by Wai Chim
We veered to the left, following the coastline towards the beach. The ground was all rocks and short grass but now all I could hear was the crashing of waves ahead. By the sound of them I imagined them to be several metres high but when I looked out, they must have been half my height at most.
The beach came into view and Li glanced over his shoulder and broke into a huge smile. The ground beneath our feet was giving way to coarse sand. We were sprinting now, the water calling out to us. It seemed like a triumph just to make it here, even though there was still the long journey ahead.
‘Sei laa!’ Li stopped short and pointed ahead. At the other end of the beach, I could just make out the silhouette of a guard and his dog. We had misjudged their movements but there was no point in going back.
The guard’s torch was pointed away from us and I knew we had to act quickly. He hadn’t spotted us and we waded into the surf. It was cool but not unforgiving. The waves lapped at our toes, pulling us gently in.
I couldn’t stop smiling. It felt like the pull of destiny.
Li paused for just a second. He should have looked ridiculous, with his underwear billowing around his legs after all the weight he’d lost. It reminded me of that first night we’d gone swimming. The wind blew his hair back and he stretched his arms out like a gull. Gazing serenely out to sea, he looked majestic.
As we slipped into the ocean, a cry came in the distance. We’d been spotted. But the barking of the dog and the yells of the guard were drowned out in the rushing of the waves. My tears, of joy and loss, melted into the salty water. And we began to swim.
Stroke, stroke, kick, kick, stroke, stroke, kick, kick.
I pushed through the water, straining to keep my arms and legs from breaking the surface as I paddled hard. Any splashing or sounds of paddling would have been a dead giveaway, so I kept my limbs churning underwater like the dogs did. My lungs already felt raw. I was burning energy too fast and not going anywhere quickly. Still I kept up the halting rhythm.
Stroke, stroke, kick, kick, stroke, stroke, kick, kick.
I was aware of nothing but the black, black sea. The rocky beach had long disappeared behind me. The inky water pushed against my chest, and wrapped around the numbness of my limbs.
Stroke, stroke, kick, kick, stroke, stroke, kick, kick.
The waves beat against me, a gentle lulling and wet slapping. I was feeling warmer now, and my breathing was starting to calm down.
Stroke, kick. Stroke, kick. Stroke, kick.
I’d switched to a clumsy breast stroke, my head ducking beneath the surface. I’d heard a saying once. The more time you spent with your head submerged, the more likely you would find the breath of the fishes. But it was also tiring to hold my neck up.
Stroke, stroke, kick, kick, stroke stroke, kick, kick.
My limbs were tiring, pulling, pushing – completely numb. I squinted at a lump of a shape in the distance. It was still at first, an innocuous shadow but then it quickly ducked beneath the waves.
Panic gripped me as my mind raced through the possibilities of something in the water with me. I thought to call Li’s name but my lips were sealed by salt water. Was that splashing? But I couldn’t see a thing.
I heard the distinct rumbling of a motor boat, getting louder by the moment. My muscles seized and fear lashed through me but I saw that it was headed in the other direction. There was shouting and I could see silhouettes pointing from the vessel. I dunked my head, pushing my limbs out and through the water, kicking beneath the surface. I changed course to give the boat a wide berth. Finally, when my lungs screamed for air, I surfaced, staying as silent as I could.
No light shone in my direction, no shouts came to stop. Once again, I was surrounded by nothing but the blackness. The boat and whatever it was following had vanished.
Nothing to do now but keep swimming.
Stroke, kick. Stroke, kick. Stroke, kick.
I paddled endlessly, trying to think of anything but the strain of muscles.
I thought of my father. I imagined his long body pushing against the current and mimicked his strokes. I could see his head bobbing up and back under the water following the distant light that would lead him to his new life. A new beginning.
I wasn’t sure how long I swam like this, the image of my father and the strength of his dream spurring me on. It was as if his very spirit had entered my body, possessed it now, his muscles moving me instead of my own.
