The Year of Finding Memory (29 page)

K
ung and Lin had returned to Macau the previous evening, and Jeen was staying behind at Lew’s apartment to look after her mother. The others had to work. So Kim and Bing were appointed by the family to escort us around Chikan, the closest town of any significance to Cheong Hong See. I soon discovered the streets were lined with impressive but neglected historic architecture, three- and four-storey buildings, ornately decorated with plaster friezes, pillars and curved balconies, evidence of the town’s heyday in the twenties and thirties. Like so many in the Four Counties, it had once become prosperous because of overseas money.

The town was constructed along both banks of a river that eventually flowed through Kaiping City before joining the Pearl and flowing into the South China Sea. The waterway was dotted with sampans, barely holding together and definitely not seaworthy. Yet the dogs tied up on their decks, the jumbles of furniture and hanging laundry all signalled
that these were undeniably permanent dwellings. Bing explained that many of the town’s residents belonged to two rival families, the Gunns and the Setos. He pointed to an imposing clock tower built by the Setos and a more recent one constructed by the Gunns that was even bigger and more elaborate. Bing found this rivalry amusing and later told me that he was a member of the Seto clan.

We spent the afternoon trailing after Bing as he led us through narrow side streets, pointing out buildings that had been abandoned just before the arrival of the Communists, rich people’s homes that he had later explored as a child. Sometimes he wandered into rooms still fully furnished; at the time people were hoping the Communist regime would be a temporary setback and that they would return fairly soon to their old properties and resume their lives. Toward the end of the afternoon, we walked to the town library, which had been built by the Setos. With his affable manner, Bing introduced himself to the library keeper and arranged for us to have a tour of the building. During the war, when the Japanese had occupied the town, they chose the library as their headquarters.

According to my mother, the people in my father’s village were fortunate because they never fell victim to the Japanese. When the Japanese came to Ning Kai Lee, she said, the villagers escaped to the nearby hills. This, of course, gave her an opening to tell me her hard-luck stories about the adversity she had suffered during the war and throughout her life in general. When I mentioned my mother’s comment to Kim, she replied that the Japanese never went past Cheong Hong
See, that they never made it to my father’s village. Looking at the splendid buildings in Chikan, I said that Ning Kai Lee had likely been saved because the Japanese could not be bothered with such a tiny, obscure place. Again Kim shook her head at this aunt who seemed so misinformed. “The Japanese never got to our village because they couldn’t get past Cheong Hong See,” she said. “They were afraid.”

The people in my family were born storytellers. It seemed that each one knew how to dangle something before me, and when I expressed disbelief, as the look on my face right then certainly did, the answer would always be the same: you don’t understand; you don’t know, Kim continued, her tone telling me to stay quiet and listen. “During the war there was a statue of the goddess Kuan-Yin standing outside a temple at the entrance to Cheong Hong See. The Japanese were about to march through the town, but the horses leading the column of troops refused to pass the temple. They reared up on their hind legs, whinnying and neighing, then finally knelt before the altar and would not budge, not even when the riders got off and whipped them. The officers of the brigade were so spooked that they turned back to Chikan. So they never went on to Ning Kai Lee.”

“Is the temple still there?” I inquired, wanting to see it.

“No. No. The Communists destroyed the temple and the statue a long time ago.” Kim said this with a wave of the hand, dismissing my unspoken request for evidence.

Kim had not been born when this had supposedly happened and had heard the account only from others, but as far as she was concerned, that made no difference to the
veracity of the story. “It’s true. Everyone says so,” she said with a rising voice as if each telling made the story more credible. Her explanation was riveting, but it also had the unmistakable whiff of a tall tale. The skeptic in me suspected that if the Japanese had wanted to expand their occupation, their efforts would not have been thwarted by a statue of Kuan-Yin. To me, this was as likely as the story that my mother had chased my father. But my niece, even though these events occurred years before her birth, spoke with the conviction of a true believer.

