Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  “Give me back a White Canada!”

  The words started feebly, seeming tentative, lacking in conviction, but as they travelled through the throats of the marchers, they gathered strength and momentum. In no time, the words had become a roar so terrifying that both shouters and listeners were stunned into temporary silence.

  Ah-Fat’s legs, folded under him, went numb. He shifted his position and pins and needles shot up from the soles of his feet to his middle.

  The uniforms. Oh God, the uniforms.

  He suddenly remembered that Rick had given him three hundred uniforms to wash and iron. They were of the best quality, red fabric meticulously edged with gold braid, and were worn by top-level employees who staffed the staterooms and dining rooms. All three hundred had been laundered and left folded and stacked against the wall. Six tall piles, fifty to each pile. They were right by the window, and even a glimmer of light would reveal the thick gold braiding. If the window was broken, you would only have to reach in to take them. Rick had told him that only the Vancouver Hotel could afford such luxury uniforms and that they cost fifty dollars each. How much were three hundred worth?

  Ah-Fat’s head felt as if it was going to burst.

  Whispering Bamboos. Maybe it was the name. Maybe he should never have picked a name like that. It had nothing to do with laundries. Time and again that name had raised his hopes to the skies, and time and again, those hopes had been dashed. Three times, actually. He decided then and there that he would never, ever, fall into that trap again.

  Suddenly he heard the clatter of horses’ hooves. Then, the shrill sound of a whistle. “In the name of King Edward the Seventh,” cried a loud voice, “I order you to disperse immediately!” Cautiously, Ah-Fat crawled out from behind the rice sacks and went to the door. Outside, a group of Mounties on huge horses charged. The crowd scattered in all directions under the horses’ hooves, like a receding mud flow. Then it reformed and ran back to the centre. This was repeated again and again. Gradually, however, the flow lost momentum, broke up into ever-smaller patches of mud and then vanished.

  After the sound of shouting and hooves receded into the distance, there was absolute silence in the street. Ah-Fat unbolted the restaurant door and went out into a world he no longer recognized. Every lantern outside every shop had been torn down and lay broken on the ground, flattened by marching feet. The street had had all its eyes plucked out. Every shopfront had lost both windowpanes and frames, and the dark openings gaped wide. Not a single person, or dog, was to be seen on the dark street. They were there somewhere, he knew, hiding in those pockets of darkness. There was no moon, only a handful of pearly stars to brighten the night sky. The ground was covered in heaps of glass shards, which twinkled like a thick layer of autumnal frost. Ah-Fat walked down the street and tripped over something soft. A cat. It mewed pitifully; Ah-Fat felt the animal and his hands came away sticky with blood.

  He groped his way through the streets until he got to his shop. It had no door. The plank of wood had been ripped off and lay on its side across the doorway. A shop without a door was like a person without a face, so changed it was unrecognizable. He trod on the door plank and walked in. It was very dark inside and his eyes took some time to adjust. When he could make out shapes, the room looked oddly crowded. He realized that every piece of furniture had been smashed into several pieces.

  The clothes. The three hundred uniforms from the Vancouver Hotel. He felt along the windowsill. Backwards, forwards, left, right. There was nothing. Those six piles, so tall they had almost reached the ceiling, had vanished from his shop as if they had never existed.

  Ah-Fat rushed out into the street. “You motherfucking scum!” he howled, his face upturned to the skies in a frenzy. “You scum of the earth!” He wanted to go on but the words would not come. He felt as if the tendons at his temples and neck had burst and molten liquid was pouring from them down his body. His cries, echoing in the air above him, somehow reminded him of the beasts slaughtered by his father’s hand.

  Suddenly a large hand clamped over his mouth.

  “Don’t shout. They’ve gone to Japan Town, but they may be back any moment.”

  Ah-Fat froze. The man was speaking English. He realized it was Rick.

  “I’ve been waiting ages for you,” said Rick.

  At Ah-Fat’s cries, the people hiding in the dark recesses of their shops began to emerge in ones and twos. They stood gazing blankly at the ruins of the street. They looked at one another, seeing desolate expressions in each other’s eyes. They no longer knew their street, or each other. They did not even know themselves.

