A Cowherd in Paradise

by May Q. Wong

  Everyone, even the cooks, came out to admire the car, inhaling deeply its new smell, caressing the shiny paint, and sitting behind the huge steering wheel. As they all swarmed around and through the automobile, Ah Thloo was served tea and almond cookies inside the restaurant. Gratified by their universal approval, Ah Dang collected his wife and prepared for a grand departure. His partners stood outside to watch and say goodbye. Waving, he stepped on the gas to pull out.

  “Eeee . . . no, no, no!” was as much as Ah Thloo could get out before they heard a sharp Caa . . . rack ! and both husband and wife were thrown back suddenly in their seats. A split-second later, they heard the tinkling of shattered glass showering down on the back of their pristine car.

  For a sixty-eight-year-old, his reflexes were pretty good—he stepped on the brake as soon as he heard his wife call out. But he was not quite quick enough to stop the car from backing into the plate-glass window of his restaurant. Stunned and humiliated, his blood pressure soaring, Ah Dang was determined not to be cowed. After dealing with insurance adjusters for both the restaurant and the car, he drove home. Ah Thloo was even more terrified and clutched the door handle all the way to the house, as if preparing to jump out. He never drove again.

  Ah Dang retired in 1978, at the age of seventy-six. The limited company was dissolved on November 8, 1986, and the assets sold, whereupon the rest of his original partners also retired.

  • • •

  AH LAI: WUHAN, 1967–1976

  While the situation in 1966 had felt relatively safe for Ah Lai and her family, they had not escaped danger. Not long after her mother and siblings left for Canada, her husband, Ah Haw One, teaching athletics at the university in Wuhan, came under suspicion by the Red Guards. Universities, as institutions of culture, were centres for revolt, and every professor was scrutinized.

  The head of his department, a well-known leader in academic circles and Ah One’s mentor, had been persecuted for his former ties to the Kuomintang Party and sent into exile for re-education through hard labour. Ah One, as a colleague, was placed under house arrest in his dormitory at the university. For three months, he was investigated and his every action noted.

  During his interrogations, he answered simply and honestly. He had never been interested in politics, nor in other matters having to do with the world in general, preferring to focus on the spiritual and inner forces of life. His questioners, cynical from the work they had been doing, tried to catch him in a lie, but it was impossible. Ah Lai had always described her husband as jake, straight—he was incapable of deception. Each day, the Red Guards watched him as he went about his teaching duties. During his private time, he exercised and practised qi gong, a meditation that focuses on the body’s vital energy. He was working to perfect his own method of channelling his body’s energy for healing.

  While Ah Lai was able to visit him (her position at the military hospital in Donghu protected her from persecution), she did not learn of the specifics of his arrest until after his release. Having relatives on both sides of his family who lived in foreign countries had attracted suspicion, but records of Ah Dang’s financial contributions to the Chinese Communist Party, and Ah Thloo’s invitation to dine at the Great Hall of the People, might have helped exonerate Ah One. However, in the end, it was his prowess as a swimmer, his superb athleticism, and his abilities as a coach of successful teams that were the deciding factors.

  Throughout the Cultural Revolution, people had emulated Mao’s historic swim across the Yangtze River. Ah One was one of the most powerful swimmers in the country, and he had led the school’s swim team at the annual reenactment as a tribute to Mao. The university needed him; the Red Guards dropped all the charges.

  He also got a promotion. At the age of thirty-three, Guan Haw One became the head of the department of physical education, one of the youngest in China. From international competitions, his athletic teams brought back winning pennants that were proudly displayed in the university’s gymnasium, and his school became famous for its athletic achievements. Most importantly, he completed thirteen crossings of the Yangtze River. Much later, he would be listed in the Who’s Who of China’s Qi Gong Masters.

