The China Coin

by Allan Baillie

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Ah, I had friends in Singapore. A boy of eleven took me along to see him operate on the tourists.’

  ‘You did that?’ It was as if a curtain was being slowly lifted on a stranger. Leah felt uneasy.

  ‘Oh no, no. I was only ten. I was in awe of the big Long Noses, but I watched. Weren’t we a great team?’

  ‘Could we have been arrested if we were caught?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose so. But I don’t think the police would bother.’

  ‘What did we do?’

  ‘Tourists have FEC – Foreign Exchange Certificates – and that’s all we are supposed to use. The Chinese have RMB – Renminbi – people’s money. Some value in the shops, but FEC are worth almost twice RMB on the black market. So we change our FEC with the man, for as many RMB as we can get away with. We use FEC in the hotels, planes, trains, anything run by the government, but otherwise we use RMB. Simple.’

  Oh fine, thought Leah. So now I’ve got a gangster for a mother.

  Another man leered at her from the pavement with three large striped animal feet. She shied away, put Joan between her and the animal feet. ‘What are they?’

  ‘Oh, them. Tiger claws.’

  Leah stopped in horror. She could see at least five ragged men peddling claws on the riverfront.

  Joan pulled her along. ‘Don’t worry. Those types of tigers are caught in the back streets of Singapore too. Supposed to be magic for your health, but they’re fakes. Made of cow bones, I think. But that reminds me. I want something for my old bones.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To market, to market, to buy a – a lot things. Come on, this is going to be an education. My mother talked a lot about Qingping Market.’

  Qingping Market was a long walk away. A long walk through hurrying crowds, sticky heat and a clinging stink of petrol fumes, old cooked food, brick dust and a trace of sewage. They skipped through a torrent of bikes on the road and edged past long lanes of bikes parked on the pavement. An old man smiled at Leah as he slowly pedalled by, a mighty tower of boxes wobbling over his head. A little later she was clucked at for getting in the way of a man riding along carrying hens rammed in cages, cages jammed on top of each other, and bound hens dangling outside the cages, beaks almost scraping the road.

  ‘That’s cruel.’ Leah wanted to push the man off his bike.

  ‘You can’t change anything,’ Joan said.

  Leah found the market a relief. Off the road into a covered lane, a clutter of dried things, stacked, hanging from hooks. The air carried a tantalising tickle of salt, hops, dusty herbs, ginger and a touch of fish. She followed Joan into the narrow passage, dancing around skeletons of starfish, under curtains of musky leaves, over hills of brittle shells. Joan stopped and bought something that looked like a horn made of woven grass, but wasn’t. She bought a fragment of a tree root and something that might have come from a vegetable or an animal a long time ago.

  ‘What are those, Joan?’

  ‘Ancient Chinese medicine.’

  ‘Oh. Like the tiger paws.’

  ‘Not like that at all. This works. Has worked for hundreds of years. For my back. Come on.’

  The crowded, aromatic lane opened to a broad street, covered in green and white panels. There were many people looking over loaded stalls but the market was not yet crowded. Caged kittens rolled over each other in silent desperation. A white puppy crawled over a carpet of other puppies, pushed its nose through the bars of its cage and looked sadly at Leah. Old-faced monkeys hung on their cages and stared into space.

  ‘Pet shop?’

  ‘No. No pets. We don’t want anything here. We leave.’

  A large lizard, a salamander, broke from its tub of water and bolted for freedom. Two men shouted and ran after it. The salamander was caught quickly and thrown back into the tub. A wire grid was slammed down over the tub and another cage was shoved on top of the grid. Sluggish fish swam in other tubs. Leah walked past cages containing wild birds and a few racoons. But she was not certain what sort of market this was, until she saw the butcher working with his cleaver.

  That night Joan took Leah to a pavement restaurant near the hotel. Leah didn’t feel like eating, especially after seeing the restaurant, but Joan insisted. ‘It’ll educate you,’ she said. Everything that was unpleasant, ugly or revolting about Guangzhou was ‘educating’.

