by Ling Zhang
Ah-Fat stuffed it all in the smaller of his two bags. By the time he got back to Chinatown, all the shops were shut. He would scurry through the familiar, narrow, dark streets until he got to the back door of Ah-Sing’s store. There was an overhanging roof which warded off the rain and he sat down under it, pulled out the contents of the bag and heated it all up on the stove. In all Chinatown, only Ah-Sing left his stove outdoors once he had finished cooking. The stove, once extinguished, was not hot enough for Ah-Fat to cook the food but just enough to warm it up. In any case, he never waited until it heated through to swallow it down. Nowadays, he had a cast-iron stomach which could withstand anything—hot, cold, cooked or raw.
Finishing his meal, he took off his cotton jacket, used it to cover himself, leaned against the wall and went to sleep. He could sleep through any amount of wind or rain but was instantly alert and awake at the first cockcrow. Before anyone in Chinatown was properly up, he would slink away without leaving the smallest trace that he had been there.
One night, however, Ah-Fat never made it back to Chinatown.
He had made a new discovery during his wanderings through the city, a discovery so closely connected to his belly that it was hard to say which was cause and which was effect.
He was wandering aimlessly down a small street to the west of the docks one day when he heard a slight sound. The street was stirring after its midday rest, but the slight sound which Ah-Fat suddenly caught was something different, something which he had been familiar with as a child, something which had seared itself into his childhood memories so deeply that nothing in the intervening years could efface it.
It was the sound of a hen scurrying around in search of food.
With its constant diet of rotten vegetables, Ah-Fat’s belly had grown ascetic. But the sound awoke in him fierce longings for meat. And those fierce longings wriggled, as lively as hordes of worms, through his scarred and pitted guts, until every fibre of his being was seized with an uncontrollable trembling. He had always been able to keep his desires at the trembling stage. On any other day except this, he would have shouldered his bag full of rotten vegetables and made his way back to Ah-Sing’s unlit back entrance, with its stinking puddles of filth, to fall asleep and dream, perhaps, of chicken meat. But today something completely unexpected occurred to upset his normal routine.
He saw a fine, fat tawny hen squeeze through a hole in its pen and skip away in the direction of the street.
Ah-Fat’s hand seemed to function independently of his brain. His hand deftly grasped the hen and folded its wings back. The hen went limp and he stuffed it into his bag. He had used this neat trick as a child to persuade his mother’s chickens back into their coops. He was surprised that he could remember so well how to do it.
As he shouldered his bag, he suddenly saw two eyes watching him from behind the pen. A pair of eyes thickly fringed with lashes the colour of clear blue lake water. The eyes watched him for a few moments, then they fluttered and the lake water darkened.
“Mummy! Thief!”
Ah-Fat heard the child’s shrill cry, and the door flew open. A man and a woman rushed out.
He could have made a run for it. His years of climbing the wilderness trails had given him the sure-footedness of a deer. But he stood rooted to the spot, as helpless as the captured hen that was struggling in his bag, because he had seen the long metal thing, glinting black in the sunlight, which the man held in his hand.
A bear hunter’s gun.
The couple came closer and he could clearly hear them talking. He did not understand everything they were saying but he caught the gist. The woman said something about “police.” The man replied, “No, no need … lesson.…” The man waved the woman back into the house. She reappeared after a few moments holding a water jug in one hand and a basket in the other.
The couple marched him along the street, which had begun to fill with afternoon shoppers. He did not need to look around to know that an evergrowing crowd was tailing him. “Yellow monkey! Yellow monkey!” That was the children; their elders did not join in but did not stop them either. The adults remained silent but it was an oppressive silence, which seemed to conceal many different feelings.
They came to a halt by a wooden pole, from the top of which hung a gaslight. The man put down his gun and took the rope which the woman had been carrying in the basket. He pushed Ah-Fat to the ground and bound him to the pole—or rather, bound his pigtail to the pole. He fastened the rope tightly with a secure running knot, then felt around in the basket.
