, performed in Christmas concerts, and was an advocate on church policies. She spent hours on the telephone with the members of the WMS, discussing the merits of proposed new plans and developing strategies to get their positions accepted by the church’s governing body. She built a reputation for getting things done; her opinions were sought after and respected.

  Ah Thloo had come back to Canada when its economy was reaching a post-war peak; the mood was optimistic and confident. Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson introduced universal health care, the Canada Pension Plan, the Maple Leaf flag, and the world’s first race-free immigration system. Between 1961 and 1971, Canada’s Chinese population more than doubled.

  To celebrate Canada’s Centennial, Montreal was the site for the Universal and International Exhibition, known as Expo ’67; its theme was “Man and His World.” During one hundred and eighty-three days, from April to October, more than fifty million visitors, including queens, kings, presidents, and prime ministers, came to Montreal.

  Ah Dang bought a season’s passport for each family member, and during that summer the family spent every offu day, his day off work, together at Expo. Ah Thloo considered herself an experienced world traveller and was now excited to have the world come to her. On her return to Canada from China, she had at first been alarmed by the long-haired hippie counter-culture. Girls screaming on The Ed Sullivan Show, wearing scandalously short skirts and bright makeup, were especially shocking after she had lived among the strictly enforced uniformed austerity of China. However, she was so relieved at having escaped the Red Guards that she let Ah May attend the fair accompanied only by her friends. She could not help but reflect on the stark contrast between the way change was happening in China, with indiscriminate destruction, and the peaceful celebration of new technology at Expo.

  Ah Thloo wanted to see everything and, not wishing to be hampered by her husband’s interests, she visited Expo regularly with her church friend, Mrs. Leung. At eighty, Mrs. Leung was a capable, fun-loving widow. Having survived decades running a restaurant with her husband as the only Chinese couple in a small rural Quebec town, she spoke English and French. Both women were small and looked unassuming. Armed with her wide-brimmed, straw Chinese farmer’s hat, a folding camp stool with a pouch that held her lunch, a thermos of tea, an umbrella, toilet paper, and her Expo passport, Ah Thloo worked her formidable strategy for quickly advancing in even the longest lineups. While Mrs. Leung did not have to pretend she was old, they both somehow convinced people in the middle of the line that they were too feeble to start waiting at the end. If anyone protested, and amazingly only a few did, they would sit on their stools and pretend they could not hear or understand. Shamelessly, they got into all the pavilions in record time.

  • • •

  AH DANG: MONTREAL, 1967–1978

  Ah Dang was relieved that Ah Thloo and the children had returned to Canada safely, though the situation between husband and wife had not changed significantly. He told her he had missed them; their separation had reminded him too much of his lonely, enforced bachelor’s life, and for a brief period, they did not argue. But he kept on working the night shift; it was easier on everyone.

  Ah Dang’s one constant, affectionate relationship was with Ah May. He always looked forward to seeing her, for she never hesitated to greet him with a loving hug at the beginning and end of his workdays. He also came to depend on her to translate official documents, and she even completed his annual income tax returns.

  With Ah Thloo, he settled into a new pattern of communication, using their daughter as an intermediary. “Tell you mada . . .” was less stressful than initiating a direct conversation with his wife. If he said “white,” she would say “black,” but the messages from his wife seemed less demanding when the words were filtered through their daughter. In this they had common ground, as Ah Thloo felt exactly the same way.

  It was easy for Ah May to become complicit, for it helped to calm the domestic atmosphere. She loved them both and wanted peace in the house, but it didn’t always work. She watched as her mother muttered and stewed over a misunderstanding or disagreement, while her father, quick to anger, was just as quick to forget an episode, all within moments. Afterwards, he would smile conspiratorially, shake his head, and say, “You mada . . ,” lean back in his recliner, and resume reading his newspaper. When Ah Thloo noticed his reaction, her anger would be stoked anew, and she would accuse him of dismissing her opinions. If Ah May tried to calm Ah Thloo, her mother fumed, “You always take your father’s side!”

  The relationship between Ah Dang and his son remained as delicate as a cobweb in winter. Ah Dang’s dream was that none of his children would ever have to work in the restaurant business—the hours were too long and the work too hard. He wanted them to be educated so they could have professional jobs. He was proud of his elder daughter, who had chosen medicine as her career, but the career path for Ah Wei was neither clear-cut nor smooth.

  Not long before the family went to China, Ah Wei had noted some developmental abnormalities a
nd was diagnosed with Klinefelter’s syndrome, a congenital defect that affected his physical and emotional development as well as his cognitive abilities. He found it hard to concentrate; academic learning was difficult and he failed to graduate from high school. Sensitive, artistic, and creative, he enjoyed working with his hands. Photography was a growing interest, and in this he had taken after his father. Ah Wei had recorded the trip to China on his palm-sized camera and had developed hundreds of miniature black-and-white photos. But neither art nor photography school were viable alternatives, in Ah Dang’s opinion. Hadn’t the boy’s uncle studied art? It hadn’t got him far—he never made a living as an artist.

  Neither parent understood their son’s difficulties and neither knew how to seek help. It was nobody’s fault, but it was hard not to assign blame. Ah Thloo blamed her husband for not having been at home to provide guidance when their son was younger. Ah Dang blamed his wife for being over-protective. Ah Thloo resorted to prayer. Ah Dang gave his son a job at the restaurant, hoping that hard work would force him out of his “mood.”

  The red brick building constitutes the 1240-1246 block of Stanley Street, 2004.

  MAY Q. WONG, MONTREAL

  In November 1970, the directors of the China Garden Café Ltd. bought the 1240-1246 block on Stanley Street. It cost two hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, with ninety-five thousand dollars down. The remainder was mortgaged at 7.75 per cent till 1987. The partners now owned their building as well as the successful restaurant. To help offset the mortgage, they collected rent from the apartments upstairs and from the other two businesses at street level.

  Ah Dang now had money to spend on a toy, which he decided would be a car. As with all his major purchases, he selected the vehicle on his own. At home, he showed off the new vehicle to his family and their neighbours, strutting around it like a proud peacock displaying his feathers. He picked up Ah Thloo from the house and drove her downtown. It was his day off, but he couldn’t wait to show the car to his colleagues at work. Sitting in the front for the first time with her husband in the driver’s seat, Ah Thloo was petrified. She dared not say anything for fear of distracting him from his driving.