Underdog

by Tobias Madden

  Ong had often taken me to this place. He liked to describe how the tiny lights in the sky could only be seen here, far away from the city, after the sun had gone to bed. Each time, he would tell me that these tiny lights belonged to many different families, all with their own worries, joys and places in society. I would hold his hand as we sat together, kneading it gently, rubbing at the lumps and spots on his skin in the hope of removing them and somehow restoring his youth.

  My father called out, ‘Lǎobǎn!’

  I stopped tracing patterns in the sink with my fingers amongst the soaking bok choy leaves. ‘Lǎobǎn’ was a respectful term, literally translating to ‘old boss’. Father walked up next to me and snatched at the bok choy, shaking the leaves to rid them of excess water. There was a crisp crunch as his knife sliced through the layers of leaves, followed by a soft scrape as the mountainous green pile was pushed into a clear plastic container. Father bent over and slid the case into the silver fridge beside the sink, shutting the door with a thud. Preparation for the Tuesday dinner rush was well underway in The Golden Duck Restaurant in downtown Wagga.

  I was fourteen when I heard about the passing of Ong. I felt cold from the announcement of his death, as though a piece of my own body had been suddenly ripped away; not a limb or anything physical, but something much deeper and much more important than that. I sat heavily, wondering if I had kneaded his once-strong hands enough, and whether I could’ve kneaded him back to good health when I saw him last if I’d tried a little harder.

  China

  The plane tyres touched down on the tarmac of Zhōngguó, the passengers greeted by familiar surroundings. Gone now were the social graces that had been adopted for life in Australia: the passengers shoved each other to retrieve their stowed bags and pushed their way through to the exit.

  The pungent smell was distinct… ancient… damp. Sewage air mingled with lingering cigarette smoke, exhaled only from the lips of wealthy men. A raspy ‘ach’ followed promptly by the ‘tooey’ of a spit globule flying from the janitor’s mouth jolted me with disgust. It landed on the tiles beside my feet, the janitor then proceeding to casually smear the spit across the ground with his mop. I was back in the familiar city that was my family’s hometown: Fuzhou, Fujian province of the great almighty motherland of China.

  It was dark and cold when we made it out of the airport. Wisps of snow whipped through the grey air. Driving back to my grandmother’s place in our second uncle’s car, I stared out the window as high-rise buildings filled the sky and then disappeared again. Neon Chinese symbols flashed along streets packed with food stalls. Bright yellow streetlights beamed down on rows of glistening roast duck, strung up along streets bursting with people.

  My grandma was a loving woman who we called ma-ma, pronounced with a higher inflection than the pronunciation of ‘mother’ in Chinese. I flicked on the lights as I entered her house and halted when I first caught a glimpse of the dark room. Ong’s light-blue striped pyjamas lay neatly folded on the end of his bed, and his khaki-coloured coat hung crinkled on the doorknob. Hot tears pricked at my eyes and I gave them an aggressive wipe.

  During dinner, I sat to face the front door. When I was a child, Ong would usually return home, late from fishing, halfway through our feast. This time, we finished dinner without that familiar click in the keyhole, so I brushed my teeth staring at his frayed toothbrush and put myself to bed in the room next to his. I waited, longing to hear the quiet knock-knock on the wall that Ong usually did to say goodnight. Instead, I fell asleep to soft sounds of crickets singing their lullabies in the distance.

  The Duck

  The spirit must cross three rivers on its way to the heavens—the Gold River, the Silver River and the Yin/Yang River. The duck symbolises protection for the spirit as it makes its journey across the water.

  There have been two dishes of duck I’ve eaten throughout my childhood: home-cooked and restaurant-style.

  The restaurant-style duck was lathered in oil, its outer skin crispy and glistening a cherry red. It was rolled out by the waiter on a huge plate and sliced into pieces at the table. We wrapped the duck in soft, chewy pancakes, along with sticks of cucumber and some roughly-chopped spring onions. Biting into the pancake, your tongue was coated with the salty hoisin sauce as your teeth sank into the succulent meat; if you didn’t slurp quickly enough, you’d find yourself with juices trailing down your arm. We would all smile, wiping our oily fingers on our napkins before handing around another pancake.

