by Ufrieda Ho
by everyone’s estimates. These were not particularly great attributes for a
potential husband for your only child, but importantly for my grandparents,
they heard that he was a good man, and enough people vouched that he
would likely be a responsible husband and provider.
My father had a few loyal friends. Many were older community
members who had come to know him in the years since he had arrived
in Johannesburg. They became like older brothers and uncles to my dad.
They spoke for him, recognised his loyalty and his reliability, his sense
of responsibility and his respect for elders. Importantly their voices did
matter.
So, my grandfather agreed to have my father around for tea on their
small plot outside Silverton in Pretoria.
My granny and mother must have frantically cleaned up the little house
and my grandfather would have been sent out that day to buy something
special for tea. My grandfather would have taken his old green station
wagon Passat to Chinatown in Johannesburg. The pastel green tank
would have chugged into the city centre for my grandfather to pick up
a cake along with the specialities of Chinese dim sum, maybe bao, the
sweetish white buns filled with smooth, dark lotus seed paste or sweet
roasted pieces of pork, char siu, and also small minced pork dumplings
steamed piping hot in their paper-thin, doughy sheaves.
My dad arrived for tea with another man and his wife. The man’s
nickname was Daai Sak (Big Stone). I remember this man we called
‘Uncle’, even though he was not my dad’s relative by blood. He had a
booming voice that was matched by an equally big laugh. He had tufts of
greyish hair that stood out around his ears that made him look a little like
an owl as he greyed more and more. I liked this misbehaving hair; it suited
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this tanned, hard-working fahfee man who had grown into his role as a
community elder, solid and unfussy.
The clincher of that meeting, though, was if my mother liked what she
saw; she still had the final say.
‘The first time I saw your dad he seemed quite tall to me and a bit on
the thin side. He was fidgeting with his fingers a lot and he seemed quiet
and shy. He did not say much when I brought out the tea from the kitchen
to be introduced to him. But he seemed nice,’ my mother recalled of that
first encounter as she flipped aside the curtains that stood in for doors in
my grandparents’ simple home to have a look at this would-be husband.
I can imagine my mom and gran fussing over the tea in the kitchen and
my gran reminding my mother to be polite and ladylike. My mom, in her
typical way, pretended not to care too much, even though the butterflies in
her stomach would have been fluttering up a storm.
And my father fiddled with his fingers rather than lighting up a cigarette,
which he thought would not have made a good impression. His hair was
probably impressive, oiled back but full and pitch black. The meeting was
full of hopeful maybes, so it was a success.
There was at least one other suitor my mother remembers coming
around for tea over those few weeks. But she says she did not like the
look or manner of this other man and she agreed instead to be courted by
my father when he also expressed interest. Being courted was the orderly,
proper way to do things and that was what my mother and grandparents
expected.
Theirs started out as a long-distance relationship because my father
was running a few small fahfee banks in Johannesburg and my mother
was in Pretoria helping her parents run the butchery.
When my father could make it out to Pretoria over weekends, he took
my mom back to the haunts of Sophiatown and Ferreirasdorp, where
there were cinema houses that Chinese people were allowed into. These
were the areas where Indian and coloured communities lived and traded.
The few photographs my dad had from that time all bear the shop stamps
of small studios in Sophiatown. Around the corner was Chinatown and a
little further west was the Newclare cemetery for coloureds, Chinese and
Indians. It was also in these suburbs that a guy could take his gal out for a
Sunday afternoon and not be harassed by the white cops.
In one of my mother’s stories, she remembers being mad with my father
for not pitching up one day for a long-awaited date when he said he would.
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She said it was nearly a deal-breaker because she was not going to be stood
up, even though this was, of course, not my father’s intention and the life
of a fahfee man did not have predictable regularity.
But there was no negotiation with my mother if she felt someone had
stepped out of line with her. Throughout her life those lines of appropriate
behaviour have been based on her idea of correct behaviour towards her,
defined by her own ideas of social hierarchy. ‘I am the older cousin’, ‘I am
the mother-in-law’ or ‘I have no responsibility because I have married out,’
are my mother’s easy, but flawed (at least to me) reasoning.
