by Ufrieda Ho
along the lattice of the main routes in and out of the city. We stopped off
at the old Library Gardens fountains and walked around the fountains
lit with lollipop-coloured lights at the bottom of the pools. The water
sprayed up in jets at their own synchronised pace. We stepped on to the
short walls of the pools and let the spray of water wet our shoes; then we
rushed over to the next fountain, shaking off the droplets.
Sometimes we did some window-shopping, strolling along the shopfronts
of the old OK Bazaars in Eloff Street and peering at the appliances for
sale and the mannequins and curly-haired dolls with their stony eyes and
magnificent fake eyelashes. They were displaying children’s clothing and
the windows were edged with a border of fake snow made with spray-
on white mist. Sometimes my parents even held hands; it was so not the
Chinese way and it made us children giggle.
Christmas in Johannesburg was also about the dioramas that were put
on display at Joubert Park, in the city’s green lung. By the 1980s, Chinese
people were permitted to enter these public areas or, at least, our family
was never turned away. I did not know then that these were restricted
places for everyone who was non-white, including the Chinese.
There were some black people at public events like this, but there were
no children or families, only black men ringing a bell, selling ice creams or
assisting their bosses who had stalls selling food, trinkets and balloons.
As a child, I had no perception that this was odd. Those warm
Johannesburg December nights were for my own selfish enjoyment. The
park was turned into a fantasia of coloured light, floats and displays.
Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk
and all the creatures of fiction’s wonderland moved and sang on their fixed
platforms among the candyfloss sellers, the ice cream vendors and the man
with the helium balloons.
Dad usually treated us to the pastel shades of candyfloss and we tore
off the airy sugar that came inside the puffed-up plastic bags. We stuck out
our tongues, showing each other the magic of the wispy pastels turning
dark and syrupy as the candyfloss melted. Sometimes we also got a balloon
each. We never pleaded or nagged for these things; either we got them or
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we did not. When we did not, we were disappointed but we did not stamp
our feet, sulk or cry because we knew they were extras and nice-to-haves
that my parents had to dig deeper into their pockets for.
When we did get balloons it was pure helium heaven. We chose one
from the box the balloon seller showed to us. He took our choice, stretched
it a bit and wrapped its rubber lip snugly over a gas cylinder. Unisda and I
especially liked the balloons that were shaped like a long-faced bear with
two protruding ears and a smiley face printed on the expanding rubber.
Yolanda and Kelvin sometimes chose those, too, or they picked the
oversized balloons that had something that rattled inside them.
Mom tied the balloons in an elaborate knot around each of our wrists
and we watched and waited for our balloons to follow our steps as we ran
in between adults’ legs, to and from the diorama displays.
When we got home, we tied our balloons to the ends of our beds and
went to sleep with them bobbing. In the morning, we found them still
smiling but sunken halfway as the night had stolen their helium breaths.
We rushed outside to the stoep with them, whirling around and around to
try to get them back up into the air. But they drooped further and further
until they touched our feet and shrank into spent rubber.
The Easter and Christmas festivals of the West had a parallel significance
with the traditional Chinese gatherings of haang ching and ching ming, the
so-called grave-sweeping festivals. These sound morbid, but a gathering
of the clans with extended families all sharing one space always sparked
a festive mood. A clan is all those who share a surname and the kinship
tie draws them together during these two annual festivals when they
remember the ancestors and the threads that bind over generations and
across the oceans that separate Africa from the East. Money was raised
from donations and this would be used for charitable initiatives in the
community and sent back to the villages in China to be used for projects
there.
Dad was also part of a kind of community stokvel. We called it gung
wui, the communal pot of money to which members contributed every
month and drew from when they needed a lump sum. Of course, there
were rules in terms of when and who got to draw from the pot. There
had to be checks and balances and equitable distribution. More than the
money, the community pot, like the dinners for haang ching and ching
ming, was about gathering, restoring old connections and sustaining a
financial net for the community that did not have to rely on things outside
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the community circle, things like banks or anything else that had a whiff
of authority and institution.
Each haang ching and ching ming, individual families would go to the
cemeteries to clean the graves of their family members and to lay down
flowers for the dead. They also performed the rituals of lighting incense
and candles and burning paper money, each sheer sheet embellished with
a wash of silver or gold and folded to resemble ingots from a time before
paper money. And they offered up food to the ancestors by placing a tray
of eats at the foot of the grave, or at an altar in their homes. The tray, filled
with bowls of rice and a few prepared dishes with chopsticks laid out,
would be lifted three times – once for heaven, once for the earth and once
for the deceased, like we did when we celebrated our birthdays. There
would also be little glasses of whisky and teacups with tea on the tray.