  The home-cooked duck wasn’t fancy, nor was it glistening in oil. It was just a simple dish, but one on which Ong had prided himself. The duck was braised in a simple base of star anise, garlic, cloves, wine and soy sauce—a recipe that had been added to over generations. I don’t know exactly what our family recipe was, but it brought us together at dinner, where we wrapped ourselves around the table with bowls of steaming rice. This dish was one that you shared memories with at the table.

  We listened to my ma-ma’s stories about her day at the street market or grocery store; about rising meat prices, or ridiculously cheap longans (which explained the red bags bursting with the fruit at the rosewood table in the living room), or about an incident with another grandmother at the store who shoved rudely past at the seafood stalls.

  The duck would allow my Ong to swim through to the heavens, but it also allowed our family to swim through memories when we shared the dish at his funeral.

  Sydney

  The decision to move from Anglo-centric Wagga Wagga to the cultural melting pot that was Sydney—for my education—was made just days prior to the beginning of a school term.

  My Sydney school was multicultural and prided itself on its diversity. I’d never known a race other than ‘Australian’ or ‘Chinese’, and being one of only two Chinese kids in primary school, it was a real culture shock when I realised I lacked knowledge of not only my own race, but of my new classmates’.

  On my first day at my new school, I was approached by a short, stocky Asian boy who began speaking to me in a rapid-fire and aggressive tone. I shook my head and threw up my hands. In perfect English he replied, ‘Oh sorry, I thought you were Korean.’

  In Sydney, I learned that culture dictated style. For the Chinese, the price often seemed more important than style. It didn’t matter if the ensemble was ugly, as long as it was expensive. It was different, though, for the Koreans; they seemed to have a more adventurous eye for fashion. Back in Wagga, I was just the ‘the Asian one’ and we all paired board shorts with muscle tees or crop tops purchased from Cotton On, on Baylis Street.

  When we lived in Wagga, we visited China once a year. But after we moved to Sydney, that was no longer the case. It was partially due to the high cost of living but, mostly, it was because we were immersed in the greater Chinese culture that Sydney had to offer. Chinatown was less than half an hour’s train ride away, and a walk down Dixon Street offered an exclusive tour through the culinary history and geography of a vast array of Chinese towns and provinces. All the restaurants offered standard Chinese fare, but each would proudly offer specialties found only in their home region.

  The area in Sydney where my family chose to settle had a thriving Asian culture, with its own Asian shopping centre—dirty in comparison to the western shopping centre down the road, spotless in comparison to the ones in China.

  In Wagga, nobody ever commented on how I looked different, but I often felt that it was implied. Here, I finally felt comfortable in my own skin. I knew my parents felt the same way, as they could easily speak to the residents in our neighbourhood in a different language without receiving odd looks. There was no longer a reason or a yearning to return home to China.

  At first, I found myself bewildered by the various cultures that existed side by side in Sydney. Like in any modern, sprawling metropolis, different cultures and ethnicities ‘belonged’ in certain suburbs. Out in the west, the Vietnamese quarter was in Cabramatta, while the Middle Eastern sector was Granville and its o
utlying suburbs. Harris Park through to Wentworthville was the Indian quarter. Eastwood was split into two sections by a line that ran right through the train station, separating the Chinese and the Koreans. The richer Anglos could be found along the Northern Beaches, and the poorer out in Penrith. It was fascinating.

  In Sydney, you could experience another country on the tip of your tongue. If you knew where to look, you would have no problem finding a cosy restaurant tucked away in a secret alleyway in the city, the scents of garlic and turmeric hanging in the air. My teeth have pulled at authentic Korean seared meats, my tastebuds have been hit by the saltiness of briny Japanese noodle broths, and I’ve had my tongue numbed by aromatic, vibrant Indian curries.

  In Sydney, the world was on your plate.

  China

  I turned my mind to the vibrant night markets that sold cheap notebooks and cute junk, purchased impulsively, becoming useless once brought home.

