The Year of Finding Memory

by Judy Fong Bates

  Everyone in the photograph seemed so relaxed, so middle-class. I remembered the close-up of my father on his head tax certificate, the bewildered expression on his face. I thought about the stories of his indigent childhood and pictured a skinny, cringing adolescent with a wooden yoke across his shoulder, carrying heavy pails of water on blistered shoulders while being scolded by an uncaring and ruthless boss. The people in this picture were living a life beyond that boy’s wildest dreams. They possessed the quiet confidence that comes with privilege, a look I had associated with other families but never my own.

  My cousin brought me another photo. A woman in her late teens or early twenties sat in a chair. She was wearing a simple, flower-printed cheongsam. Seated on the arm of the chair was a man dressed in a suit and tie, with his hand resting protectively on her shoulder. They were both leaning slightly forward and toward each other. The intimacy between them was evident and tender. The woman’s resemblance to my mother was remarkable, but she was not my mother. The photo was of Little Aunt and her husband, Kung’s parents. As I looked at this photograph, I felt envious. I’d never seen a formal picture of my parents together, nothing that announced them as a couple. The only photograph I’d seen of just the two of them was taken outside my father’s laundry in Acton. They were standing apart from each other, both wearing heavy winter coats that were several sizes too large. The droop of their mouths, the sag of their shoulders, nothing about them inspired envy. The wind was whipping strands of my mother’s hair across her forehead. I never liked that picture.

  Once again, Kung told me how indebted his family felt toward my mother. How during the years that they’d lived in the Mainland under the Communist government, they’d depended upon her generosity, how she faithfully sent money year after year. If it had not been for her, he said, they might have starved. I would hear this refrain over and over many times before our trip was finished, and I’d also heard it many times before. As I held the picture of my cousin’s parents in my hand, I thought about what their last years must have been like together in their son’s home in Macau, surrounded by family, living in the only culture they had ever known.

  During our time in Taishan, Kung insisted on paying for everything from taxi rides to an evening at a hot springs resort. On our last morning, when we went to the station to take the bus to Kaiping City, he insisted on paying the fares for everyone. He finally agreed, though, that when he and his family joined us in my ancestral county, they would be our guests.

  EIGHTEEN

  My nephew Lew, son of First Brother Hing, lived with his family in a complex of medium-rise, concrete apartment buildings. There was no greenery between the buildings, and each grey tower rose directly from the asphalt. On the pavement near the entrance was a huge, dark blue mound of jeans. A little girl was playing on top of the heap while her mother sat on a stool and snipped the loose threads from each pair of pants. I stopped and exchanged greetings with the woman. The little girl couldn’t take her eyes off Michael, but when I offered to take her picture, she hid behind the mountain of denim.

  Bing, who was married to my niece Jeen—Lew’s sister—had met Kung, Lin, Michael and me at the Kaiping bus station and invited us for lunch at Lew’s apartment. Lew lived there with his wife, Wei; their adult son; and his elderly mother, the widow of First Brother. After Bing unlocked the heavy-looking steel front door, he led us up five flights of stairs. I did not expect to enter a spacious apartment with marble floors and big windows overlooking a large balcony. Since I’d always thought my relatives in China were poor, I was pleased to see Lew’s comfortable furnishings: a wooden sofa, a coffee table and a TV. His standard of living was perhaps not as high as Kung’s, but possessions like those were not even part of my early childhood in Acton.

  The unmistakable aroma of simmering soup filled the air, and in spite of my full breakfast, I felt hungry. Every morning, Jeen, who had lost her job and now received a small pension, arrived before Lew and Wei left for work, to look after their mother. But today she had also been busy preparing lunch.

  I had met First Brother’s Widow briefly last year when she’d visited us with her son and daughter-in-law at the Ever Joint Hotel. Her face seemed to be lifted from ancient China with her high cheekbones and plucked hairline. But during the past year, the old woman had grown even more frail and was no longer able to climb the five flights of stairs. She had not left the apartment for almost a year.

  Jeen wheeled a large, round table with collapsible legs into the middle of the living room, set it up and spread a tablecloth on top. As soon as Lew and Wei arrived home from work, they greeted us and then changed out of their work clothes and started to cook. They told me that Chinese workers, at least in the Kaiping area, were given a two-hour break for lunch. I was astonished and when I told them that most workers in Canada had only thirty to sixty minutes, they both shook their heads. Two hours, they insisted, were necessary for producing a decent meal.

  Jeen rolled her eyes and laughed. “Nobody is as fussy as Lew, except Wei,” she said. “Wei insists all her vegetables be cut in a particular way and when she cuts up fruit, everything has to be displayed just so. First the fruit has to be carefully chosen, and presented in a way that looks so good your hand automatically reaches out.” Wei had gone into the kitchen, and I could hear her good-natured laugh above the hiss of ingredients being tossed into a wok of hot oil.

  I once read that food for the Chinese is like sex for Westerners. My relatives were obsessed with food. Since arriving in Macau, we had consumed three multi-course meals every day and snacked in between.

