Lives of the Family

by Denise Chong

  At the end of the Second World War, Harry Lim played a waiting game. If Canada reversed its immigration policy and began re-admitting Chinese, he could think about getting his family out of China. Chinese-Canadian soldiers had supported the British defence of Hong Kong against the Japanese and had paid a heavy price in casualties, both in battle and in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. China had fought on the side of the Allies, and Chinese men and women in Canada had voluntarily enlisted to help Canada’s war effort. The United States had repealed its own exclusion act in 1943. How much longer could Canada hold out?

  In 1947, the Canadian parliament relented. It lifted exclusion and restored the right of Chinese immigrants already resident in the country to become naturalized. The government announced that Chinese men who had acquired Canadian citizenship could apply to sponsor wives and dependent children.

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1949, Fay-oi arrived home on vacation from her school in Canton. Her mother greeted her, looking grave: “I have a surprise for you.” She handed her a letter postmarked from Canada. Its contents shocked Fay-oi; her father had sent instructions for herself, Second Mother and Youngest Brother to prepare to immigrate to Canada. However, he added, “if you’re not sure about leaving your mother now, you can always come later, as someone’s wife.”

  Fay-oi evaluated her life in China. No compelling reason presented itself for her to leave. The family had survived the war years. Min-hon had secured their future. He had dutifully followed their father’s advice: if and when the strife of war subsides, add to the family’s holdings of mau tin. Someone could steal a water buffalo or empty another’s larder, but cultivated land, which earned rental income, stayed put. But above all, Fay-oi was rejoicing in life as a family unit again. A year or so before the war ended, Min-hon and his wife had moved Yee-hing and Fay-oi from the village to live with them in a district market town near Canton. The couple had received an offer to establish a new school there. The job came with a large house set in a spacious garden with a lemon tree, a papaya tree and an apple tree amid the flowering shrubs. When Min-hon had proposed that mother and daughter join them, Yee-hing packed two suitcases without hesitation, locked the doors of the house on No. 2 Lane and gave the key to a relative.

  As Fay-oi saw it, her life already had the benefits of an overseas connection. Theirs was a household headed by a father whose money and attentions allowed them to live well. Every care package Harry sent indulged the women he’d left behind—a petticoat, a crinoline, seamed nylon stockings, leather gloves, once, a fur stole. A rich friend of her mother’s, who owned a seven-storey hotel a block from the waterfront in Canton, had befriended Min-hon, bringing Fay-oi into the social circles of a cultured elite. Attendance at a private high school conferred on her the company of the children of doctors, lawyers and business people. How would life abroad be any more privileged than this?

  Yet, thought Fay-oi, if she went to Canada, apart from learning English, her adjustment to living in a white society probably wouldn’t be that difficult. Certainly, going abroad appealed to her adventurous streak. When she was perhaps eight or nine, she had decided to visit the wife of her uncle. The woman lived downriver in the next village, where Fay-oi had never been. Undaunted, she walked to the river and boarded a ferry. At the next stop, about four kilometres away, while waiting to disembark, she tugged at the sleeve of one of two ladies standing close beside her and asked politely for directions to her aunt’s house. Startled, each of the ladies asked her neighbour: “Aren’t you her Mama?”

  Yee-hing had waited two days before asking her daughter: “Have you made up your mind? Are you going to Canada?”

  During that time, tension had gripped the household. Min-hon, disappointed that he wasn’t the one going to Canada, had turned sullen. He’d never lost sight of his ambition to be a doctor of Western medicine, but he understood too that he’d never achieve the necessary proficiency in English in China. Harry had written to explain why he couldn’t sponsor him to come to Canada: Canadian rules specified that only dependent children under the age of eighteen were eligible. Min-hon was twenty-nine.

  Fay-oi answered her mother with an emphatic yes.

  Yee-hing was downcast: “Why would you want to go to a strange country where people eat only potatoes?”

  “For two reasons,” Fay-oi replied. “I have no memory of my father. And I would like a university education in the West.”