A little from each would be poured out on to the ground to resemble the
offering and invitation to the people who had died to join in the meal.
After the ceremony, the food could be eaten, but only after the incense had
burnt out, only after the ancestors had eaten.
The candles, incense and offerings made up the ritual that creates a
portal to the ancestors. Years later, I watched a Chinese comedy about two
friends. One dies and enters the afterlife. He appears to his friend first in
a dream and then they start to communicate. As they chat the dead friend
always reminds his mate to pour a little beer on the floor, saying he is
getting thirsty in the afterlife. The scene flashes to the dead friend holding
an empty glass. The glass starts to fill up as his friend in the land of the
living tips his glass to the ground. They drink together like they were never
separated.
In the old days, the clans would have gathered for these remembrance
feasts at their villages, I imagine, each village taking a turn to play host.
In South Africa, though, the feasts and the remembrances are held at a
different gathering point: a Chinese restaurant. Included on the m
enu for
haang ching and ching ming is always something vegetarian, mushrooms
maybe, and sheets of dried bean curd and crunchy wood ear fungus. The
meat-free dish is in honour of the dead and the old Buddhist and Taoist
ways of doing no harm to sentient beings.
It was not the religious philosophy that mattered but the traditions
and the customs, the ritualised actions that gave shape and form. In fact,
Buddhism and even Taoism, as I came to understand it as an adult, are
very different from what I encountered growing up. Religiosity then was
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about respect and remembrance for ancestors, for gods and heavenly
protectors, all done with smoky incense and fast-burning red votive candles,
superstition-inspired bows and prostrations, and little jade amulets and
trinkets worn around a wrist or a neck for warding off evil and misfortune.
Some people even tied these around babies’ tummies. At best, the ritualised
effort and the conformity pleased the gods; at worst, it could do no harm
and all the while it bound the clan with memories of ancestral union.
Once the haang ching and ching ming meal was completed, usually
with pots of Chinese tea and fruit, the bill was paid for by donations. Each
Ho family that had arrived for the meal was expected to cover its portion
and also to put in a few rand extra. The collections were placed in a brown
paper bag; nobody checked who gave what, but there was always a bit of
gossip about the big eaters, the inconsiderate eaters, those who took the
good pieces of the chicken or who ate up all the pork crackling before
anyone else could start on the shared food. There were also those who
were stingy with their money, underpaying a little, not leaving a tip or a
donation. Even the brown paper bag could not hide some sins.
The dinners were always held on Sunday nights to accommodate the
fahfee men and shopkeepers who would ordinarily only take a Sunday
or Sunday afternoon off from work. It was the same with weddings and
funerals. I used to think that there was something religious or superstitious
about Chinese funerals being on Sundays. Only years later did I realise
that it had no significance other than the fact that Saturdays were still
working days. Celebration and final respects would have to wait until the
cash registers rested and the fahfee rounds were done.
Not all Ho families attended these dinners but many of them did and
still do. There were several other Hos in my school so it was a treat to see
each other over the weekend at these dinners. After the meal, we children
ran around playing hide-and-seek in all the new spaces of the restaurant.
One of the most popular venues for the dinners was Litchee Inn in Pretoria
Street, Hillbrow. I also ended up working there on weekends as a teenager.
This suburb hummed with its seedy but throbbing nightlife, a cult cinema,
a massive shop dedicated to selling books and even a Wimpy where the
odd black person sat next to a white person as beggars, drunks, police
vans and old women shuffled along to buy a litre of milk from the local
Checkers, even in the segregated 1980s.
To get to the restaurant you had to enter an arcade which was always
someone’s urinal or ashtray. But then you would round the corner and
get to the restaurant escalators. The walls, papered over with designs of
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bamboo stretching from the floor to the ceiling, showed you were about
to enter somewhere quite different.
We loved to race up and down the escalators, running up the downward
escalator, sitting on the rails for a seated decline. We would play until we
were scolded by someone for making a nuisance of ourselves or until the
restaurant receptionist turned off the escalators in frustration. Then we
returned to our moms’ sides, a little exhausted and a little defeated for
being caught out for misbehaving and we would wait to go home.