  The owner of the Loong Kee was the first to pull himself together. Without a sound, he walked up behind Rick and threw a savage punch at the back of his head. Rick was taken by surprise. His body sagged, then straightened again.

  “Kill the yeung fan, kill him!”

  The onlookers shook themselves awake and surrounded Rick, hemming him in.

  “Don’t … don’t hit him, he’s … he’s not.…” Ah-Fat tried to explain but found himself suddenly incapable of speech. All he could do was put his arms tightly round Rick. The blows rained down on his body although it was his mouth which took the full force of them. Ah-Fat tasted blood. By the time the crowd realized that they were beating up one of their own, Ah-Fat had lost one of his front teeth.

  Ah-Fat helped Rick to his shop and stood in front of him like the god of gateways, blocking the way. The men glared at the pair of them, their eyes shining green and wolf-like in the dark.

  “You idiots, he’s with us,” Ah-Fat said, spitting out bloody saliva.

  Then they heard two dull thuds in the distance.

  “It’s guns. The yeung fan are firing,” someone said. A tremor ran through the crowd, and shadowy figures surged back towards the dark door openings.

  “They’re Japanese guns,” Rick said to Ah-Fat. “The Japanese sector has its own armed militia but Chinatown has no protection at all. The mob won’t hang around there. They’ll be back here any minute.

  “How many women and children are there here?” he asked. Ah-Fat made a quick calculation. “There can’t be more than twenty or so, we’re almost all single men around here,” he said.

  “Get them together. The secretary of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce is my friend. They can take shelter there, I’ll take them. You men go back indoors and hide. Don’t light the lanterns and don’t go out before daybreak. More Mounties should be here soon. They may seal the district off to keep all non-Chinese out. You’ll be safe then.”

  Rick took something wrapped in cloth out of his pocket and gave it to Ah-Fat. “Be careful. This is the real thing.” Ah-Fat fingered it lightly—a pistol.

  At that moment, thunder rumbled in the distance and the ground began to tremble again.

  Ah-Fat knew what that meant. The yeung fan rabble had come back.

  Dear Ah-Yin,

  At the end of last year, I received a little over nine hundred dollars from the Canadian government. Mr. Henderson engaged a lawyer who got me compensation for the destruction of my laundry business the year before last, by a yeung fan mob who came to Chinatown. I was hoping to use this money to get a boat passage home, but then I heard that some of our fellow countrymen have been buying land in New Westminster, about twenty kilometres from Vancouver. They cleared it and planted fruit trees and vegetables and now they do good business selling their produce all over the place. Ah-Lam and I followed their example and moved to New Westminster this New Year. I have used the compensation to buy land to farm. Who knows whether Heaven will favour me with a good harvest. I have opened three laundry businesses here and none of them made good, for all sorts of reasons which could not have been foreseen. So I decided not to do that again. I still have around five hundred dollars left over, which is enough to bring one person to Canada. If Mum insists that she does not want you to come, could Kam Shan join me? Clearing and farming this land is back-breaking work. Ah-Lam is in his fifties, and I’
m catching up to him. We really need someone younger to help. I am sure that Mum will be unhappy about Kam Shan leaving, but I hope you will make her see reason. When you receive this letter, will you ask my uncle and Ha Kau to go to Canton and find out the time of the boats, so he can come as soon as possible?

  Your husband, Tak Fat, twenty-ninth day of the third month, 1909, New Westminster

  Springtime, year two of the reign of Xuan Tong (1910) Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China

  Mak Dau crossed No-Name River with Kam Ho on his back. The sun was up and warm enough to bead his forehead with sweat. The women following behind giggled at the dark sweat marks which appeared on the back of his jacket. “Your Mak Dau’s like a leaky sieve, Six Fingers,” one said. “Hot, cold, whatever the weather, he always pours with sweat.” Six Fingers took a small towel from the basket on her arm, caught up with Mak Dau and gave it to him. Mak Dau hoisted the boy higher up his back, but refused the towel. He gave a little smile and Six Fingers understood he did not want to dirty it. When Mak Dau smiled, Six Fingers suddenly felt the day brighten. He had the whitest teeth in the whole of Spur-On Village. The other men’s teeth were a dirty yellow from the tobacco they smoked. Only Mak Dau’s teeth were like a row of pearls, a dazzling, almost bluishwhite.