  How could Yee-hing object? The word Baba had hardly crossed her daughter’s lips. She and Min-hon had been determined that Fay-oi start school at an early age; she’d bribed her daughter by promising her new dresses—they took her Shirley Temple doll to the tailor so that her frocks could be modelled after the doll’s dresses. Even before Fay-oi started school, Min-hon had tutored her in the English alphabet. And for high school, Yee-hing had given her up to boarding school.

  Yee-hing said nothing.

  In responding to her father, Fay-oi addressed his suggestion that she could come later as a wife. She had found it demeaning that her father would make a bargain of marriage for her. Never would she enter into an arranged marriage as her mother had done; nor could she be bought like Second Mother. Fay-oi made herself clear: “Baba, I am coming to Canada on one condition: as your daughter. I will never, never, come as someone’s wife.”

  When the day of departure came, only Yee-hing rose to send her off. Fay-oi felt hurt that Min-hon and his wife did not bother to get out of bed to say goodbye; no one knew when, if ever, they might see each other again.

  Fay-oi and her mother stood on the pier waiting for the boat to take her on the first leg of her trip, to Hong Kong. Each remained composed; neither wanted the other to see her cry. “I’m capable of looking after myself, Mama,” Fay-oi said. “There’s no need for you to worry.” Once on the boat, Fay-oi watched until her mother, unmoving on the pier, disappeared from view as the boat rounded the bend in the river.

  AFTER A YEAR AND A HALF studying basic English at Seymour School, Marion—as Fay-oi now called herself courtesy of Freda—scored high enough to be placed in ninth grade in public school at Britannia High. At the end of the tenth grade, she asked her father his opinion of what her future course of study should be at university.

  “You’re a girl!” Harry sputtered. “Why would you need a degree to stay in the kitchen? You don’t need to make a living to support the family. Don’t plan on going to university.”

  Her father’s response plunged Marion into despair. She suddenly saw the reality of her life in Canada. Second Mother, who became pregnant soon after their arrival, had delivered a second son; university was an expense to be saved for a boy. And one whose entire schooling would be in Canada, one whose English would always be better than hers. I have no interest in cooking, Marion wanted to say in retort. Something her mother said came back to her: “When you marry, you’ll have many servants; there’s no need for you to learn to cook.”

  At the suggestion of the guidance counsellor at Britannia, Marion transferred to Vancouver Technical School to take secretarial training. But she would not be cowed by her father’s rebuke. She resolved to take her education and her future into her own hands. Learn English, Marion. Learn English.

  Marion insisted that her Chinese school chums speak only English to her. She kept company with them after school, when they routinely headed to one home or another. They’d raid family fridges for pie and ice cream, and then settle into gossip and idle chatter, except for Marion. She asked them to take turns firing English words at her. She would repeat the word, then spell it. She’d sometimes be so focused on incoming words that she wasn’t aware she was repeating their conversation—“Holy. H-O-L-Y. Smoke. S-M-O-K-E.” Marion made a pledge to herself; never would she stop learning. My father has ended my education; I have not, she told herself.

  ON SATURDAY EVENINGS when W.K. Oriental Gardens got especially busy or a private party had taken it over, Harry would ring home to tell Marion to come help out Jessie Kwong at the hat check. Besides taki
ng coats, hats and umbrellas, the hat check girls had to sell cigarettes. Marion relished those nights. The well-heeled clientele kept up a patter with Jessie; everybody knew her brother, Larry, famous for being the first Chinese to play in the National Hockey League. (He would play but one shift. In 1948, the New York Rangers put him on the ice late in the third period against the Montreal Canadiens.) Few knew that Larry had been the only player with the Trail Smoke Eaters (from which he’d been scouted by the Rangers’ farm team) who had not been supported by a job “up the hill”; the town’s Cominco Smelter had a “No Orientals” policy. Larry had had to settle for a job as a hotel bellhop.