And before I knew it, the island lay just ahead of me, close and real. We had made it. And I looked around for Li but there was no sign of him. I knew better than to shout his name, so I whispered against the waves.
‘Li.’
There was no answer. I called again, keeping my head just above the water, my eyes peeled open for any splash or movement that would be a boy swimming for his life.
‘Li.’
And I realised I was alone.
The urge to turn back hit hard, but I remembered the boat. I shook my head and tried to focus. The only thing I could do was keep pushing forwards.
Stroke, kick. Stroke, kick. Stroke, kick.
That thin stretch of land loomed above me. I could just make out the cliffs and the sloping hills covered in trees. Dawn was about to break, and the silhouette was majestic against the slowly pinkening sky.
I paddled harder, though I had thought my arms and legs could give no more. It must have been close to two hours since we left the beach, but it was impossible to tell. All I knew now was the narrow sandbar I had spotted along the shore.
Stroke, kick. Stroke, kick. Stroke, kick.
It was teasing me, pulling away as I struggled with the surf. I knew I was close now and I paddled even harder, calling on the tiny bit of strength that I hadn’t realised I still had. And then my feet hit the ground. And I collapsed on my hands and knees.
Crawling now, pulling myself towards the beach. I imagined collapsing in a heap at this last moment. Drowned in a few inches of sea.
Finally, finally I could stop. I lay there panting, my cheek against the sand, my face still submerged as salt water splashed against my teeth.
It was over.
I lay there until the sun had risen and the sound of birds filled the morning air. Shoes crunched towards me.
A man in a khaki uniform peered down, his hands on his knees. He spoke with a clean, crisp accent.
‘You sneaking in?’
I could barely nod.
He straightened up and peered up and down the beach.
‘Only one of you?’
My tongue felt thick and limp, like it was not my own and I struggled to find my voice.
‘Yeah. Just me.’
Chapter 18
Hong Kong, British Dependent Territory
MING — 1973
Even after four years, Hong Kong still made me feel like I was melting into the ground. Every step I took, a little part of me was left behind, stuck to the pavement like sodden gum. While the village summers had certainly been hot and humid, they were nothing like in this city. The heat of the pavement burned my skin, not to mention the constant crush of sweaty bodies pushing up against me. The towering steel and concrete buildings radiated like giant furnaces, so it I felt like my insides were cooking when I stood underneath them.
This wasn’t the paradise of freedom that my father had spoken of. It was stifling and claustrophobic. Every day was a monotonous burden and I was trapped.
After the official found me on the beach, he’d called on his colleague who found a Hong Kong Police Boat to take me to Kowloon. The guard escorting me asked if I had any family or relatives here and when I mentioned Uncle Po, he’d grumbled under his breath so much that I thought he would toss me back into the harbour. But as it turned out, it was just his way. That was what I’d come to realise about Hong Kong officials and the police. Being a part of the government was a job, like working in a factory or out in the fields. There were some corrupt officials, no doubt about that, but there wasn’t any of the
political grandiosity that came with the Cadre title. Everyone was just doing their job.
The grumpy police officer had dropped me off in Kowloon, right on the Hong Kong harbour. I spent hours there waiting, sitting in nothing but my holey briefs and wrapped in a towel that the station provided. Once again, I was asked about family, distant relatives, anyone who could possibly look after me, claim responsibility for me in this strange land. I told them about Uncle Po, who Ba was supposed to meet when he first arrived in Hong Kong. But when they pushed me further, I realised I didn’t even know Uncle Po’s first name.
Eventually, they did find a Po living in the city from Dingzai village. I spoke to him through a heavy piece of hard plastic that the police pressed to my ear. It was my first time using a telephone.
‘Who’s this?’
‘It’s … it’s Ming. Ming Hong. I’m Ming Gwa’s son.’
‘Ming Gwa? So gwaa? From Dapeng?’ His voice was so loud that I had to lean away. I winced at the nickname he used for my father. Foolish melon.
‘Yeah … yeah. That’s me.’