The basket was full of bits and pieces and it took some time for him to find what he was looking for—a tin containing nails. He spat in his palm and began to hammer a nail through the rope into the pole. He used all of his strength, and the rope and the pole began to complain under the force of the hammer blows. Then he tugged on Ah-Fat’s pigtail. It did not budge. At that point, he picked up his gun and nodded to the woman.
The woman came up and got an old wooden bowl out of the basket. She put it in front of Ah-Fat and filled it to the brim with water. Then, paying no attention to the crowd of onlookers, the pair walked away. They had not gone more than a couple of paces when the woman ran back and threw down a pair of scissors.
After a moment, Ah-Fat and the onlookers realized what was happening.
What stood between Ah-Fat and his liberty was nothing more, nothing less, than his pigtail. There was only one way for him to escape, and that was to use the scissors to cut it off.
The water in the bowl only offered a temporary respite.
A sigh rose up from the crowd. It was a sigh which expressed many things, and astonishment was only one of them.
The night, like a wolf-hair brush laden with ink, slowly daubed the trees, streets and houses until they faded from sight. The air was heavy with moisture—you could almost wring the water from it. The rain, when it came, fell first as a fine drizzle, then as spattering drops, then in steady columns, then finally as sheets which slashed the ground like a knife leaving great gashes everywhere.
The rain fell on Ah-Fat, but, at first, he did not find it painful. That came later. In fact, he longed for it to come down harder—and harder still—because it put the crowd to flight like startled birds. The street filled with the pattering of retreating footsteps. Ah-Fat sat on the ground and, screened by the rainfall, relieved himself with a long piss. He had wanted to hang on until he got back to Chinatown. When he was captured, his first thought was to wonder how he was going to deal with his bursting need to piss.
Now the rain had unexpectedly come to his rescue.
The warm urine leaked from his trousers and formed a rank-smelling puddle. His body was relaxed now and, since he had been tied up for some time, he began to feel hungry. During the whole of the previous day, he had only eaten a couple of rotting potatoes the size of hens’ eggs. He was racked by almost overwhelming hunger pangs. Even if he had eaten that fine, fat hen, he thought, it would only have filled a small corner of his belly. He could not think of anything which was capable of filling up that yawning cavity.
The rain poured down now. The whole of his body felt as if it was covered with nothing more than a thin membrane into which the rain drilled little holes. Every time he took a slight breath, each of the holes hissed with pain.
When he could not stand the pain any more he kneeled and faced east. He wanted to kowtow but his pigtail was tightly bound to the post and threatened to pull his scalp off. So he just placed his palms together and raised his face to the heavens.
“Oh, my emperor, my ancestors,” he muttered, “I, Fong Tak Fat, am forced to live in degradation.…”
Then he reached for the scissors.
A long howl echoed down the street.
The sound startled even those men of the neighbourhood who were seasoned hunters; they had only ever heard a starving wolf make such sound. It was so ear-splitting the city streets vibrated. The rain abruptly ceased, and the clouds cleared away to reveal a firmament f
ull of stars.
Ah-Fat threw down the scissors and got to his feet. Far in the distance, he could hear a pitter-pattering noise brought to him by the wind. When there was a strong gust, it was as sharp and clear as corn popping; when the wind dropped, the sound was muffled, like toads blowing bubbles under water.
It was the sound of firecrackers welcoming in the Chinese New Year.
Ah-Fat slunk quietly off to the back door of the Tsun Sing General Store and sat down under the overhanging roof. His jacket ran with so much water it hung on him like a stiff board. He took it off, wrung it out and put it back on again. He trembled like a leaf in the wind. It was a good thing Ah-Sing’s stove was still giving out a few miserable dregs of heat. He huddled close to it. It was at that point he discovered that he had dropped the small bag. He still had the long bag, though the fiddle inside was wet through. The snakeskin had blown up and split open with the soaking, and the sound box was full of water.
