by Alice Pung
10.
You tell the tramp to stop the taxi.
But he says that past is set in concrete. There is nothing you can do about it now. He’s just here to make sure you stay here.
‘Believe me,’ he says ‘It was a shock to me too.’
You look down and see wooden panelling.
Your nails are still growing.
The taxi plunges into darkness and you are falling through the air.
Five, four, three, two…
1.
Your skin sticks to the sweaty seat.
Homecoming
.................................
My China
Kylie Kwong
As a 29th-generation Kwong, I have long dreamt of visiting the Kwong ancestral village in China, where my great-grandfather Kwong Sue Duk was born in 1853. A dedicated practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Kwong Sue Duk was lured to Australia in 1875 by the promise of gold. Over the years he travelled many times between China and Australia as he forged business connections and secured a future for his family. His descendants now number around 1200 and span five generations, and I am honoured to be a part of what is possibly the largest Chinese family tree in Australia. Today I am returning to the clan village, the first family member to visit our ancestral home in ninety years.
Wong Nai Hang, Kwong Sue Duk’s home village, lies in the countryside outside Toishan, a big and modern city in Guang-dong province, about three hours’ drive southwest from Guangzhou. Wong Nai Hang translates as ‘Yellow Mud Ditch,’ a reflection of the village’s fertile soil, but it’s also known a little more auspiciously as ‘The Good Luck and Peace Village.’
I am being driven down a dirt road through the fields towards Wong Nai Hang, a scattered group of elderly, square-sided houses up ahead, all shaded by huge old trees. I get out and begin walking along the white-pebbled track leading to the Kwong family’s ancestral village – the feeling is primal. I find out later that the path was pebbled in my honour.
As I make my way through the village, it buzzes with life: mottled chickens peck at the ground, twitchy-eared dogs sniff the air and stare at us; farmers steer water buffalo through the lush, green rice paddies; worn and weathered wooden wheelbarrows lie by the side of the fields; ducks glide through the murky waters, and waddle in and out of their coops; and pigs run wild and generally make a nuisance of themselves. Some of the villagers, clad in thin polyester floral-patterned shirts and knee-length pants, stand in the doorways of their houses, looking on and wondering what all the commotion is about.
When I finally arrive at the top of a small hill, there stands Kwong Sue Duk’s home – I can’t believe it! Over 130 years old, infused with tradition and ritual, the house is built of mud bricks and wooden beams, and earthy, musty smells permeate the air. The building comes from a China I have only ever seen before on the television screen or in books. A patina of dark brownish-black and deep sea-green mould covers the narrow, densely layered bricks – I run my fingers over the walls, hoping to ‘feel’ a little bit of my great-grandfather’s spirit. Old wooden lids and baskets sit in what must once have been the living room but is now a safe haven for chickens. On the wall is the Kwong family seal – I am overwhelmed by the feeling that I really belong somewhere. I am thrilled; my heart is pounding with emotion, and I cannot recall the last time I smiled this much.
Warned of my visit in advance, a group of villagers is waiting for me and within a few moments we are talking through an interpreter as if we have known each other forever – they treat me like I am their child, their sister, their aunt. With their high-pitched vocal tone and rather blunt, down-to-earth manner, Chinese people can be quite a noisy bunch … and at this moment I don’t know who is louder, the chooks or the villagers! I’m surrounded by a lot of squawking as I am affectionately dragged toward the porch of my great-grandfather’s house, in preparation for the ritual of thanks to my ancestors.
The ancestor shrine is inside Kwong Sue Duk’s house. A wobbly old card table holds bowls filled with food: a white-cooked chicken, still with head, neck and feet; one unpeeled orange; a juicy, fat strip of roasted pork, complete with crackling; and small bowls variously filled with tomatoes, stir-fried potatoes, and some cauliflower cooked with salted radish. It occurs to me that, even in the context of ceremonies, the Chinese are always thinking of balance and harmony of flavour, texture and ingredient. One of my relatives is saying something to me in Chinese, and is becoming more and more insistent. After a lot of kerfuffle, I work out that tradition demands I add a sweet to the platter of food for good luck – and to impart sweetness to the afterlife. I look around desperately at my friends and we all rummage through our bags until, finally, a mint is retrieved … phew!