‘Aiyah! Last I heard your father died freedom swimming. What are you doing here?’
‘Um.’ I eyed the officers nervously but they seemed bored. ‘I came looking for you. I swam. I freedom swam.’
Silence on the other end and I thought he would hear my heart beating through the phone.
He begrudgingly accepted me into his care and gave me a job at one of his factories for a pittance, until I could work off my debt to him, he said.
The first six months, I didn’t have a dime to call my own. The work was tough, sometimes even harder than being in the fields. Standing in the same spot every day for hours on end, my joints went stiff and ached from lack of use. My lean, taut muscles softened and I was always dizzy from the lack of fresh air.
The hardest part about the city was the steady cacophony of noise. All day, every day, it was never-ending blaring, screeching, drilling, pounding, honking, yelling, hollering, cussing – and rushing. Rushing everywhere – to the bus, to the shops, to nowhere in particular. I had never known before arriving in Hong Kong that there was a particular sound for fast-moving people.
I lived with the other workers in the cramped factory dorms, over twenty workers stuffed into a room about the size of the dorm back home. Every night I went to sleep with the stench of sweat and body odour just inches from my face.
The other workers were friendly enough, but I kept to myself mostly. I hardly ever talked about Dapeng, or about Tian or any of the boys from back home. I hardly mentioned Ma or Ba except to say that they had both passed away and I was alone. And I never said a word about Fei, letting the burgeoning silence be the answer to everyone’s curious questions about having a girl back home.
And most of all, I never ever spoke of Li.
Over time, the memories of the village seemed to fade with the grind of Hong Kong life. The days and weeks blended together into months, and then years.
Once I was free of my debt, I spent every spare second working and saving money. I had become obsessed with it, counting every cent, scrimping and saving every dollar I earned. Some of the other workers would blow all their money on horse racing or women on their days off, but none of that appealed to me. Time is money. I had adopted this as my personal mantra.
I kept it in a secure pocket strapped to my chest that I took with me everywhere – even when I went for a bath. The bills were slowly growing so that the money belt made an unsightly bulge, despite the baggy clothes I tended to wear over my skinny frame. At night, with my ears still ringing from the din on the factory floor and pain shooting through the joints in my arms and fingers, I often found myself thinking about my father.
Was any of this a part of his dream?
I was strolling through the outskirts of the Kowloon City one sticky evening. Summers in Hong Kong were worse than Dapeng, with the soaring buildings and factory fumes meaning there was nowhere for the mugginess to escape. I found myself wondering how things were back home, something I very rarely did. Right now, I would be hunched over the stove, trying to coax it into flame so we could have our paltry evening meal. Would the city youths still be there? Would Feng and Commander Hongbing be gossiping and joking alongside Wang, Cho and Tian?
My heart seized up and I had to bat away the stinging at the corner of my eyes. This was why I rarely let myself think of home.
The sound of footsteps jolted me from my thoughts. They were close, more than one set of them. I rubbed my thumb against my shortened middle finger, a nervous habit I’d developed after I’d lost the tip of it in an accident in the factory.
I quickened my pace but the footfalls followed. I counted three pairs of them now. Did I dare turn back? I cursed myself for wandering into an unfamiliar neighbourhood, even if I had stuck to the main roads.
My pulse was racing, my eyes scanning the route ahead to see if I had a chance of losing them. But just as I came to the edge of the building, another figure emerged, blocking the way. He was short, stout – his mouth set midway between a grimace and a leer. There was a flash of steel – a sharp, thick butterfly knife was clutched in his left hand. I dared a look behind me; the others were closing in, clad in leather vests and thick hoodies, despite the heat – I was cornered like cattle. The boy ahead was laughing, cackling like a demon. I wasn’t sure how, but I’d ended up with my back against the wall.
‘What have we got here? Huh?’ The boy with the knife reached lewdly for my side, pointing the blade towards my throat. ‘Grab him, we string him up by the balls.’
Hands lunged forwards, clutching my shirt and reaching underneath. I twisted and grunted but I knew there was no point crying out; no-one would come to my aid.