  The restaurant was a hole in the corner of an old grey building. There was a stove with a huge blackened wok facing the street, billowing smoke and fumes out over the pavement and back into the restaurant. A grimy fish tank and a closed basket reduced the entrance to a totter and a hop. There were a few tables in the restaurant and a few more on the pavement outside. Joan picked a table against a lamppost and Leah was faintly relieved. At least on the street you could feel the air moving.

  ‘Well, what would you like?’ Joan said as a woman placed greasy chopsticks on the gritty table.

  ‘Just vegetables.’

  ‘That all? You need more than that.’

  ‘Just rice.’ Leah looked through the film on her glass.

  ‘Don’t worry about that.’ Joan wiped the chopsticks, the bowls, the glasses with tissues. ‘This is very fresh food. Far fresher than the hotel restaurants. Straight from the market to us. Ready to be cooked for us. What about a fish?’

  ‘Fish?’

  ‘Yes.’ Joan talked quickly to the woman and the woman retreated into the restaurant.

  Leah watched her approaching the fishtank with a net. There were two fish in the tank. Leah raised her hand and there was one fish in the tank and there was nothing she could say.

  A few minutes later she was approached by a grimy little girl with large eyes and her open hand stretched out. There was a grimier man standing in the shadows behind the little girl.

  Joan saw the girl and lifted her eyes at the man. ‘Go away!’ She threw a little money at the man’s face.

  The little girl picked up the money and walked silently away with the man.

  ‘Thought they had stopped that,’ Joan muttered.

  The woman in the restaurant reached into the basket and pulled out a small curling snake. Joan nodded.

  ‘You’re not …?’

  ‘Why not? Good for rheumatism and it tastes like chicken.’

  Leah dropped her eyes. Joan was changing with every minute they spent in Guangzhou and it was starting to get frightening.

  The fish and the snake were brought to the table. Leah started to take the fish apart with her chopsticks but the other fish was staring at her from its tank. She was not hungry.

  ‘Hey!’ Someone had just flicked a splatter of white at her shirt.

  A young man with lopsided glasses peered round the lamppost. ‘Oh, sorry.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Joan growled.

  The youth stepped out from the lamppost. He was carrying a shoulder bag full of rough posters, a pot of paste and a dripping brush. ‘Ah …’ He was fumbling for the words. ‘Telling the facts.’

  ‘What facts?’

  ‘Yaobang is dead but democracy lives. Is that good?’

  ‘You are political.’

  ‘Oh yes. Definitely.’

  ‘Are you allowed to do that? Stick up posters everywhere?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ He raised his finger to his lips and looked about him. ‘We are Enemies of the State. Terrible. Why, if they caught us …’ He shrugged, but winked at Leah.

  ‘Well go on, be an enemy of the state somewhere else. Go on, away.’

  The youth looked hurt but moved away.

  ‘I thought he was nice,’ Leah said. ‘What’s Yowbang?’

  ‘Hu Yaobang was a government leader who wanted reform. Now he is dead.’ Joan passed her hand across her forehead. ‘That was what last night’s TV report was about. It’s closer than we thought …’

  The night exploded. Detonations filled the air around Leah, forcing her head down, skidding her chair back, a glass spinning to th
e pavement. They were in the middle of an insane gun-battle! Where was that youth?

  Across the road, grinning at her. Pointing at the restaurant.

  And near the fishtank a chain of large red crackers was writhing, exploding itself to bits.

  Joan recovered quickly. ‘Celebration. The owner of this restaurant must be getting married. Noisy, aren’t they?’ She was smiling, but her face was white.

  Leah was squeezing her fists into tight white balls. ‘I hate it. I hate China.’

  3 The Village

  Leah stopped combing her hair before the mirror and stared. She frowned at the mirror and the girl with the long black hair, the brown eyes, the sniffy nose and the freckles frowned back at her. Dad’s nose, Dad’s freckles …

  ‘You’re not Chinese. You don’t even look like them,’ she told herself, and looked quickly over her shoulder.

  But Joan was out, had been gone for two hours, chasing up her village in government offices.

