Chop Suey Nation

by Ann Hui

  But, she soon learned, the words “temporary” and “part-time” didn’t seem to exist in Chinese restaurants. Nor did the idea of an eight-hour workday, or any kind of work-life balance. It was a family business, and as such, all-consuming. She was expected to be there all day, every day. From early until late.

  Not long after Ms. Karschti came on board at Ling Lee’s, her mother retired. And soon after, she was taking over many of her father’s duties too. Soon, it was Ms. Karschti working day-to-night and spending all of her time at the restaurant. Soon, it was her kids she was leaving at home. Now, she’s fifty and looking down the road at her own eventual retirement. She wonders whether she made the right decision in taking over the restaurant.

  “I have huge regrets. My son is going to be nineteen, and I’ve barely spent time with him,” she said.

  Her son helps out once in a while. He talks about perhaps taking over the business someday. But unlike her own dad, Ms. Karschti isn’t sure that’s what she wants for her child.

  It was the same thing I’d heard from other restaurant owners. That they never, ever wanted their own children to end up working in restaurants.

  “Do I want to put my child through what I went through?” said Ms. Karschti.

  But then she thinks about the stability the restaurant has given her family. It’s hard work, but the restaurant provides a steady income and comfortable life. She figures that’s the real reason her dad wanted her to take over. It was his way of making sure she was taken care of.

  “My kids want for nothing. They can go to the best schools,” she said. “So there’s give and take, right?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Hong Kong–Vancouver, BC.

  1974

  We were just starting to make dinner at my parents’ house one evening when I found myself bickering with Mom over dishcloths.

  Dishcloths.

  The ones they had hanging from their stove were dingy and fraying at the edges. They’d been using the same two for years: one of those orange, super-absorbent dishcloths that had long since faded, and a threadbare, discoloured white one with blue border and the words “Good morning” printed in red. Seeing this, I had bought them a tube of disposable antibacterial wipes. But for months, the tube had gone unopened.

  “How can you keep using these?” I said, pointing to the dirty cloths. “They’re dirty and they’re spreading germs. But these,” I said, picking up the tube of wipes. “You haven’t even touched.”

  Mom shrugged. “Why waste them?”

  This was a common refrain for both of them. It was their response to why they never bought new clothes. It was why Dad was wearing the same paint-splattered sweaters from the 1980s, and socks so worn out they may as well have been hosiery. It was why I would often see Mom sitting hunched over the kitchen table, cutting stacks of paper napkins in half.

  I found this maddening.

  “Our mouths are only so big,” she would say. “You don’t need the whole thing.”

  I could never understand their thinking. They had been poor in China and in Hong Kong. And they had struggled for many years here in Canada too. But by now, they had more than they needed. They were comfortably retired, with their house paid off. Plus, they owned several investment properties on top of that. They travelled frequently and could buy just about anything they wanted. “You have the money,” I said to her, exasperated. “You can buy as many dish towels as you want. New ones! Clean ones! Or tubes and tubes of these wipes!”

  But they were similarly astounded by me. They’d visit our house in Toronto, shaking their heads at the leftovers we would allow to go bad in the refrigerator, or the snacks we would buy on the road instead of bringing our own. The pained expression Mom gave me when I confessed we were spending hundreds of dollars each month on a dog walker. “What a waste,” she had mumbled under her breath.

  There’s a saying in Chinese, a chengyu or four-character idiom, that Mom would repeat often. Translated literally, it means: “Bitter first, sweet later.” To many Chinese, and especially to Mom and Dad, this was the natural order of things. To them, success could only come after sacrifice—and their scrimping and saving was part of that sacrifice. I thought they should begin enjoying their success, but they were still hung up on the sacrifice.

  Eventually, Dad pulled me aside. “Come,” he said. “Look what I found.”

  I followed him, watching as he scrounged around his room for a few moments, digging through the plastic bags he seemed to keep all his belongings in. Eventually, he found what he was looking for: a wool blanket, mustard yellow with a floral pattern, wrapped in a clear plastic case.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “I bought this in Hong Kong,” he said.