‘Wait, guys stop.’ Out of nowhere, one of the boys in a thick hooded sweatshirt came forwards, beating aside the arms and hands ready to pummel me. I slumped up against the wall but he yanked me up by the collar. I squinted, trying to make out his shadowy face under the dark hood.
He recognised me first.
‘Ming. What the hell are you doing here?’
That voice was unmistakable, and he didn’t need to throw back the hood for me to know exactly whose face I’d see underneath.
It was Tian.
Daa Hyun Za. Big Circle Boys. That’s what they called themselves. Actually it was what the Hong Kong Police called them; the criminal gangs of new immigrant youths from the Mainland, mostly from Guangzhou. Tian, of course, wasn’t from the city. He’d come to Hong Kong about seven months earlier, risking the swim across the bay the same way Li and I had done four summers ago. He’d been taken to Kowloon, like I had been, but instead of finding ‘family’ like Uncle Po, Tian had struck out on his own. He’d tried a few factory jobs at first, but then set up a hawker’s cart, selling discarded fruit to unwitting tourists and passers-by.
Eventually, the leader of the local Big Circle Boys had taken notice of Tian when he’d accidentally ventured into their turf. He’d liked Tian’s street smarts and stout build as well as his entrepreneurial character, so he had invited Tian to join the gang. The group was small and nimble, just fifteen strong, hardly the insurmountable numbers of the triads like the 14K that they often came across.
‘Big Circle, see?’ Tian grinned wide, proudly showing off the tattoo on his arm – a blackened circle with a thick ring around it, staring up at me like a lazy eye.
I didn’t bother to mask my awe and reached out to touch it. The muscle was rock hard underneath the taut skin. ‘Wah. Hou ging.’ Intense. I wasn’t sure if he was bordering on crazy or cool.
‘It’s like Guangzhou on a map, because it’s a big city, see.’ He had a new sort of know-it-all smugness about him. ‘I reckon the village wouldn’t warrant a speck.’
At the mention of home, we both grew sombre. Tian lit up a cigarette, an expensive Western brand that he would never have even seen in China, and exhaled a deep grey cloud.
‘Ming, we thought you were dead. Why didn’
t you write to us?’ His forehead was all pockmarked and sunken in, like a contoured map.
‘I – I didn’t think there was any need to. I didn’t think you’d miss me.’ It sounded lame, even to my own ears, but how could I explain the agony and the pain of losing Li at sea? How Hong Kong had changed me?
Tian’s face grew sombre and he inhaled deeply. ‘Ming, you should have written, even a line would have been nice. The way Li was going on …’
I shook my head. ‘Going on about what? Li’s dead.’ Even after all this time, saying the words together cut me open from the inside out.
Tian blinked twice. ‘What do you mean? When did he die?’
I pinched my lips together and shut my eyes, like I was willing myself to wake up from a dream. That way, I didn’t have to say anything, and I wouldn’t have to watch Tian’s reaction. But instead I said, ‘He didn’t make it. He didn’t survive the swim.’
I couldn’t meet Tian’s eye. He probably wouldn’t really care since I knew the two of them weren’t that close, but I still didn’t want him to see my shame.
‘Ming,’ Tian’s voice was surprisingly soft. ‘Li’s alive. He made it back to the village. He said you were the one who drowned.’
‘Me? Drowned? But I called out. I looked for him and he wasn’t there. I was all by myself.’ I lost the ability to form sentences. Thoughts and phrases. Two words stood out.
Li’s alive.
Li’s alive.
Li wasn’t dead.
I repeated this over and over and eventually, my lips were moving too. ‘Li’s not dead. Li’s alive. Li’s not dead.’ I was overwhelmed with glee and leapt to my feet, tossing my head back and grasping at my hair. ‘Li’s alive. Li’s not dead.’
Tian smiled, patiently puffing at his cigarette, ever the gently mocking older brother. I was going to scream, I was going to skip out of the room and shout to the world.