My father took a far more relaxed attitude about matters of social
order and correctness. He was less bound to the standards that my mother
took as gospel. A particular barb in my mom’s side while they were dating
was a woman my dad was friends with from before he started dating my
mother. This woman, a few years older than my father, had two small
children but her husband had left her or something else that seemed
scandalous when we asked about it as teenagers. My father would look in
on the family from time to time and try to help out the single mom when
he could but I know my mother disapproved of the friendship that she
felt just was not proper. There is still a photo or two of a lanky woman
and two small children that survived in the family albums. I remember my
father chuckling at my mom’s jealousy and her jibes that this woman was
my dad’s ‘girlfriend’. I understood my mother’s insecurity. My mom has
always been a proud woman and as a young woman dating someone who
could be her future husband she would not tolerate the intrusion into the
social rules that she felt had to apply to her picture of perfect.
Perhaps my father was more easy-going because without family
members in South Africa there were not so many busybodies to prop up
conventions.
My parents did marry, within about a year of dating each other. For
the longest time I could only picture their wedding day in black and white
through the images printed on that special photographic paper with wavy
edges and white borders, which proved that something extra special had
taken place inside the frames. There are a few stiff photographs, all neatly
posed on the steps of the University of the Witwatersrand.
My mother had a bob and dark eyeliner and a long-sleeved white
wedding dress with a simple cascade of satin and lace detail. Around her
neck was a gold chain, in heavy yellow Chinese gold, with a heart-shaped
jade pendant. I recognised this later when as a girl I rummaged through
&
nbsp; my mother’s jewellery.
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My father was in a dark suit, with a thin tie and an attitude.
It was not like back in China where a wedding couple will, still today,
wear traditional garments for at least part of the wedding day ceremonies.
The bride’s dress is also a central feature as it is in Western custom. It is
an embroidered cheung saam in silk brocade with intricate beading and
glittering thread offset on a mostly red background – red is the colour of
all things lucky, happy and auspicious. The bride in China or Hong Kong
will have a headdress or at least plastic flowers with dangling beads in her
hair.
Back in South Africa, my mother’s wedding dress was white in the
Western custom of the time. White is a traditional colour of mourning
in China, in fact, but the widespread adoption of Western-style outfits
was a sign of the mingling of cultures and traditions under an African
sun. My parents’ wedding party was tiny compared to that of some other
Chinese families. On my dad’s side, the people who stood in for the family
photographs were brothers of a different kind, men like Daai Sak, who had
come to know my father in the years almost as a brother or a son. On my
mom’s side, there were my grandparents and my granny’s older sister and
her husband and children. Because my mom was an only child, there was
also a group of made-up siblings lined up in pretty dresses, ironed shirts,
topped with stiff, hair-sprayed dos and big smiles. In my parents’ group
photos, it is friends and extended family of cousins and their children
that make up the sprouts of a family tree all standing on the steps of
Wits University, the most common venue for wedding photographs at that
time.
Years later, Kelvin and his own bride, both then Wits University alumni,
would repeat that wedding ritual on the Great Hall steps; she in her cascade
of satin and beads and Kelvin with a cravat under his chin and a carnation
in his buttonhole.
I liked to look at those static posed images from my parents’ wedding
and search for clues of the emotions of that day. In some photos my father
looked stern to me. I later found out it was because some of his cousins had
made a fuss about being in photos because there had been a death in their
extended family. My father would have felt that it was not disrespectful to
the dead person for these cousins to choose to show him a bit of respect
by being in the photo. It was one of those conventions that must have
irked my father and his expression showed it. I could not tell much from
my mother’s sweet composure as the young bride. She would have been
told how she should stand and place her feet. For years when we were
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growing up, we three girls have photographs in which our feet are placed
at specific angles to create an impression my mother would say was pretty
and ladylike. Mostly my expressions in these photos also showed how I
felt about fussy rules and customs.
We did not get to see my mom’s wedding dress ever. It was not bundled
away with mothballs and memories in the back of a wardrobe. Instead, it
was cut up by the time we children came along, reincarnated as something
that outlived the expiry date of a single event. The veil, she told with
thrifty contentment, was turned into a net to cover food from pesky flies.
My sentimentalist heart sank, but I grew up to know better about what
matters to my mother.
Decades later it was an aunt, Aunt Ah Peng, who offered to trawl
through her old boxes to find the invitation to my parents’ wedding close
to 40 years ago. She said she knew she still had it somewhere.