  Hong Kong? I scanned my memory. He and Mom had made many trips back to China over the years. Since retiring, they’d made the trip once every couple of years. But after Dad got sick, they had slowed down with their travels. I couldn’t think of a recent trip.

  “Not recently,” Dad said. “Back when I came to Canada.”

  I did the math quickly. Forty-two years. He had held onto this blanket for forty-two years?

  He cleared a space beside him on the carpet, pushing a few plastic bags off to the side. Then he eased himself onto the ground and began talking.

  * * *

  It was about noon by the time Dad’s train pulled into the station in Hong Kong. It was his first time outside of China, and from what he’d heard of the city, he expected the streets to be paved with gold.

  Instead, he stepped out onto a crowded sidewalk, a mess of people all breathing in the same thick smog. The air smelled of rotting fruit and sewage. Everywhere he turned, there were crowds. As he made his way down the street, cars and taxis and buses sped by, blowing hot diesel toward him. He felt dizzy.

  Clutching his suitcase beside him, he rode a bus to Central Hong Kong. There, his uncle came to meet him, taking him to a Hong Kong–style diner—a cha chaan teng—for lunch. Looking at the menu, Dad had no idea what to order. He didn’t recognize anything on the menu. Back in the area around Jingweicun, there had been only two restaurants, one that sold congee in the morning and another that served dim sum in the afternoon.

  But this diner had baked toast with sweet condensed milk, instant noodles with ham, sandwiches, cocktail buns and pork cutlets in tomato sauce. It was traditional Hong Kong–style cafe food influenced by the city’s long history of British occupation. Cha chaan tengs exploded in popularity in the mid-twentieth century as the city’s economy became more and more reliant on manufacturing and factory workers looking for a quick, cheap food during their short lunch breaks.

  Dad’s uncle ordered a plate of gon chow ngau ho, stir-fried rice noodles with beef, onion and bean sprouts. When the plate arrived, piping hot, Dad took a bite and his eyes widened. The noodles were hot, salty, greasy. They were delicious. His uncle told him he wasn’t hungry, so Dad happily shovelled bite after bite into his mouth with his chopsticks. Back at Uncle’s apartment inside a public housing complex in Chai Wan, he took in the cramped living area—a bed and dining table pushed so closely together they were almost touching. It wasn’t that much different from Ah Gong’s in Guangzhou. That was when Dad realized Uncle likely had been hungry back at the cha chaan teng, he just couldn’t afford to order a second plate.

  Dad had about a week to spend in Hong Kong, so each day he went out to explore the city, taking in the Tiger Balm Garden in Wan Chai and spending a day shopping with his aunt to buy supplies he would need in Canada. Ye Ye had sent him some money—the equivalent of about six hundred dollars Canadian. It was more cash than he’d ever seen before.

  Ye Ye had warned him about the cold in Canada, so he used the money to buy a couple of sweaters, a thick jacket for the winter and a leather coat. He also bought his very first camera—a Japanese brand called Yashica, which Dad pronounced “Yes-ka.”

  He also bought a thick blanket, padded with cotton, with yellow and brown flowers
—the blanket he was holding now. He held it up to me now, proudly. “See?” he said. He had kept it after all these years. I reached out beneath the pouch to graze the surface of the blanket. It was wool and rough to the touch. I had never seen it used in our house by Dad or anyone else.

  “Why did you keep it?” I asked. He shrugged, just as Mom had earlier. “Why waste it?” he responded. Seeing Mom and I bicker earlier must have reminded him of that time. Of being young and spending six hundred dollars on clothes and cameras. He likely hadn’t thought about how long it must have taken Ye Ye to save up that kind of money. He saw in me now how he’d been all those years ago.

  I asked him what else he bought. He dug around his room some more, pulling open drawers and the little cloth pouches inside them. Finally, he found what he was looking for: a stainless steel wristwatch. He handed it to me. It was a Rado brand watch with a round face the size of a golf ball. “Golden Sabre,” it said on the bottom.

  “Ye Ye asked me to buy two watches,” he said. So he’d spent one afternoon with his aunt, walking from store to store. He had no idea where to start. Would Ye Ye prefer something conservative, or flashy? He had no idea. He’d never met the man.