For the adults, the after-dinner interaction was about networking a
little, sharing some community news or snippets from the villages back
home. It was informal but all-important; for my father these were like
his cousins, even though they were not cousins by blood, only by name.
Sharing a clan name meant you were connected and for a man with no
brothers around him, these connections mattered.
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12
Another Day, Another
Dollar
Dad’s boss, Gou Sok, was a newer migrant to South Africa, arriving in
the 1980s. His son had been in the country for some years already and
spoke English fl uently, used an English name and had married a woman
who was also South African born. When Gou Sok came to South Africa,
he stepped into a more properly structured life. He had more capital and
more business savvy than those who entered as stowaways in the 1950s
and 60s. Arriving in the 1980s meant he was able to leapfrog some of the
stifl ing restrictions that had been in place for the Chinese – he did not have
to contend with fake papers, being a paper son or living in grey suburbs
and staying on the periphery in the same way as the men and women who
arrived in South Africa in earlier decades. With his son already in the
country, his wife and daughters would follow.
Gou Sok and his wife initially lived in a fl at in Doornfontein. This
became my dad’s base for work where he clocked in each morning on the
ninth fl oor to run through the numbers he would play before he and his
colleagues drove out just before midday to the various banks.
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Unlike the holiday shifts we accompanied my dad on, now the day was
longer, with more banks and probably more betters with everyone back at
work. My dad and his colleagues would only get back to the flat at around
eight in the evening.
The fahfee men ate their evening meal together because the work day
was not quite over even as dinner time came around. Dishes would be
cleared and then it was down to counting the day’s takings. The money
had to be accounted for and then the banking happened in the next few
days. As in our home, an old newspaper would be split along its spine and
the bags of money tumbled out on to the newsprint for counting.
The records for the day were put into the small, square-lined notebooks;
only then, as the ashtrays filled up and the unfinished sips of tea grew cold,
did the fahfee men go home.
Even though Gou Sok was a decent boss, my father and his colleagues
went through the grind of making someone else rich. But dad stayed with
Gou Sok for many years because he knew he was appreciated and Gou
Sok was, to my dad, a mostly reasonable person to clock in for.
I remember Gou Sok for the chocolates he bought each of us children
at Christmas. There were four layers of chocolates inside the cellophane-
wrapped box and we each had our own box. One year, my box of chocolates
had a big-eyed kitten on it, photographed with a pinkish halo. I kept the
box for many years until its sellotape-reinforced edges finally gave i
n.
We leaned the boxes against our fireplace that did not work and where
our tinsel-laden Christmas tree took pride of place over the holidays. The
few small presents around the plastic, green spikes were now dwarfed by
the decorated boxes. We nagged mom to let us open the chocolates ahead
of Christmas day until eventually she folded under our pressure and said
okay.
The four of us sat down together to open the boxes. We knew they
were identical but we needed to be sure. We lifted off the lids to reveal
sweet nuggets that looked like delicate jewels on display. At first we chose
carefully, but after a while we gorged ourselves and then we felt sick. As the
days wore on, we started all over again until at last only a few overlooked
dairy gems remained and we were sorry that we had not paced ourselves.
With the chocolates came the present of having dad home a bit more for
the holidays. We knew too well how little time we got to spend together
when the school term was in full swing. Most days dawned with dad still
sleeping while we got ready to catch the school bus. By the time his work
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day ended, we were usually tucked in for the night. Many nights I lay
awake, waiting for dad to come home safely, only falling asleep when I
heard the familiar squeak of the garden gate and the acceleration of the
car as it thrust forward after dropping him off.
Before my father was a fahfee man, though, I remember him as a shopkeeper,
with my mom working hard by his side. The shop was on Sauer Street in
downtown Johannesburg. My mom called it an ‘eating house’ in English;
it was like a canteen for the black workmen of the city. They also sold
some mageu, traditional beer, behind the counter, along with provisions
such as snuff, loaves of bread, a few slices of polony, some canned goods
and bottles of cooldrink.
But it was mostly for the hot food that the men arrived each midday.
There were stews made from cheap cuts of meat, cooked in hearty gravies
and served with steaming pap or chunks of thickly cut white bread ready
to mop up the gravy. These men were not allowed into white restaurants
and there were few places they could sit down to eat a hot meal in the
middle of the day.