  Dad never said you were English, or Chinese, or Australian. It didn’t matter. You were just the kid, his kid and you knew just where you were. You lived in an old house in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood, went to high school, played hockey and had a few friends like Rose and Andy – and even a sort of boyfriend, Ben. Dad came from Ipswich; Mum came from Singapore and what more did you need to know than that? It was more important to know how to fix a puncture on your bike, and know that Ben Harrington could and would carry that bike five kilometres on his back if you forgot to carry the puncture repair kit. And that you never, never, called Rose Rosie, and you never went round to Andy’s place when her uncle – Zorba with the hands – was home.

  Chatswood was home, where you never made Andy feel Greek outside of soccer matches and they never made you feel Chinese, except when they passed one of those stupid ‘Asians Go Home’ wall scrawls, and looked guiltily at you, as if they were responsible.

  Or rather, Chatswood had been home. Oh, that it could go back to that! Even back to after the coin, back to Dad trying to speak putonghua and watching Chinese movies without reading the subtitles, back to everything before the Cough …

  Leah turned away from the mirror.

  After that, when it was all over, Mum had become ‘Joan’ and the coin was all hers. Her lost Ancestral Village deep in southern China, with her half-Chinese daughter tacked on.

  But this half-English daughter is coming along to solve her father’s mystery. Something she has to do …

  A clatter outside and Joan swept into the room, clapping, her dress swirling. ‘We’ve found the village!’

  Leah looked up from the mirror. Just like that?

  ‘C’mon, we’ve got to go, go! I’ve got a taxi down below.’

  Leah rose stiffly.

  ‘Shift! Pack, pack. We’re not going next week. We’re going now!’

  Leah moved mechanically with Joan swooping about her.

  ‘Found an office clerk who wasn’t asleep all the time and she found the village, Liang Tian, on a map, near the town of Xinhua.’

  ‘Great.’ Liang Tian, how’s your Cantonese? Good Field. This is too fast.

  They stumbled out into the corridor and swung the bags into the lift.

  ‘You nervous, or something, Leah?’

  ‘Nervous? No. Not much.’

  ‘I am a little nervous. But we’ll battle through, won’t we?’

  A flash of money – FECs – at the cashier and they were out in the stink and grey heat of Guangzhou again. They slid into a battered black taxi which crawled away. The air was still heavy and clammy, but it was moving.

  It will be like Rose’s trip ‘home’ to England. Three weeks in cold rain to meet her uncles, aunts, and grandmother for the first time. Didn’t like any of them and they didn’t like her.

  ‘You’re not excited,’ said Joan, disappointed. ‘You used to be. What happened?’

  Of course, of course. On with the adventure! Village of murderous bandits with filed teeth and a secret. Sorry Dad.

  ‘I’m all right, Joan, just a little tired.’

  ‘We haven’t done anything yet.’

  The taxi eased from the tall buildings, from the factory chimneys, the dusty shops and the piles of bricks and rubble.

  ‘Did you ever live in a village, Joan?’

  Joan shook her head happily. ‘Just a city slicker all the way. Born in Penang …’ The smile faded. ‘Then Singapore and Sydney.’

  ‘So you don’t know what we will find?’

  ‘Blind as you.’ She put her hand over Leah’s and smiled, but saw something in her face and took it away again.

  The first blur of green in a rice paddy. They were getting into the country now, the grey sky fading to clean blue and a warm sun.

  ‘But that’s not too bad, is it?’ Joan said.

  Flat square paddies, some with a flash of water, glided past. Young trees fencing the road, stands of green vegetables dotting the earth.

  ‘A bit primitive, maybe,’ Joan said.

  Oh great, where are the bandits?

  The taxi rolled into Xinhua, a small town with broad streets, a park, buildings rising in bamboo scaffolds, and a hotel. Built like an imperial palace with lakes, gardens being dug and planted. Joan paid off the driver and booked into the hotel.

  ‘We stay here while we find our family,’ Joan said at lunch.

  ‘Good.’ That gives us a base to work from, Leah thought with relief. And a place to retreat. Who said adventurers have to live rough?

  After lunch they found a man running a three-wheel taxi-truck around town and, yes, he knew well where the Good Field village was. He was surprised when Joan hired him and clambered in the back.