  He wound up settling on this stainless steel design. He put one on his wrist. It was the first wristwatch he had ever worn. He liked how it felt cold and heavy on his wrist. Substantial. He decided he wanted one too, so he asked the clerk for another one—two for his dad and one for himself. He’d never made such a large purchase before. He left feeling important.

  While in Hong Kong, he marvelled at how colourful the people all looked. Back in China, brightly coloured clothing, or anything that attracted attention, was frowned upon. Most people wore the same drab, work-issued black or grey garb. Besides, few households could afford the luxury of soap. Wearing dark colours was just practical. Here, people wore blue and yellow and pink and red, and clothes in all shapes and styles. They wore whatever they wanted.

  * * *

  On September 29, 1974, eight days after he had first arrived in Hong Kong, Dad boarded a Canadian Pacific Air Lines flight to Vancouver.

  After the engines began whirring and the plane hurtled down the runway, he breathed in sharply, amazed at how effortlessly they lifted into the air. After takeoff, the flight attendant made an announcement on the PA system, but she spoke only in English. He looked around, wondering if he should ask one of the Chinese-looking faces around him. But he was embarrassed and didn’t want to draw attention to himself, so he stayed silent.

  For the entirety of the flight, he would stay like that, sitting silently in his seat. He had no idea when he was supposed to stand up or stay seated. He didn’t know how to use the bathroom, or even that there was one. When the lights in the airplane cabin dimmed so that passengers could nap, he didn’t know if he should be alarmed. Nor did he know what to make of the chiming noise that would come on over the intercom every once in a while. No one else seemed bothered by it. Each time the plane lurched, or dropped, or shook from turbulence, he let out a quiet breath, hoping that what he was hearing was normal.

  At one point, a flight attendant came up to him. She looked directly at him and spoke in quick English. He stared back dumbly, feeling his face grow warm. The flight attendant repeated herself a few times, but Dad just sat frozen in his seat. Eventually, the young Chinese woman next to him pointed her finger toward a metal cart the flight attendant had parked a few rows away—a cart covered with beverage cans and metal teapots. “She’s asking what you want to drink,” the woman said to Dad.

  He didn’t want to draw further attention to himself, so he said he’d have whatever she was having. The flight attendant gave them both orange juice.

  Many hours later, as they prepared to land in Vancouver, Dad stared out the window, fascinated. The ocean glittered blue below and seemed to go on forever. The houses, tiny boxes of white and grey, had neat square tracts beside them. He guessed the green fields surrounding them were farms. There was so much space.

  The plane landed with a series of thuds, and afterward Dad followed everyone off the plane. He followed as they walked past signs printed in all English. He followed as they made their way down wide concourses and into a smaller lounge with line-ups and stern-looking officers sitting behind a pane of glass. When it was his turn at the glass, a translator standing over the shoulder of the officer spoke to Dad in Cantonese. “How much money are you bringing into the country?” he asked.

  “Twenty-nine dollars.”

  “What’s in your luggage?”

  He listed off his belongings: Five pairs of pants. A few shirts. A leather jacket. The blanket. A camera. The watches. A moon cake.

  “A moon cake?”

  “It’s almost mid-autumn festival,” Dad explained. It was a gift for his family.

  The customs official nodded as the translator explained this to him. He threw the cake out anyway.

  Then he asked about the watches.

  “I just bought them in Hong Kong,” Dad said. He didn’t understand the purpose of the interview, or why he was being asked about his belongings. When asked, he told the officer how much he’d paid for the watches. A few moments later, the two men consulted with one another, and the translator told him to wait to the side. Dad stood there, nervously. Had he done something wrong?

  From behind a pane of glass, he watched the official return a few minutes later. He was accompanied by another man, Chinese, in his forties. The man wore a dark T-shirt and slacks. It was Ye Ye.

  At last, here was his father. Dad watched as Ye Ye glanced at him. Their eyes met for the first time. The expression on Ye Ye’s face was difficult to read. His brow was pinched together, and his lips pursed. He responded to the customs official in short bursts and huffs. He looked—irritated.