  Among Marion’s friends, Jeanne Yip, three years older than her, was to her the model of sophistication. Being of the same height and build, Marion liked to imagine her friend’s clothes as her own. By day, Jeanne wore smart dresses and suits, with a hat and gloves and shoes to match. By evening, she dressed for her social life. Jeanne had once fantasized that she’d move to San Francisco and be a dress designer in the Chinatown there. Instead, she worked as a secretary to Quon Wong (the province’s first Chinese notary), who ran an agency in Chinatown offering interpretation and advisory services, and which was especially in demand for issues related to immigration. Jeanne, the eldest of ten, was perfectly bilingual, for which she credited her parents. They’d insisted that their children not mix English words with their spoken Chinese, a policy that eroded, however, further down in the sibling order.

  If ever a Chinese group organized a dance, you could count on seeing Jeanne Yip on the dance floor. (Chinese army and navy vets and YMCA and YWCA members often rented night spots like the Commodore downtown or the Alma Academy out by the University of British Columbia.) Because Jeanne didn’t like to wear the same party dress twice, her routine after work often involved stopping at a fabric shop to buy yardage, usually remnants she could experiment with and combine with what she had on hand. She’d look at her file of ideas, sketch a design, lay out the fabric and start sewing. By morning, she’d have a dress ready to be worn that evening.

  House parties were the extent of Marion’s social life: boys and girls gathered at someone’s house, put out bottles of soda pop and potato chips and popcorn, and turned up the hi-fi. The real excitement came before the party, when the girls fussed over what to wear.

  One day, Marion attended the wedding of a relative of Jeanne’s and gasped at the gown her friend wore: coral-coloured, strapless, with three tiers of tulle cascading to the floor. Marion swooned: “I love it!”

  “Then you can have it.”

  At seventeen years old, Marion had yet to go on a first date. For months thereafter, she hoped fervently that some boy would ask her out somewhere where she could show off her new gown. Incredibly, it happened.

  A Chinese boy asked if she’d like to accompany his two friends and their dates to The Cave, a supper and night club. Mere mention of The Cave on Howe Street, near the landmark Hotel Vancouver, evoked urban sophistication. On nights when the club hosted big-name acts, the latest Oldsmobiles pulled up in front to discharge socialites escorted by men in tuxedos.

  If she hadn’t had Jeanne’s dress, Marion would have told the boy she couldn’t go. The only good dresses she owned were her richly embroidered cheong sams. She couldn’t wear one of those to The Cave. It would be obvious: the immigrant girl had to go into her trunk from China to find something to wear.

  On the evening of Marion’s date, at the appointed hour, the boy knocked at the door of the Lims’ house. Marion appeared in her splendour.

  She had expected his approval. Why, she wondered, did he look so crushed?

  At The Cave, they passed under the large neon sign over the entrance and through the doors, and went down the stairs into the semi-darkness of a cavernous grotto with white plaster stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

  The boy’s friends had already claimed a table near the dance floor and stage. Suddenly, Marion understood why her date was so miserable; the two other girls in their party were in knee-length skirts and twin sweater sets.

  Marion and her date sat in stony silence.

  Whenever the club’s roving spotlight came near, she shrank from it. Every time she looked at her watch, not ten minutes had passed since she’d last checked it. She couldn’t wait for the evening to end.

  Years later, when Marion moved to the other side of the country and found herself shivering through an Ottawa winter, she’d be amused that yet again she’d erred in what to wear. Coming from Vancouver, she had never imagined the season could deliver such icy temperatures and snow. Never mind, she told herself, I’ll know for next year.

  Lui-sang Hum during her first winter in Ottawa.

  Courtesy Lui-sang Wong

  TWO

  LAYERS

  MANY OF THE Chinese immigrants who had arrived in Ottawa in the 1950s settled near the downtown core. Rents were cheap, owing to all the commerce mixed into the residential blocks. Within a mile of Parliament Hill, on residential streets off busy, shop-lined Bank Street, a handful of houses were home to families, often multiple families, of Chinese origin. On Waverley and Frank streets a pocket of such immigrants lived in the shadow of the cavernous Colonial Furniture. Owned by the Cohen family, the store straddled two buildings: one used to be a turning and lathing mill, and the other a car dealer’s showroom for Packards and Studebakers. Colonial’s sign, which stretched two stories high and overhung the sidewalk, made it impossible to miss.