Three tiny plastic red cups, similar to ones you might find in a doll’s house, are placed in a row in front of the food, along with three sets of matching chopsticks. Another relative pours wine into the three cups and then lights a wad of joss sticks, which are a wonderful magenta colour with camel-coloured tips – exactly the same as the ones our family used to light at Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney. Following instructions, I hold the incense between my palms and bow forward three times. I then pour the wine, one cup at a time, onto the ground in front of the table; the cups are promptly refilled and repositioned, before the ritual is repeated. Next I light a wad of paper money, which is left to burn itself out on the ground, and bow a final three times.
To complete the ritual, we all stand back as a box of red fire-crackers is lit, and everyone shrieks and runs for cover as they let off an almighty bang and a blinding cloud of smoke. The Chinese enjoyment of noise, fuss, big crowds, bright lights and loud colours is all to do with driving away bad luck and evil spirits; silence, gloom and white are always associated with loneliness and death.
The ritual is over, and it’s time to move outside Kwong Sue Duk’s home to a perch overlooking the fields, where I’m going to cook lunch for the crowd of villagers and relatives around me. There could be no better spot to do it than here, in the middle of a rice paddy in rural China. My translator tells me that, in fact, very few Kwongs still live in the village today, but one of them – who I immediately think of as an ‘uncle’ – stokes the fire for me, and I have to do a double-take because he looks so much like my eldest brother, Paul.
We had scoured the local markets that morning for the freshest vegetables, including yellow garlic chives, wonderfully crunchy lotus roots and shiny purple eggplants; live baby fish and snappy little crabs; large red chillies and small green chillies … I make up the recipes as I go along. I am on such a high, I don’t know who to smile at next. As the flames roar into life under what seems like the world’s biggest and hottest wok, and with the temperature climbing as the sun rises in the sky, it is sultry and smoky. In the background are timeless scenes of paddy fields tended by workers wearing traditional bamboo hats, while closer to me old men sit around the fire flashing gold-toothed smiles and smoking rather interesting-looking cigarettes.
The village women are enchanting. Although we first met just hours ago, I feel as if we have known each other for years, and we easily slip into this incredibly harmonious and efficient ‘working bee.’ Squatting on their haunches, three of the women wash and wipe dishes, while the fourth goes up and down the path to the well, filling and carrying two pails on each trip.
These villagers are very fit: they live simply, eat only fresh food and, as farmers, work very hard in tune with the seasons. Despite having so few of those essentials we take for granted (there’s no piped gas, running water or electricity in the village), they have such spirit – their eyes dance, they laugh all the time, they are responsive and seem to live in the moment … I say to myself, This is what living is all about.
As I cook over an open flame in this remote village, I feel so at home. My mind begins to wander. So this is where the old man came from, this is what his family life was all about. What incredible courage on his part, firstly to want for mor
e than this simple existence and, secondly, to venture out of this corner of the world and sail to faraway Australia.
A million questions come to mind – how I wish that Kwong Sue Duk was here right now to answer them. I would ask him what prompted him to embark on such a momentous journey; what was going through his mind and what lay in his soul at the time; I want to know where he got his pioneering spirit from, and I wonder whether my sense of adventure can be traced back to him.
What inspired a 25-year-old man to leave all he had ever known? I would give almost anything to have had just one conversation with my great-grandfather about his thoughts, his feelings, his passions, his views … I never even got the chance to meet my grandfathers: by the time I was born, both had already passed on. I always felt sad about this when I was growing up as I had heard so much about them: my maternal grandfather Goong Goong’s famous homemade pickles, my paternal grandfather’s excellent musical talent. If only Kwong Sue Duk could be with us – I feel sure that he would be thrilled to see all of us connecting and living our lives in the same enthusiastic fashion as he lived his own. I guess he is here in spirit …
*
Sadly, the time comes to pack up and leave. Our farewells are accompanied by much hugging, and as we walk down the track to the bus, one of the villagers roars up beside me on his motorbike. Looking at me with a cheeky smile, he points to me and then back to his bike. The next thing I know I am perched on the back of his Suzuki, charging through the village at quite a speed. I laugh helplessly as we pass a blur of houses, chook pens, pig pens and duck ponds, with the rest of the villagers waving and cheering us on.