  Mak Dau was a younger cousin of Ha Kau on his mother’s side. Since he and Ah-Choi had married, Ha Kau had been promoted to steward in charge of the entire property. The Fongs owned scores of mu and a large residence with three courtyards, housing two families and a dozen or so labourers and servants. It was too much for Ha Kau to manage alone and he brought Mak Dau to help out. Mak Dau became the odd-job man and anyone in the house could call upon him at any time.

  “Mak Dau, Ah-Wong’s twisted his ankle. Go and finish planting out the rice seedlings in the riverbank field.”

  “Mak Dau, the pigs have made a hole in the door of the piggery, go and fix it, quick.”

  “Mak Dau, I’m out of fuel, go up the hillside and get an armful, and hurry, I’ve got cooking to do.”

  “Mak Dau, the water barrel’s got a crack in it. Get Wet-Eyes Loong to come and mend it.”

  Mak Dau’s name came naturally to everyone’s lips. It was handy to have him around, and calling upon him became a household habit. Mak Dau could plug any gap, round or square, small or large. If the household was a cart, Mak Dau was neither the axle nor the rim, still less was he the spokes. But he was the layer of oil on the wheels. He was invisible, yet he was everywhere. Without Mak Dau, the wheels would still turn, but not smoothly.

  The two brothers, Kam Shan and Kam Ho, were the first to discover just how useful Mak Dau was.

  Mak Dau knew the names of all the birds in the woods. Mak Dau need only hear a cricket chirp once, and he knew exactly which leaf it was hiding under. Mak Dau could jump into No-Name River and stay under water (without a single bubble breaking the surface) until Kam Ho grew so frightened he shouted for help. Mak Dau picked banana leaves, soaked them in salt water till they softened, and stripped the thick green layer off the leaves, leaving behind a network of fine veins. Then, he would roll them up into a tight coil and put them to his mouth like a cigar. When he blew through them, out came extraordinary sounds, like the wind in the trees and raindrops on water. Mak Dau only had to glance at a cockerel by the roadside to know whether it could beat another cockerel in a fight.

  But there was one thing that Mak Dau could not do, and that was read.

  Poor Mak Dau. His name meant “writing ink” but he could not read his own name. Once he plucked up the courage to ask Kam Shan how his name was written. Kam Shan thought for a while, then went to his mother’s room and fetched some paper. He wrote out “Shit Heap Tse,” Tse being Mak Dau’s family name, and got Mak Dau to paste it on his back with rice glue and walk around the village. When Six Fingers saw him, she took one of the bamboo poles from the drying frame and thrashed Kam Shan till he howled. She decided that from that day on, Mak Dau should study alongside the boys.

  When Mrs. Mak found out, she was tight-lipped. “What’s the point in teaching a servant to read and write? It’s a waste of time and energy.” But Six Fingers said: “Mum, this servant spends all day with your grandsons. If he doesn’t study a bit and learn a few characters, I’m afraid he might have a bad influence on them.” Mrs. Mak said nothing more. If Six Fingers wanted her mother-in-law’s consent to do something, she had only to drop in the names of the two boys, and all obstacles would be smoothed out of the way. Though Ah-Fat had written several letters about Kam Shan going to Gold Mountain, Mrs. Mak could not be persuaded to let him go. The boat trip was postponed again and again, and so Kam Shan remained at home with Six Fingers and Mrs. Mak.

  The boys’ school was in Yuen Kai, a few li from Spur-On Village. Gold Mountain emigrants from the surrounding villages raised money for it, so most of the pupils (all boys) were from Gold Mountain families. The school was run by Protestant missionaries. The teachers were recruited by the Church; some were locals, others had come from North China. The lay teachers taught traditional Chinese classics, while the missionaries taught mathematics and Bible studies. They also taught singing and, at the New Year and other festivals, they staged plays and invited all the mums, grannies and granddads to the school to see the performance. Kam Shan had been given a part in the Easter play and Six Fingers organized a joint outing for the Gold Mountain wives of Spur-On Village. Kam Ho had run a fever during the night and overslept. His brother left for the school play without him, so he had to go with his mother.