Ah-Fat upended the fiddle to empty the water out and heard a clunk, as if something had fallen out of it. He felt around and picked it up. It was a stone.
Ah-Fat’s heart gave a wild leap and began to hammer so hard the whole street could have heard it.
As soon as he felt the veins which streaked the stone, he knew exactly what it was.
It was a nugget of gold.
It was the nugget which Red Hair had hidden when he was panning for gold.
No wonder Red Hair had not let the fiddle out of his sight. That was how he had kept it hidden all those years. In fact, he had told Ah-Fat about it that evening in the camp, but Ah-Fat had not been paying attention.
That morning the sleepers in the Tsun Sing General Store were awoken by a strange noise. Ah-Sing pulled on some clothes, got out of bed, lit the lamp and went to open the back door. There he found a man, his clothes soaked through and his head covered with a cloth bag, sitting on his woodpile, sawing away at a broken fiddle and making blood-curdling screeching sounds.
“It’s New Year’s Day, so you won’t refuse me a bowl of rice porridge, will you? And I’d like it hot.” Ah-Fat gave Ah-Sing a broad grin although his teeth chattered audibly.
In year thirteen of the reign of Guangxu (1887), on Dragon Boat Festival Day, a new laundry opened up in the city of Victoria. It was right on the edge of Chinatown, with one foot on yeung fan turf.
It was a lot different from the city’s other laundries.
It had a different sort of name, for starters. The city’s laundries were usually named after the owner. For instance there was “Ah-Hung’s Wash House” and “Wong Ah-Yuen’s Laundry” and “Loon Yee’s Washing and Ironing.” But this laundry had a strange name. It was called the “Whispering Bamboos Laundry Company.”
It was furnished and decorated differently too. Outside, there hung from the wall two hexagonal lanterns, each face of which was covered in delicate flower and bird designs. Unlit, the lanterns were an unassuming, restrained shade of red. But lit up, that red illuminated the whole street with an intense glow of colour. If you pushed open the door and went inside, scrolls hung to the left and right. On the west wall, there was watercolour of the beautiful Xi-Shi washing gauze. On the east wall, there was a calligraphy scroll with a poem written in a flowing cursive hand:
Bamboos whisper of washer-girls returning home,
Lotus-leaves yield before the fishing boat.
If it were not for the mountainous pile of clothes on the counter and the coal-fired iron on the wooden ironing board, the customers might have thought they were entering a tutor school or a shop selling paintings.
The laundry was registered under the name of Frank Fong.
A month before the laundry opened, Mrs. Mak, of Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County in Guangdong Province, China, received a long-awaited dollar letter from one of the “town horse” couriers. In the envelope, there was a cheque for three hundred dollars. The letter was short and was full of smudges. Mrs. Mak was illiterate so she took it to Mr. Ding, who ran the village tutor school, and he read it out loud to her:
My most esteemed mother,
Your son had a very hard year in Gold Mountain last year and had no money to send home. My hard-working mother must have been anxiously waiting. But this year, I came into a bit of money and am sending you three hundred American dollars. Please write to me as soon as you receive them so that I do not worry. One hundred and fifty dollars belong to Uncle Red Hair’s wife and I hope you will immediately give it to her so that she can use it to send his boy Loon to school. The rest is for you to spend. Your son in Gold Mountain is fine, please do not worry yourself.
This was the largest amount of money Ah-Fat had ever sent Mrs. Mak. She used it to redeem the parts of their courtyard residence which had been pawned for Ah-Fat’s passage to Gold Mountain. Then she got Ah-Fat’s uncle to buy a few mu of land and hire labourers to cultivate it.