I never even thought of asking my mom about the invitation. It never
occurred to me that a sentimental memento like a piece of red cardboard,
embossed with the double happiness – two identical Chinese characters
written together to form a unity of happiness – as most traditional wedding
invitations are designed, could be stashed somewhere in and among
my mother’s things. It still remains missing at this stage. How I would
love to see my parents’ names, written in gold or red, announcing their
auspicious union. By contrast to my mother, I grew up as a hoarder of
everything sentimental. I have held on to letters from teenage pen pals
even though I have never re-read them, my soft toys all have names and
when they were loved threadbare I sewed them up, patched them with
sellotape and glued on new eyes. There are wedding invitations from
friends and family members that I have never thrown out. Their gilded
cards in bundled piles are packed in boxes alongside old birthday cards
and teddy bears with chewed-up ears and scuffed eyes that I cannot say
goodbye to.
One day, when I was about seven, I noticed an oddly shaped item on
top of our pale blue, steel kitchen cupboards, a unit with tinny shelves and
a simple counter covered with a thin waterproof sheeting that had a mock
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marble pattern. It was simply pushed up against the wall, leaving a small
gap that collected dust and grease and little things you think you have lost
forever.
Like everything else on the top of the cupboard, it was sheathed in a
greasy plastic bag and rested on a bed of yellowed newspapers that lined
the top of the cabinets. I nagged my mom until eventually she brought it
down to show me. I settled on top of our blue Formica table so that I could
have a bird’s-eye view as the plastic sheath was pulled back. It revealed
an oddly shaped straw basket that had a hinged lid and an intricate metal
lock. I loved it immediately.
On the inside, the basket had a material lining that was bright red.
It had moulded sections that were snug nests for a Chinese tea set. My
mother handled the small cups with a tender relish. The cups were each
painted with a phoenix and a dragon and rimmed with a gold trim. As
my mom lifted up the teapot from the centre, it was more cylindrical than
squat and its handle was not porcelain but a woven kind of straw. My
mom told me it was the tea set she had used for her wedding ceremony, the
one that my grandparents sipped from to give their blessing to the union.
A marriage tea ceremony has the bride and groom kneel in front of the
older members of the families and offer a cup of tea. It is called sun poh
chai (daughter-in-law tea). They offer up the tea and after the relative has
sipped, they set aside the cup and congratulate the couple with a lei see,
the double red packets of monetary gifts or a piece of jewellery that has
been handed down through the family. The amounts given are linked to
lucky numbers. There are no numbers with fours as that in Cantonese is
sei and sounds similar to the word for dying. Instead, the numbers would
be eights or threes, baat or saam, numbers that sound similar to the words
for prosper and for being alive.
Memories of kneeling on the cool drapes of her white wedding dress to
offer tea to he
r parents and her new family elders would have come back
to my mother. Then she returned the cups and the pot to their crimson
nests, hooked in the lock on the basket, refreshed the grimy plastic bag
with a new one and returned her treasure to its spot on top of the yellowed
newspaper.
Many years later we found something else that had survived. When
Yolanda was at university, a friend’s boyfriend told her that he thought he
still had some old 8-mm footage from our parents’ wedding. His father
had long since passed away but he had given some work to my father and
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taken him on as a general farmhand when my dad first arrived in South
Africa. Growing up on a smallholding this friend, Anthony, said he could
remember my father as a cool young man that he wanted to hang out with;
my father taught him how to tie his shoelaces, he had said with affection.
Anthony gave the cassette to us in a yellowed cardboard case and for
years it was like a locked jewellery box that we could not look into because
we did not have a projector.
It took some years still for the footage to be freed. Our dad had died by
then. The man with the technological magic did not stay far from us and
he accepted the coil of film from me with a nod of his head, assuring me
that he was absolutely able to do something with it and told me to return
in a week’s time.
One week later he had a video tape for me. We gathered to watch
the video the night I collected it. The video man had decided to dub on
some sound because there was no audio track on the original. He had
chosen a haunting instrumental rendition of ‘Somewhere My Love’. For
the first time I could see that my mother’s bridesmaids had peach-coloured
mini-dresses and my granny’s neat two-piece outfit was a brocade of pale
blue and silver. The static black and white photos came to life as the film
footage betrayed the posed and poised silver halide images.
The film captured my parents walking towards the Wits Great Hall
steps, the iconic facade of the central block of the university’s buildings,
my father strutting and puffing on a cigarette. He played up for the camera
a bit with an exaggerated puff and a wave. My mom was coy, trying to
keep from tripping over the clumsy froth of her wedding gown train.
We smiled and laughed in our living room that night. We saw our dad