  The food was abundant, especially the fruit—dramatically cheaper and richer in taste. I sucked on mangosteen that coated my tongue in a sickly-sweet juice, munched into dragon fruit with seeds that stayed stuck between my teeth, and ate through endless bags of longan, juices dribbling down my chin.

  The streets were dirty, but I felt comfortable. A gentle shoulder bump with a stranger wouldn’t cause a potential issue here, as it could in Sydney.

  Side streets were laden with food stores, selling freshly-fried Chinese pancakes, dripping in oil. Meat stores were piled high with chicken feet and fatty pig intestines, and customers filled small plastic bags with the meat to snack on, on their way home.

  No government officials checked health or safety regulations. Unless you were a foreigner, nobody minded where the food or chef certificates were kept, or, for that matter, if they even existed. Reputation counted for more.

  During a traditional Chinese funeral, the deceased is offered various plates of food, each dish having great significance in contributing to the safe journey of a spirit into the heavens.

  My Ong was offered the traditional dishes of meat, vegetables and rice. This happened for many days, and once each day ended, the mourners would then eat the offerings. Years ago, when my great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather passed, there would have only been a limited amount of food due to the lack of wealth, so only certain dishes were chosen as offerings. The community already struggled to keep themselves fed, but the Chinese are proud, so to be too poor to send someone to the heavens was unspoken of.

  Tradition was tradition, and nobody wanted to be haunted by an angry spirit.

  Now, there was wealth, and we feasted upon the juices of the symbolic animal we offered that day, our teeth sinking into its flesh without any sense of gratitude or remorse. To me, these offerings that were supposed to be full of reflection and respect felt hollow because we could go to any Chinese restaurant—in China or Australia—and gorge on the same meals.

  At night, a spiral-shaped incense stayed lit to guide my Ong through his journey to the heavens. The cold, concrete walls of the living room were unevenly paved, as my father had constructed them with child-sized hands when he was younger. In this room, my uncle slept by the coffin and incense, waking every other hour to offer more rice to my grandfather’s spirit, or to relight the incense stick. Every night, I watched the match head crackle against the flint of the box and burst into a small bright flame before kissing the spiral of delicate bamboo, the faint fragrance of jasmine filling the room. Once the sun woke in the morning, my Ong would be able to find his way during the day, though we offered more food to protect him during this journey.

  When Ong’s ashes were sprinkled into his concrete grave, we placed plates of fruit around the front of it, along with some yu wan. His portrait was leaned against the headstone carefully, to identify his resting place from the other thousand graves that were clustered along the mountain top. My grandfather’s favourite bread biscuits were stacked on a plate for him to eat, and to share around with his new friends who were travelling on the same journey to heaven. There was no outpouring of grief, no wailing or gnashing of teeth. Our grief was tightly funnelled into tradition and routine. Tears were crushed in favour of cultural mores.

  Yu wan—which translates to ‘fish ball’—originated from Fuzhou, ‘back home’. One of my favourite childhood dishes, it was the comfort food of choice during winters. Three or four of these fish balls floated in a hot, clear, noodle-filled soup. Ong used to sit me on the kitchen counter as he prepared the yu wan. He had an economy of movement that I have never seen since; each step was performed with precision in a flawless ballet of muscle memory and years of discipline.

  Ong loved this dish, and so I prepared it to be offered at his funeral. A large proportion of the offerings were made to my grandfather’s liking, so he could embark on his journey happily.

  The Cock

  The cock holds a rich place in ancient Chinese history, in both divination and cockfighting. Embracing the symbol of the sun and the yang element, it possesses the qualities of light, warmth and strength. When the deceased’s body is moved to the burial site, a white-feathered cock may be placed on the coffin to banish evil spirits, allowing the soul to remain safely with the body.

  Along with the yu wan sat a plate of a cold, shiny and yellowing sliced chicken. This was made by my ma-ma. I watched her falter as she set the plate down. She looked at Ong’s photo for a long time then turned and shuffled slowly out of the room.

  Returning to mainland China for my grandfather’s funeral meant that the Canadian branch of our family would also be there. Most of our family had settled in Canada, where the sun was mild in summer, hitting tops of 25 degrees on a sweltering day, and snow falling heavily in the -20-degree winters. But my family had settled where there were beautiful beaches and summers that soared into the 40s, and we considered a mild 17 degrees too cold to handle.