3
Gold Mountain Promise
2004
Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China
“Tak Yin House diulau was built in 1913. It’s one of the earliest fortress homes in the area,” Auyung told Amy. “Everything needed to build it was shipped in all the way from Vancouver via Hong Kong by your maternal great-grandfather, Fong Tak Fat—the cement, the marble, the glass, the kitchen and toilet fittings. The workmen were hired locally, but they had to follow his plans to the letter. He even chose the designs for the carvings on the windowsills, doors and eaves.
“He sent over extremely detailed plans,” Auyung continued. “It took nearly two years to build and he spent fifteen thousand Hong Kong dollars on it, which was a fortune in those days. Because he ran up such huge debts building it, he couldn’t afford the boat fare back home to supervise the work. So he didn’t come back until after it was finished.”
Amy shook her head. “What a shame,” she said. “If you ask me, it’s a terrible mishmash of a building. The fact that it’s airy is one of its few good points.”
“The purpose of a building like this was to protect its inhabitants primarily against bandits, and secondly, against flooding. Spur-On Village was in a lowlying area. One rainstorm and all the villagers’ chickens and dogs might be washed away. All other considerations were secondary. In fact, the decision to build it was forced on your great-grandfather by a very serious event which happened to the family. As for its architectural style, you can’t ask too much of a peasant who hardly had any proper schooling.”
“What serious event?”
“Did your grandfather never talk about it?”
“I never saw much of him. My mother left home when she was very young. She couldn’t say more than a few words without getting into a fight with him, and one of those would be a four-letter word.”
“And what about you? Did the same apply to you and your mum?”
Amy looked startled. “How did you know?” Auyung gave a loud, toothy laugh: “Well, otherwise, how would you know so little about your family history?”
Amy laughed too. “Mr. Auyung,” she said, “under your excellent guidance, my interest in my family history is growing.”
Auyung showed Amy into the second-floor bedroom.
“This building has five floors. The locals had never seen buildings with several floors and apparently one of the builders, when he got four floors up, refused to build any farther. He said if he went any higher, he’d be able to touch the Thunder God’s family jewels!”
Amy looked puzzled. “What family jewels?” “I’m sorry,” said Auyung. “I should mind my language when I’m with a lady.” Amy suddenly understood, and could not help laughing.
“Apart from the balcony under the eaves, where the weapons were kept, all five floors were lived in. There was a courtyard in the centre with rooms arranged on all four sides. Every floor was the same: two passageways, a reception room, two bedrooms and a storeroom.
“On the ground floor were the kitchen and the servants’ rooms. Your great-grandfather’s mother and your great-aunt had their ro
oms on this floor. The shrine to Guan Yam, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, and the spirit tablets to the ancestors, were here too. That was to save the old lady from having to climb the stairs. When your great-grandfather came back from Canada for a while, he lived here too.
“Your great-grandfather’s uncle lived with his family on the third floor. Your great-grandfather’s daughter lived on the fourth floor—that was your grandfather’s younger sister. She was nearly twenty years younger than him, and was the only one of Fong Tak Fat’s three children who was born in this house. The fifth floor was originally empty but then when your grandfather’s younger brother came back and married, his wife and son lived there.”
Amy covered her mouth and gave a long yawn.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been talking too much,” Auyung said. “Let’s take you to the hotel. We can come back tomorrow.” “No, no, let’s get it over with as quick as we can. I’ve got a ton of things to do when I get back home.”
Amy walked into the bedroom. It held a bed and a wardrobe. The bed was of old-fashioned red rosewood, its four posts carved with designs. The original colour had long since faded—only in the deepest parts of the carving were there traces of yellowish-brown. Amy perched cautiously on the edge of the bed, running her fingers up the dragon and phoenix designs on the bedposts until she got to the wooden pearl in the dragon’s mouth. Even this light touch left her fingertips covered in a layer of dust. She examined them carefully. Could you talk about dust being old?
“Did my great-grandfather get married here?” asked Amy.
“Of course not. By the time Tak Yin House was finished, your great-grandfather’s eldest son—your grandfather—had already left for Gold Mountain. Even your great-uncle was thirteen years old.”