As our bus pulls out, we wave goodbye and drive at a snail’s pace over my beloved white-pebbled track. I fall back in my seat, smiling and speechless. I can’t wait to call my family in Australia and tell them of my experiences – of the path freshly pebbled for my visit, of my uncle’s wok and, especially, I can’t wait to tell them how deliriously happy I feel to be a part of this enchanting, extraordinary and energetic family.
This is an edited extract from My China by Kylie Kwong (Penguin Books, 2007).
The Face in the Mirror
Blossom Beeby
When I was a child, my mother would amuse herself with stories of how I’d come into the world. Perhaps I had arrived on the front lawn in a spaceship, or had been sent to do the cleaning. In the late eighties, people were not accustomed to seeing white parents with a smiley Asian kid in tow. Curious ones would ask my parents why they had a ‘Chinese daughter,’ and I think my mother liked the idea of shocking them with unexpected responses. It was kind of a secret joke between us.
There are of course some truths that my mother shared about my arrival. When I was born on the first of February in 1984, the temperature was thirteen degrees below zero. It was in a city in the south of Korea called ‘Pusan.’ These are two things I have always known about my birth. For a long time, though, I’d pronounced the ‘-san’ part of Pusan in a hard, Australian-sounding way, to rhyme with the word ‘can.’ It should have been a softer ‘sahn.’ My parents gave me the middle name ‘Soo Jeong,’ which in Korean means ‘crystal’ and was my first name when I was a baby in Korea. These details were hard-wired into my brain: interesting morsels to satisfy curious people, but static and scripted, with little current meaning.
Parents who acquired ‘Made in Korea’ babies in the 1980s received scant care instructions. Don’t treat delicately. Allow to integrate. Take special care not to acknowledge Asianness. My parents heeded the tag, I think. Asian adoptees often talk about their experiences with mirrors. To many of us they have a sad significance. Inside we identified with the Caucasian people who made up our families. If we closed our eyes and imagined ourselves, we would see rosy white kids. When we looked at our faces in the mirror, though, foreigners would appear. I internalised my Asian face, but it didn’t mean that I liked it. I just accepted it.
My mother had bought a large coffee-table book with beautiful images of Korea inside. There were tranquil countryside landscapes and serene images of cherry blossoms falling on courtyards. In one of these, there was an elderly woman, hunched over and gazing at the camera. I was repulsed by her brown wrinkledness. I thought about becoming like this in my old age. I genuinely believed that with the progression of time in Australia, I would eventually evolve into a fully-fledged Caucasian and would never have to face the possibility of being a shrivelled-up old Asian woman.
For much of my childhood, my Asianness was pushed to a crevice in the back of my mind. My friends were white, my family was white, my world was white. We lived in tolerant, white neighbourhoods. In both my primary and high schools, I was the only Asian kid in my year. The characters I read about in books and watched on television and in movies were white. All my conceptions of beauty were white, and I wondered if boys would ever find me attractive. To me, Asian people were not attractive and were in no way sexual beings.
It was quite easy to forget I was Asian when everyone around me was white, but there were occasions when the facade wasn’t entirely effective. Asian people scared me silly. When I was a kid, South-East Asian guys with long, centre-parted hair used to squat, cigarettes in hand, in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall. They would look around listlessly and talk amongst themselves. If I ever walked through that part of the mall with my dad, I would stare at the ground and subtly urge him to walk faster. I don’t know what I was fearful of. Perhaps if I’d acknowledged that these people existed, I would have had to look in the mirror again.