  Once Michael and I sat down at the table, Jeen set a large, steaming bowl of watercress soup in the middle. She’d arrived at her brother’s early in the morning to get a head start on simmering the stock of pork bones, dried red dates and dried orange peel. Wei carefully ladled out a bowl for each person. After the soup Lew and Wei started bringing out dish after dish. My nephew had gone to much trouble and expense to provide us with an elaborate lunch. There was roast pork from the barbeque shop, a plate of stir-fried shrimp, a whole steamed fish with scallions, a variety of Chinese greens and a steamed patty of minced pork and salted fish with ginger. Jeen had made this last dish because she’d remembered from last year that it was a favourite of Michael Uncle. We ate everything with bowls of hot steamed rice. After a short break Wei produced a platter of perfectly sliced oranges, dragon fruit and Chinese pears. I was deeply touched.

  Once lunch was over Michael hooked up his digital camera to Lew’s television and showed everyone the photos we’d taken in Taishan and Macau. My relatives commented politely. Very nice … But the moment anyone in the room appeared on the TV screen, they started to laugh and point at the screen. It didn’t matter that Michael spoke no Chinese. He’d crossed the language barrier. When they saw pictures of our granddaughter, they asked how could she, with her blue eyes and fair hair, possibly be one-quarter Chinese? I had wondered the same thing.

  Later in the afternoon my sister Jook and her daughter Kim arrived at the apartment. My sister struck me as being slightly more stooped than when I’d last seen her, but Kim was the same, greeting me with her silvery smile. I told my relatives that I wanted to return to my father’s village and to the family store in Cheong Hong See. I looked forward to exploring my ancestral village without being rushed from one destination to another. Last year I’d wanted to walk among the rice paddies behind Ning Kai Lee, but there was not enough time. I wanted to return to my father’s house and make an offering to the ancestors again. They told me not to worry, that they would look after everything.

  It was the beginning of October, but the temperatures in southern China made it feel like July in southern Ontario. Once settled back into the Ever Joint Hotel, Michael and I decided to walk along the river toward the centre of the city. Last year we were always shuttled by van from one place to another and I’d formed my impressions of this place through the window of a moving vehicle. I remembered Kaiping as rund
own and grimy. This evening, for the first time, I saw the beauty of this city, built at the confluence of two large rivers. We walked along the tree-lined boulevard next to the river, then sat down on a bench under a thick canopy of branches and watched the light on the water change as the sun moved closer and closer to the horizon. Several antiquated-looking sampans were moored along the bank. There was something organic about their appearance; in the dimming light the little boats started to look more and more like sea creatures rising out of the river. The air was beginning to cool, and I smelled dampness in the descending dark.

  I should not have been surprised. The next morning, the van that Kim had booked for us stopped in front of the hotel, jammed beyond capacity. It already held eleven people. Everyone was headed for Cheong Hong See, the town that I’d discovered, last year, was my actual place of birth. Afterwards, we would go to Ning Kai Lee. Through the van’s windows, I could see Kim and Jeen waving and smiling. Crammed in the back two rows were Kung, Lin, Jook and Lew’s wife, Wei. There were also a few people I recognized but could not name. Shaking my head, I glanced at my husband, who merely shrugged his shoulders. A grinning Bing hopped out of the front passenger seat and gestured for Michael to sit down. Attitudes had not changed in the intervening year. Everyone cheerfully reorganized themselves while Bing and I squeezed inside. Except for my husband, no one wore a seatbelt. My relatives remembered this from last year and once again they joked about Michael Uncle’s concern for safety.

  Michael has an uncanny sense of direction. Several years can pass before he returns to a destination he has driven to only once, and he always seems to know where to go without the assistance of a map. The moment we left the hotel, he knew which road to turn down and recalled landmarks that I had forgotten. Our driver this time was a heavy-set man who leaned on the horn incessantly, and like the driver the year before, insisted on passing everything in sight. But this driver was equally at home passing vehicles from either left or right. Once again, I noticed my husband’s rigid posture and his fist wrapped tightly around the door handle.

  We were driving through a now-familiar landscape of rice, vegetables, bananas, sugar cane and papayas. My nieces and cousin Kung kept telling me stories about how remittance money from overseas relatives had made the townspeople in Taishan and Kaiping lazy and indifferent to employment. But this land outside Kaiping City was intensely cultivated and carefully maintained, evidence that at least the farmers continued to work hard. I was not surprised when Michael pointed out the approach to Cheong Hong See. At the entrance to the town, crouching workers were trimming poles by hand on the ground in a bamboo-processing yard, and water buffalo were grazing along the road.

  During my childhood I heard certain place names over and over again. Ning Kai Lee was our ancestral village; Cheong Hong See was the location of my parents’ store. But my mother would often tell me that our store was in Chek Sui. I found this confusing, but this year, when I arrived in Cheong Hong See, Bing also referred to the store being in Chek Sui. He then explained to me that Cheong Hong See was simply a local name, given to our side of the river.