  Ah Lai of course wrote to her parents about Ah One’s accomplishments, but she kept the secret of his dormitory arrest from them for thirty years. At first she was reluctant and afraid to write about it, as mail to foreign countries was subject to potential confiscation and review, and then, as time went on, life crowded the incident out of her immediate consciousness. But if her parents had known of the danger, would they have made more of an attempt to bring her family to Canada? Would she and her family have been allowed to leave the country? There were too many “what ifs” to contemplate. What was, was.

  Left to right: Ah Lai holding Ah Thlam Moy, Ah One holding Ah Doon, and Ah Fuy, 1969.

  PHOTOGRAPHER STUDIO, CHINA

  In 1970, Canada established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). A year later, as the PRC opened an embassy in Ottawa, and Canada sent its first delegation to China, the United Nations officially recognized the government. On October 11, 1973, Pierre Elliot Trudeau became the first Canadian prime minister to officially visit the PRC. Ah Dang and Ah Thloo preceded him.

  In the spring of 1973, Ah Lai received a letter from her mother. Both of her parents were coming this time, with a plan to visit family in Hong Kong and Guangzhou before taking a tour of China. She and Ah One were invited to join them on the cross-country trip. She had not seen her father in a quarter-century; she was now thirty-six years old. She and Ah One had three children: Ah Bing Fuy was ten, Ah Bing Doon, a son, was six, and their younger daughter, Ah Thlam Moy, conceived after Ah One was released from arrest, was four. Though they still lived in Donghu, Ah Lai had been posted to work at the central hospital in Wuhan.

  Ah Lai brought the whole family from Wuhan to Guangzhou to welcome her parents at the train station. It had been six years, but Ah Fuy’s happy anticipation of a reunion with this grandmother set the tone for her siblings. Ah Dang picked up each grandchild to bestow a kiss. When he carried Ah Thlam Moy on his back, Ah Lai noticed the little girl snuggling up to him, obviously enjoying the aroma of his aftershave. At that time, aftershave and other personal care products, for either men or women, were rare commodities. The children stayed with Ah Thloo and Ah Dang at the Overseas Chinese Hotel, while Ah Lai and Ah One were again offered accommodations at uncle Ah Choo’s apartment. Ah Dang ordered refreshments to be delivered to the room. The highlight for the children was drinking fizzy orange pop, available only to foreigners, through hollow reeds used as straws; it was a memorable treat.

  The children were lavished with gifts, including a new girl’s red bicycle (until then, they had all shared Ah Wei’s old bicycle, still a sought-after commodity), a camera, a new radio with AM, FM, and short wave, and a tape recorder. Ah Dang had brought tapes so the family could learn English. When they returned to Wuhan, they did use the machine, but before they turned it on, they locked the doors. It was still dangerous to be seen, or heard, to be interested in things foreign.

  Ah Ngange, who still lived with the family in Wuhan, was apparently pleased to see her adoptive son and daughter-in-law; throughout their stay, not a harsh word passed between them. Since 1967, Ah Ngange had been surrounded by her beloved granddaughter and great-grandchildren, and she had mellowed. In photographs with the children, she was actually smiling. She lived out the rest of her life in relative comfort, and in line with her reformed character, she was to die peacefully at home, in 1977.

  • • •

  Ah Thloo and Ah Dang had booked a fifteen-day trip to see the highlights of China. The tour started in Wuhan and included Zhengzhou, Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. They were to fly to most destinations, be picked up in a van each morning, and dropped off each night at the door of their hotel.

  At first, Ah Lai and Ah One were denied tickets—the tour was considered too bourgeois f
or comrades of the state. Luckily for them, the Chinese tradition of “connections” had not been eliminated by the red flag of communism. The tour organizer had grown up in the same village as Ah One, and he remembered the now-famous athletic director. The couple was charged two hundred and twenty dollars per person, an exorbitant price, but it was happily paid by Ah Dang, and they became the first Chinese citizens to join the excursion. The operator was offered Ah Wei’s old bicycle for the equivalent of around twenty-five dollars, for helping them.

  Ah One with his father and Ah Lai with both of her parents at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, 1973.

  UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER, CHINA

  Since the tour was designated for Overseas Chinese as a way to show off the country to nationals living in foreign countries, the amenities were first class. The clients had three meals a day and were treated to local specialties. At each stop, they toured the most famous landmarks. The highlights included the major sights in both Beijing and Shanghai, Mount Song and the Shaolin Temple in Zhengzhou, the thousand-year-old Dule Temple and the statue of Kuan Yin in Tianjin, and the Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Nanjing.

  In Wuxi on China’s National Day, October 1, they were invited to dine with the mayor. For some reason, Ah Dang was considered an honoured guest and sat at the mayor’s table, while Ah Lai and Ah Thloo sat together elsewhere. They were served the famous Wuxi Three Whites, a dish of white shrimp, whitebait, and whitefish.

  Coincidentally, Ah One’s father was visiting from the Kingdom of Brunei, in Southeast Asia, where he had lived and worked as a building contractor for decades. He had helped build the new palace for the king. He joined the tour at Beijing, but, already failing in health, he suffered a mild heart attack and had to be hospitalized. Ah One stayed behind to keep his father company—it had been many years since they had seen each other and they took advantage of the time to get reacquainted. The senior Guan recovered in time for them both to rejoin the tour in Shanghai. He had taken a chance in going to the People’s Republic of China to see his son again; diplomatic relations between China and Brunei made it impossible for him to return to the country that he had called home. After the tour, when they all returned to Wuhan, he was reunited with his wife and lived with his family until his Chinese visa expired. Unable to extend the visa, he left for Hong Kong, where he had another heart attack and died, alone.

  It had been important for Ah Lai to join the tour. Her father was going to be in China for only a short while, and she needed to spend as much of that time with him as possible. Twenty-five years earlier, she had been too young and too much in awe of him to try to get to know him. If she had been younger, her curiosity might have overcome her shyness, but she had been a teenager, herself changing too much to know how to cope with an unknown parent and authority figure. Now was the time to reconcile with her father. Earlier in her life, she had sought his approval by being frugal and a good student; it hadn’t worked out as she had hoped. Now she was an adult, but she still needed affirmation as his daughter.

  Ah Lai at work.

  UNKNOWN, CHINA

  Ah Lai had imagined they would talk together—about his years in Canada and what he was doing now—and exchange views about modern China. She had expected he would ask her about her life and what she thought about things. Although she did not know how she would have responded, she used to dream that he would invite her to go to Canada. However, it was hard to know what was on his mind, what he knew, how he felt. He was not a talkative man. She would have loved to know, but could not just ask, “What do you think of the life I have made?” or more importantly, “What do you think of me?”

  Back in Wuhan, Ah Lai took her parents on a tour of the large, modern hospital where she worked as a department head. She noted with pride that the staff, including other doctors, greeted her and her parents with warmth and deference. Of course, acting as the interpreter, she was reluctant to fully translate her colleagues’ enthusiastic compliments. Both parents just nodded and smiled; they asked few questions.

  However, while Ah Lai’s and Ah One’s professional lives were satisfying, they had experienced very little economic gain. Everyone got the same wages, which were never enough to clothe and feed a household of four adults and three growing children. Much of the time, there were even more people, as poor relations from the village came to live with them, to help with the household chores and care for the children when Ah Lai was posted to different work places for months at a time.

  Ah Lai with her parents by a scenic lake, 1973.

  H.B. GUAN, CHINA

  What the tour guides neglected to show were the deprivations people faced during that time. In 1973, even without the Red Guards, the anarchy that was the Cultural Revolution was still going on. Its effects had spread to industry, agriculture, and even the country’s finances. The shortages of consumer goods and food had become worse since 1966; lineups for staples were longer and the portions smaller.

  Food was rationed with coupons. Each person got one kilo of meat per month. Fish was inexpensive, but to get fresh fish, one had to be in line by 3:00 AM. People held their places in line with a rock and hoped someone would kick it forward, or would ask a friend to pick up the fish for a tip, about the same amount as the fish itself. Ah Lai’s family survived on legumes, tofu, and rice. She could remember every new piece of clothing she had had before 1985. The year her parents visited, Ah Lai was assigned a new apartment and additional food coupons in recognition of her foreign guests.