  For four years, two young women, who had immigrated to Canada within the same year, lived across from one another on Frank Street. They knew each other by name and said hello when they crossed paths on the street. One was married, one was not. One had been sponsored as a bride, the other as a dependent child. They were not friends; however, given how sparse the Chinese were among the city’s overwhelmingly white population, if you were Chinese and if ever you passed another Chinese person, you made eye contact and you smiled as if you had known each other for a long time.

  One of these women was Lui-sang Hum. She had come at the age of sixteen in 1958. A bright-eyed girl with cherubic cheeks, she lived like a domestic under the thumb of Mrs. Eng, whom she addressed as Third Auntie—the third-born among her mother’s siblings. She and Mr. Eng had financed Lui-sang’s immigration to Canada. Mr. Eng waited on tables at the Ho Ho Café, and Third Auntie stayed at home with their four young children, all under the age of six. The Engs owned their own home on Frank Street, and from time to time rented rooms out. Lui-sang lived with them for four years, until she married Tsan Wong, a part owner of the busy Canton Inn.

  The other was Lai-sim Yee, who arrived on Frank Street in 1959 at the age of twenty-one. She came to marry Yu-nam Leung, a cook who divided his time between the Cathay House restaurant downtown and its owner’s second restaurant, the Sampan, out in the suburbs. The Leungs began their married life in two matchbox-like rooms. Their landlord, Mr. Kung, whose new laundromat business was doing well, had turned his fourplex into a rooming house of sorts. A kindly man, he helped many new arrivals with their immigration paperwork. He’d pick them up from the airport and sometimes offer to run an errand in his new Chevy. The Leungs’ household expanded: by the fourth year, they would be two couples, each with a child, sharing two rooms, with no kitchen other than a hotplate and the bathroom sink.

  In the summer of 1963, Lui-sang moved one block to the north, to Waverley Street. Lai-sim followed a few months later. Their street view was much the same as before—the side of Colonial Furniture and its gravel parking lot. Once again, they lived across from each other. But where they once had been tenants, now they were homeowners, each with her own street address and her own front door. Lui-sang, who owned the larger house, adorned with decorative brickwork, had her own covered front porch large enough to sit in. Lai-sim’s plain, even shabby, red brick house, was smaller, but with six rooms—tiny, mind—spread over two and a half floors, her extended household was no longer tripping over one another.

  O
n Waverley Street, a new neighbourliness seeded the ground between the two women. It didn’t take long before one or the other could be seen scurrying across the street to visit. Eventually, over the ten years that they would both live on Waverley Street, the hour wouldn’t matter, early morning or late—very late—into the night. Nor the elements, rain or shine. Both determinedly beat a path to the other’s door. “My sister! My best friend!” they’d say. In English, as if marking the friendship as homegrown, in Canada.

  IN THE WAKE OF THE Canadian government’s lifting of exclusion, new Chinese immigrants arrived with an identity that was determined by the connection that got them into the country: as a wife or a dependent child reuniting with a husband or parent, or promised as a bride. These identities suggested that the familial relationship was the referee of their lives. In reality family stories set against the tragic and sometimes brutal history of the previous decades had been sagas of loss and dislocation. So, given the opportunity, someone resourceful might try to realign fractures in the family narrative to restore or recast the original, or construct a new one. To do so, however, might compel one to unearth memory. Or alternatively, to bury memory.

  “We’ll do whatever we have to, to keep up your story, but if you want to stay in Canada, you better move in with us.” Chiu Hum and his wife and their two daughters, who’d come to visit Lui-sang at the Engs’ immediately upon her arrival, pressed her to move from Third Auntie’s to their house. A well-known cook among Chinese café-owners, Mr. Hum warned her of the zealousness of the RCMP: they were rumoured to arrive unannounced to ask to see immigration documents and would take anyone caught out as paper sons and daughters straight out to the airport and put them on a plane—although nobody actually knew of anyone to whom this had happened.