  My Canadian cousins were brought up speaking a broken ‘Chinglish’ of English and Mandarin. My parents brought us up speaking our regional dialect, Fuzhounese, with a smattering of Mandarin and Cantonese. But when the Canadians came, it was only English. In China, it was thought of as ‘superior’ to speak this way, weaving through night markets in Fuzhou chatting in English. At the park, the other Chinese kids would stare in awe and ask us where we were from and how we learned to speak a different language. ‘Zài lái, Zài lái,’ or, ‘Again, again,’ was always shouted. ‘Teach us how to speak English!’ they’d say as they giggled self-consciously at their awkward pronunciations.

  My dad joked around with the locals when they asked how we spoke such fluent English, telling everyone that his kids studied at international schools. He curated a story about how they taught us to speak English fluently and taught us to love hobbies like chess, violin and basketball. In a way, it was his means of telling us that he loved us and he was proud of our achievements and how we developed as a family in Australia.

  Yet this time, there was no sense of superiority, because I had lost my ability to communicate even the simplest words of the universal Chinese language and only a few knew how to speak Fuzhounese. I didn’t really have anybody to share or practise the dialect with in Australia, so I stuck to English.

  We stayed in China for two weeks for the mourning, celebration and funeral. Typically, the funeral offerings would continue for a cycle of forty-nine days. It was a ‘seven by seven’ tradition. Seven by seven weeks meant that on the seventh day of each week, another offering of food would be made. A spiral of incense was lit every day to provide energy for Ong to continue on his journey. On the forty-ninth day, his final offering would be given, signalling that he had reached the heavens. After each offering, we would devour pig, duck or chicken, slowly forgetting about the prayers we shared for the elderly and deceased.

  Buddha’s Delight (Luóhàn zhāi)

  This vegetarian dish uses eighteen ingredients of particular cultural significance to represent the eighteen Buddhas. The family of the deceased may choose to abstain
from eating meat during the mourning period to cleanse the body and remain pure in the eyes of the gods. The presentation of this dish also allows the deceased’s spirit to be purified.

  We arrived at Pu Tuo Shan for the last leg of our journey. Pu Tuo Shan is a mountain renowned for Chinese Buddhism, surrounded by traditionally-built temples and plastic-wrapped shrines. The mountain wavered high above the ground, its rugged terrain fading from a lush green to a dull ochre yellow. The architecture of the temples adhered to the structural principles of ancient Chinese Tang Dynasty design, with high, multi-tiered terracotta roofs. It was a four-hour train ride and an hour bus journey followed by thirty minutes on a cramped, rocky boat.

  Because of the surrounding religious customs, it was a requirement to remain vegetarian or vegan throughout one’s stay at the mountain. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all provided, but were inevitably the same.

  Breakfast was bowls of watered-down congee (to save the restaurant money). Lunch was savoury boiled potatoes, sweet chilli tofu and a crunchy kelp stir-fry dish, each presented with a communal bowl of steamed rice. Dinner was the same. But the mountain was cold and rainy, and we were soaked and hungry, so nobody complained much. The one thing people picked on, though, was the soup. Every meal was served with the same seaweed ‘soup’. Hot water, dried seaweed and a drizzle of sesame oil. ‘We paid to be served hot water and a sprinkling of seaweed here!’ came from a lot of tables.

  Each day, we made our way up a different mountain to bow to the shrines and offer incense and, if we wished, money. People would place large sums into the boxes in front of each statue of a god to prove their devotion and to ask for the spirits to watch over them and bless them with a life of prosperity. But when these same people got back on their tour bus at the end of the visit on each mountain, they discreetly peeled open vacuum-sealed packets of preserved chicken feet and sucked on them behind their seats.

  On the train ride back, I was able to catch a glimpse of Chinese countryside before we disappeared into the pitch-black tunnels. There were villages scattered across the terrain, some made up of just four or five concrete buildings, with expensive black cars coming and going constantly. Other villages were filled with endless rows of green and yellow fields, where a person could be spotted bent over, hacking away tirelessly at the crops.