  For the sake of her children, Ah Lai had to test the waters, hoping for a more permanent reunion with her parents. One evening, she screwed up her courage. “Father—could we go to Canada now? The children are getting older.”

  True to form, he responded bluntly, “Your situation looks good here. You are a doctor. It’d be different in Canada. Without English, you wouldn’t be able to work as a doctor. Instead, you’d be doing thlange foo gonge, hard manual labour. You’d be better not to go.”

  Perhaps it was all true, but while the words were not harsh, the implications stung like nettles. Not wanting to argue with her father and spoil the short time they had together, Ah Lai said nothing more and let the matter drop.

  Discussing it years later with her sister, Ah Lai would say, “When everyone is in the same situation, you don’t feel bitter. We had it somewhat better than others; we’d have extra money from Father to buy a chicken or a fish. In comparison, we were much better off, wouldn’t you say?”

  • • •

  In China, the 1970s remained politically turbulent. General Lin Biao, formerly named Mao’s successor, attempted an armed coup d’état in 1971; it failed. In 1974, the Gang of Four, led by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, seized power and imposed a two-year reign of terror that rivalled the worst of the Cultural Revolution.

  When Premier Zhou Enlai died in January 1976, millions of citizens travelled to Tiananmen Square to lay wreaths, poems, and eulogies at the Monument to the People’s Heroes. He had been the balanced face of the regime and the country mourned his loss deeply. Ah Thloo said a prayer out loud for Zhou Enlai’s soul.

  Not long afterwards, an earthquake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale killed more than two hundred and forty-two thousand people in China. Some considered it a portent that the Mandate of Heaven was ending. Chairman Mao Zedong died in September 1976, his body embalmed and displayed in a crystal coffin in the Memorial Hall on Tiananmen Square. Ah Thloo, who was of the opinion that Chairman Mao had made it possible for China to become independent and proud, said a prayer out loud for his soul as well.

  Grandma’s Chinese name is Tue Sue. “Tue Sue” literally means autumn compassion. Autumn is the season of harvest and abundance. She was a rich woman of contentment because she appreciated and valued what she had and was gifted to find beauty in ordinary things. She once told me she was very lucky. “Who could have ever imagined a Chinese village girl like me would end up living in such a heavenly place?”

  —Guan Binghui, A Eulogy for Grandm
a

  FOURTEEN

  A Cowherd in Paradise

  AH DANG AND MICHAEL: VICTORIA, 1981

  “Five hundred dollars? That was a fortune in 1921!” said Michael, Ah May’s husband, of the head tax.

  “Lotsa money, at dat time, can buy two house! But I have no leglets,” Ah Dang replied in his heavily accented English.

  “Aren’t you angry at the government for making you pay to live in Canada?”

  “At firs, I really mad. Sure. No one else have to pay. Jus Chinee. Not fair. Maybe govmen should say, ‘Solly,’ but I don’t tink they will do dat, do you?”

  “You’re probably right. The government wouldn’t apologize for something that happened so long ago.” And Michael added sarcastically, “It has so many things to be sorry about.”

  When Ah Dang was asked what had drawn him to Canada, he explained, “Na-ting for me in China. In Canada, I find job, sometime very bad job, but in China, no work for no body. Too many war in China, all de time fighting! Canada peacefoo place. But I don’t forget, I Chinee, my famly Chinee. I still love China. But now Canada my home.”

  After a long pause, he added, in a faraway voice, “One ting I leglet; my family in China so long without me. We no have chance to be family together. Dat why Ah May so plecious to me and to her mommy.” He looked Michael straight in the eye. “I know you take good care my daughter.”

  They enjoyed it so much, they did it again—for the record! 1978

  ROBERT WONG, MONTREAL

  • • •

  AH DANG AND AH THLOO: MONTREAL AND VICTORIA, 1978–1984