  The taxi-truck swept out of the broad roads of Xinhua to lurch along a rough, narrow track, winding across the plain. They passed low, ancient villages, lakes, two-storey concrete houses and paddies. They passed a lone woman on a bicycle with a baby on her back, a horse pulling a cart loaded with hay with a youth sleeping on top, a platoon of geese marching along the track. They were passed slowly by a motor cyclist wearing a florid shirt and dark glasses. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry.

  Finally the truck neared a low hill, a break in the monotony of the dead flat plain. Leah saw a village on the other side of a rectangular reservoir, sheltered by a dark green forest of massive bamboo. Some of the houses in the village were being built of brick and concrete and would finish as double storey homes, but others were very old, very flat.

  The taxi-truck stopped and the driver beamed back. ‘Good Field,’ he said.

  Joan swayed down from the back of the truck and arranged for the driver to return later. Leah stood in the dust left by the truck and watched some ducks waddle casually toward her. The lead duck looked at her and quacked, once.

  ‘Nice village, isn’t it?’ Joan waved at the sea of tall green vegetables, rippling in the breeze.

  Leah realized she was standing in the ducks’ way and started to move. But she stopped. The lead duck eyed her for a moment, then turned its beak away, as if in contempt. The ducks eddied past her and wobbled down the road. Leah was surprised to find herself smiling.

  ‘C’mon.’

  They walked toward the village through a shady arch formed by tall green bamboo. Bamboo? More like thin trees. The arm-thick bamboos soared from both sides of the path to meet far above Leah’s head with a soft clatter.

  A stocky woman with a hoe smiled uncertainly as Joan approached. Joan spoke to her and she laughed and swept her arm over the village.

  Joan said to Leah: ‘She says there are many Ji families here. Almost half the village.’

  Leah had understood most of what the woman had said and nodded bleakly. Mum was no longer Mrs Waters. She was Joan Ji, as if she had never married Dad. Was that what it was about?

  Joan asked the woman with the hoe if she knew of any families with relatives in Australia. Leah picked it up by keeping her eyes closed.

  ‘Australia?’ the woman said. ‘I don’t know. You’d
better see Ji Yin Yu. She has many relatives in other countries. Is your daughter blind?’

  Leah blinked and stared at the woman.

  The woman nodded and pointed at a stucco house at the edge of the village. Joan thanked her and walked across some rubble to the house with Leah trailing behind her.

  The door of the house was open, with a painted house demon glaring across the passage. A tough-looking young woman was squatting in the sun half-way down the passage, working in a bucket of water.

  ‘Hello?’ Joan called.

  The young woman looked up and came to Joan with a friendly smile, but the trace of a frown. She wiped her hands on her dress.

  ‘Hello, I am Ji Feng Hua,’ said Joan.

  Not even Joan now. This is even before the nuns in Singapore. Feng Hua, Fragrant Flower. And Ji is Pearl. Fragrant Pearl Flower. You forget about that. You’d think she would forget about that.

  ‘And this is my daughter, Leah.’

  ‘Li? Ji Li?’ Grabbing Leah by the shoulders and beaming. ‘You are family?’

  Just like that, Leah thought. You’re Chinese, you have been here all your life. Australia, Dad, Rose and all the other kids, they’re just a dream.

  ‘Well, we don’t really know,’ Joan said. ‘We want to find out.’

  ‘I am Chou Yin Yu, married into the Ji family.’ Shaking Joan’s hand, pulling her into the house. ‘Please, please. Your daughter, she is very serious.’

  ‘Yes, much too serious.’

  Leah was translating the woman’s name, Yin Yu, Silver Jade, and she liked it. She smiled at Jade.

  ‘That’s better.’ Jade winked at Leah.

  Past a store room fenced off with chicken wire, a closed door, an open door with a TV set gleaming in the shadows. Out in the sun again. In the centre of the house there was no roof. Just a railing, fencing in the sky. Below, the concrete floor surrounded a sunken square and a covered well. Then into a shadowy kitchen, and Jade bustled about with low chairs and a table.

  ‘Tea?’ Jade threw tealeaves into a white and pink teapot and added hot water from a thermos. ‘Where are you from?’