  The two men continued to talk for a few more minutes before Dad watched Ye Ye pull a stack of bills out of his wallet. He peeled a few off and handed them to the officer. Then he turned around and left. The officials returned. “You’re fine to go,” the translator said.

  Dad walked out the door into the arrivals lounge. They were all standing there: Ye Ye, Ah Ngeen and Great-Aunt.

  Great-Aunt spoke first: “This is your dad,” she said to him. “Call him ‘Father.’”

  Up close, Dad could see how much the man looked like him—just older. They were about the same height, which surprised him. He had expected him to be taller.

  “Lo Dao,” Dad called him quietly.

  Ye Ye nodded. He stuck his hand out, inviting Dad to shake it. They did, stiffly.

  Then Dad turned to look at his mother, Ah Ngeen. It had been thirteen years since he had last seen her. Her face had grown rounder, wider. And her hair was cut short. He was surprised to see her wearing a T-shirt and slacks. He had imagined she would appear as she had in that photo, in a freshly pressed dress and high heels. Instead, she was dressed as though she were back in Jingweicun.

  He was just about to greet her but Ye Ye cut him off.

  “Did you have to tell them the watches were brand new? And why did you buy three of them?”

  The face he’d seen from behind the glass wall was back. Ye Ye looked annoyed. That was why he’d been in the customs office—they were making him pay the duty on the watches. Dad had no idea. He also had no idea that when Ye Ye had originally asked for two watches, he’d already intended to give Dad one as a gift.

  “Why didn’t you just tell them you had worn them before?” Then he started lecturing him about the fancy camera and the brand new leather coat, the extravagances he had bought for himself with Ye Ye’s money.

  As he recounted this, Dad began to laugh. “The first time I met my dad—and he was scolding me.”

  * * *

  They walked out together, the four of them, into the parking lot. They stopped next to a mustard yellow station wagon.

  “This is yours?” Dad asked in disbelief. Ye Ye nodded and told him to get in.

  Nobody he knew owned a car back in Chin
a. Only government officials and taxi drivers. They drove through Richmond, through the large swaths of farmland he’d seen from the airplane. It didn’t look that different from Jingweicun, except the houses were huge and spread out between giant pieces of land.

  Before long, they were on the Knight Street Bridge, which would take them into Vancouver. He had never seen so many lanes of traffic before. It was dizzying, even busier than what he’d seen in Hong Kong. Along the way, Great-Aunt asked most of the questions. She asked him about relatives back in Jingweicun, how everyone was doing. When she ran out of questions about the village, she asked about his travels, whether he’d eaten on the plane, and whether the plane ride had been comfortable.

  About thirty minutes later, they pulled up next to a two-storey, dark beige house on McSpadden Avenue. It was just off Commercial Drive, an area populated mostly with Italian and Portuguese immigrants. The house they parked in front of was finished with clapboard, and had a porch and a tidy front yard with grass.

  Dad couldn’t believe this was their house. Back in Guangzhou, Ah Gong had always talked about wanting to own a house. In China, it had been an impossible dream.

  They walked through the front door, Dad lugging his suitcase beside him. They were greeted with a crush of voices. Inside, there were dozens of people. Some of them looked vaguely familiar. Others he didn’t think he’d met before. “These are all your relatives and our friends,” Ah Ngeen told him. Great-Aunt’s kids and her husband were all there. And Ms. Lee, who owned a farm out in Delta, was there with her kids. Mr. Ma, a friend of Ye Ye’s, who liked to tell people’s fortunes. Dad greeted them one by one, forgetting most of their names almost instantly.

  Then he was led in front of a small shrine in the kitchen—a wood placard blessing the home, a couple of oranges to serve as an offering and a bowl filled with rice and the remnants of incense sticks. “It’s time to Bai sun,” Ye Ye said. Pay respects to our ancestors. It wasn’t like China, where they could visit the burial plot just a short walk from the house. Here, they’d had to build a shrine. One by one, they took turns bowing in front of it. Dad held the incense, rolling the red sticks between his index fingers and thumbs, before holding them in front of his forehead. He closed his eyes and paused a few seconds, thinking about Jingweicun. The thick smell of sandalwood filled the house.