I spent many summers flipping through my grandmother’s trashy weekly gossip magazines. One day I came across an advertisement for pantyhose. The ad featured an Asian woman standing in a boxing ring. She had glistening black hair and was wearing a figure-hugging red dress with a split all the way up her leg. She was wearing a pair of sheer, black pantyhose and impossibly high stilettos. Heavily made-up to look smouldering, her facial expression was confident, if a little smug. She was beautiful and she gave me a glimmer of a hope.
In the latter years of high school, I began a rebellion of sorts. I started going to nightclubs with my best friend, who was half Ghanaian and had grown up mostly with a white English mother. We were both a little culturally confused and suddenly found places where there were a lot of people who looked like us. There were Asians, Arabs, Africans, Indians and every ethnicity in between: the white kids were the minority. It was a cultural hodgepodge and a comfort zone I’d never known before. I felt at ease asserting my ethnicity among the throngs of other black-haired people who gathered in those dark, smoky venues. It was the first time I’d felt comfortable being an Asian, around other Asians. It may have been a very seedy way of achieving it and not one to be advocated in adoptive parenting handbooks, but I was finally kind of glad to be Asian.
I had fully acknowledged my Asianness and was proud of it. I met more Asians and felt comfortable around them. I would ask their nationality and they would ask mine. As with the facts about my birth, the response ‘Korean’ became automated. But if you’d asked, I couldn’t have told you one thing about Korea. I didn’t feel I needed to delve any deeper.
My university boyfriend was a Japanese-Australian. He determined very quickly that I actually was Korean. He was sensitive and genuinely wanted me to learn about the country. Being proud, I couldn’t tell him that I was scared. So I went along with it.
He took me to the Korean food stand in Chinatown. I ordered a generic chicken dish and sat down with it in trepidation. He told me to try the kimchi, Korea’s national dish. I shoved it in my mouth and chewed. It was a nerve-wracking experience. I wonder now if he detected that. ‘Not bad,’ was all I could muster.
From then on, I threw my fears aside and learnt all I could about Korea. Maybe it was the mystical healing properties of the kimchi. Smells of sesame oil and fermented cabbage and soybean paste brought me a certain comfort and epicurean happiness. I ventured timidly into the one Korean grocery store in Adelaide to buy bulgogi and ramyeon and a
nything else I recognised.
One day, while waiting for a lecture, I noticed a small flyer offering Korean language lessons in exchange for help with English conversation. I hastily ripped off a tab and stashed it in my wallet. I called the number that night and spoke with a young Korean woman. We met up the following weekend and over potato wedges, with sour cream and sweet-chilli sauce, I began to learn my first Korean words.
My tutor began teaching me the basics of the Korean alphabet. To me, written Korean looked like someone had thrown down sticks and circles on a page. But I learned quickly and was soon able to make out the sounds they represented. I returned to Chinatown one weekend and stared at the sticks and circles: . They began looking less like meaningless shapes and more like words that I could actually read and say. It was like I had cracked a special code. My tutor was extremely patient and encouraged me. She told me my pronunciation was excellent and attributed this to my Korean tongue. I smirked and accepted the compliment.
The small snippets of information that I had always spat out on cue about my history now began to have significance. I had my university change my records so that my middle name – my Korean name, Soo Jeong – would appear on all my documents. I would sit and write my Korean name over and over in Hangeul: I could be or Blossom Beeby. I began to think of my Korean name as the one connection between myself and Korea and my birth mother. I met people who had been to Pusan. They had stories of how Pusan people are tough, Pusan women have distinctive faces, the men are terse and uncompassionate and everyone speaks in a dialect that to outsiders gives the impression that they are yelling at each other. I wondered if I had inherited any of these characteristics.
I scoured my university library for books about Korea. To my dismay, there was scant contemporary material. The few books I could find, much like the country itself, were jammed between numerous tomes about its more glorious and fascinating neighbours, Japan and China. I was dissatisfied and hungry for more.