  My father’s building was in somewhat better shape this year. The outside walls had recently been whitewashed and seemed less tired. But the inside was unchanged: the shelves were still a jumble of dusty boxes packed with old hardware, the tin ceiling shedding flakes of paint. I wondered if the store had sold anything since my previous visit. The proprietor and his wife sat in the very same spot behind the counter. I swore they hadn’t moved in a year.

  Bing asked if I wanted to see the upstairs. I nodded, pleased that he’d anticipated my unspoken wish. The year before, when I’d inquired about seeing the second floor, someone had muttered that it was unsafe. And I remembered my sister’s bemused expression when I had asked to see a place that had been uninhabited for so long. It was the room where I’d been born, but it was worthless as far as she was concerned.

  Bing led us back outside and unlocked a door beside the entrance to the store. I braced myself for a space that would be small, confined and dark, yet another reminder of the meagre lives my parents had led. We followed Bing up a narrow set of stairs, which took a turn and opened into a wide staircase with elegant, hand-carved, wooden banisters and spindles. The room was large, with high, peaked ceilings and windows at both ends. It was airy and full of light—not at all what I had imagined. This shabby space had at one time been beautiful. I stood staring, almost breathless, stunned by what I saw. I wandered into each of the three bedrooms, some still containing old dusty furniture. Jeen pointed to an armoire and said it had been built for her parents’ wedding. At one time this cast-off cupboard had been exquisite, with colourful images of flowers and fruit painted on black lacquer.

  In one of the bedrooms, Michael noticed a Western-style wardrobe trunk, reinforced in the corners with brass fittings, a trunk similar to the ones his parents had used when they’d crossed the Atlantic from England. I smiled when Jook called it a Gold Mountain chest; it had belonged to our father and had crossed the Pacific many times. On his return journey to China in the late 1920s, he’d made a stopover in Hong Kong, where he filled the trunk with books of classical Chinese literature. After the death of First Wife, just after the start of the Second World War, First Brother sold all the books and used the money to satisfy his gambling addiction. I felt a rush of anger when I heard this story, but my sister spoke without rancour.

  Above the travel trunk was a wooden picture frame crowded with photos. Kim was standing beside me and pointed at one corner. “That’s you when you were just a girl. And look at this one of you and Michael Uncle with your daughters when they were babies. First Brother Uncle must have put these pictures together. He and his family lived here after your mother left for Hong Kong with you, your sister and Doon Uncle.” I had not expected this, not pictures of me with my husband and children. My mother had sent pictures here too, and even though the recipients had not met many of the people in the photos, they were put on display for others to see, for others to know that this family was blessed with a Gold Mountain benefactor.

  As I looked around, I became keenly aware that this apartment had belonged to a well-off man. It stood in such stark contrast to the dark, cramped house in Ning Kai Lee. My father had intended that he and my mother would spend the rest of their lives in this spacious, comfortable home. Nothing in these surroundings matched what I knew about my parents. Was it possible that once my father returned to China and married my mother, they’d decided to build a life together here, perhaps without romance, but at least with maturity and mutual respect?

  But then the Communists arrived, and my mother knew that the life she was enjoying with her young daughters and stepsons in the market town of Cheong Hong See was about to end. Everyone told her how lucky she was to have a husband in Gam Sun, someone who gave her the means to leave the country legally. People were fearful of the Communists, and my mother suspected that life under their regime would be harsh. Sooner or later they would have found out about her connection to Big Uncle and our very survival would have been at risk.

  Her preference would have been for only his sons to join him in Canada. She and her daughters would live in Hong Kong and receive remittances from my father. But the better schools were beyond his means, and Canada offered free education. The time had come to join him overseas.

  My brother, Shing, once told me that our father did not want to return to Canada where he would have to su lo fon hai. I knew exactly what he meant, but it was one of those phrases for which I had no precise translation. The closest I could offer Michael was that our father dreaded a future where every breath he took was filled with the contempt of lofons. He no longer wanted to fill his lungs with that bitter, toxic air. In 1947, when he believed he was returning to China to stay, his feelings of joy and hope must have been euphoric. The war was over and he would finally be reunited with his children. He would marry a woman whom he respected. Together, they would put the anguish of those war y
ears behind and build a new life in Cheong Hong See. A few short years later he made his no-choice journey back to the Gold Mountain, a man weighed down by anger and despair.

  While I stood in my parents’ apartment in Cheong Hong See, Jook told me that in our village our father was mung kah lah. When I heard this I could have wept. Mung kah lah was how my mother described Big Uncle. Powerful. The image I have of my father is of a small man with his head perpetually bent at a slight angle while he worked: sorting dirty laundry, ironing rumpled laundry, pulling wet laundry out of the washing machine. It was labour performed always with one’s head down, always looking at one’s hands. As I looked back I understood what I could not articulate as a child. My father was a man who carried the look of defeat. I saw it in his wilted mouth, the slump of his shoulders, in the way his feet barely left the ground when he walked. If my parents agreed on anything, it was that fate had never smiled upon them. In retrospect that brief window of happiness in Cheong Hong See seems almost cruel. Given that my father persisted all those years with eking out a living in sad hand laundries, driven by his all-consuming sense of duty, his efforts were nothing short of heroic.