  They got everything ready the night before, including a bamboo basket filled half with eggs and half with sesame cakes and layer cakes. The eggs were a present for the teachers, and the cakes were to eat on the way. Six Fingers went into the courtyard, the basket on her arm, to find her mother-in-law holding a broken egg between finger and thumb, berating Ah-Choi. “This would never have happened if you’d got out of bed earlier. You pay no attention to me these days. No one in this house does what I say.” “What happened?” Six Fingers asked Ah-Choi. “One of the hens must have laid an egg with a soft shell, and it got trampled and broken in the coop.”

  “Next time, check the nest first thing each morning so this doesn’t happen again,” said Six Fingers with a wink in Ah-Choi’s direction. “Now go and light the hand-warmer for Mrs. Mak, the weather’s still cold.” “Really? The sun’s hot enough to make you sweat!” Another wink from Six Fingers. “If I tell you to go, then go. No wonder the Missus says you don’t pay her any attention. You’re so lazy, you’ll have maggots growing under your feet.” Ah-Choi finally took the hint and went to the kitchen.

  After she had gone, Six Fingers called Kam Ho: “Come and say good morning to Granny.” Mrs. Mak took the little boy’s hand and the vertical frown lines at the corners of her mouth and between her brows resolved themselves into horizontal ones. “Kam Ho, you’ve still got a temperature. You shouldn’t go to school. Stay here and keep Granny company.” “But I want to go and see Kam Shan in the school play!” “I’d forgotten! What a bad memory Granny’s got!” she said, slapping her forehead. “What part’s your big brother going to play?” “A donkey. He’s going to be a donkey. Jesus is going to enter the city riding on his back.” “That teacher needs a good beating,” exclaimed Mrs. Mak. “Fancy making your big brother a beast of burden!” “Kam Shan laughed all the way through the rehearsals, Granny, so the teacher made him be the donkey as a punishment.” Mrs. Mak gave a gap-toothed laugh at this. “And so he should! He’s a naughty boy, your brother, not like my little Kam Ho, who’s so honest, and good to his old granny.”

  Six Fingers took the boy by the hand. “We have to be off, Mum, otherwise we’ll be late for the play. Ah-Chu and Ah-Lin are waiting at the entrance to the village.” Mrs. Mak’s eyebrows drew together again. “Are you going too? To where those hairy foreigners are? I wonder you young women aren’t scared of them!” Six Fingers knew her mother-in-law was referring to the Protestant missionaries. She smi
led: “They all dress like us and wear their hair in a pigtail, Mum. You’d never know they were yeung fan to look at them. They speak our language too, and they’re friendlier than the Chinese teachers from the North.” “Huh! If the yeung fan look like us, then a wolf looks like a sheep,” Mrs. Mak retorted. And she turned towards the kitchen and shouted for Mak Dau.

  Mak Dau was sharpening knives for Ah-Choi. Machetes, meat cleavers, vegetable knives, potato peelers, knives for scraping the bristle from the pigs’ hides, all were laid out on the floor. Mak Dau was finishing with the potato peeler. He had been at it for a while and the blade was covered with a layer of swarf. Mak Dau wiped the knife clean with an oily cloth and held it up to his eyes. He blew gently on the blade and it made a humming noise. Hearing Mrs. Mak’s call, he stuck the knife in his belt and ran to the courtyard.

  “Go with Kam Ho and the young Missus to the school. It’ll be mayhem there so you take good care of them and when the play’s finished, come straight home.”

  “Yes, Missus.” Mak Dau nodded. He was the sort of young man who did not waste words. The corners of his eyes and the spot between his brows expressed what he was thinking. It took a good hour to get from the house to the school on foot, without stopping on the way. If you took break to have a drink or eat snacks, then it was two hours. He took the boys to school every day, but he had never made the trip with the young Missus before.