Lew was born after my mother, Doon, Ming Nee and I had left Mainland China, while we were living in Hong Kong. My mother never met him, and yet of all her step-grandchildren in China, she seemed to love him the most. She would mention his name more than any other, and he was specifically left a small inheritance in her will. I never thought much about their relationship. It was one of those mysterious things connected to China and had nothing to do with me.

I was getting used to the five flights of stairs leading to Lew’s apartment. Bing had come to the Ever Joint Hotel earlier that morning to invite us for lunch. We’d happily accepted. When Michael and I entered the apartment, First Brother’s Widow was seated by the window in her usual place. I sat down beside her and held her hand in mine. Within a few moments Lew and Wei arrived home from work. As expected they changed and started to cook. Jeen had already
put on a pot of soup. The distinct aroma of medicinal herbs simmering in the chicken stock reminded me of my childhood. Several times a week my mother used to fill a pot with water and pork or chicken bones and a variety of dried herbs, roots and seeds meant to fortify blood, improve circulation or clear the lungs.

Delicious smells filled the room. Jeen had taken a tray of food to her mother, and everyone else was seated at the round table. Once again, Jeen brought out a steamed patty made from minced salted fish, pork and ginger, which she presented to my husband. “Michael Uncle likes this. I remember,” she said, then waited for me to translate.

Michael grinned, picked up his chopsticks, broke off a piece and popped it into his mouth.
“Ho sec
, delicious,” he said. Everyone around the table cheered.

Partway through our meal, Jeen inquired whether I knew about a brother who “lives above my head.”
A brother who lives above my head?
But in that very instant, I understood that Jeen was referring to a son my mother had given birth to the year before I was born. He had lived only a few days. I had always known about this child but rarely thought about him.

After I nodded in answer to her question, Jeen asked, “Did you know that if it hadn’t been for Lew, your mother would never have made it to Canada?” Once again, I felt as if a carrot was being dangled in front of me. Without waiting for a reply, Jeen went on. “When your mother was in Hong Kong with Ming Nee and you, the Canadian government had twice refused her application to enter Canada.”

“Jin hai-lah?”
I said—
Really?
—not so much as a response, but as a signal for her to continue.

“Well, your mother decided to see a fortune teller. The fortune teller said that it was the spirit of her dead son who was preventing her from leaving the country. He was upset with his mother for leaving China and with the prospect that there was no one to carry on his lineage. Well, our mother, First Brother’s wife, was pregnant at the time. Your mother was told to adopt this child as her dead son’s offspring and make him her grandchild. So after Lew was born, we had a ceremony, making him the spirit son of your dead brother. This made the brother “who lives above your head” happy and shortly afterward the Canadian government granted your mother permission to enter. You can say whatever you want, but as soon as your dead brother got his son, your mother got the necessary papers.” I glanced over at First Brother’s Widow, and she nodded.

I might have guessed that my mother would seek the advice of a clairvoyant. She was never a religious person, and yet I would be hard pressed to find someone more superstitious. She paid close attention to a person’s moles, convinced that an unlucky position could spell misfortune. She believed in
hai thleng
, which translates roughly as face reading. But
hai thleng
was more than that. It was the belief that by examining facial contours, the shape and symmetry of features, by reading a person’s
chi
, a fortune teller could not only see goodness or evil, but could also foresee the course of a person’s life.

My father often used to tell me that in Chinese society, one always felt stronger kinship toward the father’s side of
the family. This was why parents were always cared for by sons and not daughters. My mother retorted that we were living in the West and that none of those customs applied—though she did not dismiss those beliefs herself. Little by little my mother’s behaviour was beginning to make sense: the letters and the money that she sent to Lew, her insistence that this man whom she had never met be included in her will. I now understood why Lew treated me with such respect, why we had been invited so many times to his home for meals, why he and Wei made special trips to deliver late evening soup to us at our hotel. I looked across the table at my
spirit
nephew. For a moment our eyes met.

TWENTY-ONE

M
ichael unfolded the Chinese-language Kaiping tourist map and laid it on the desk in our hotel room. Earlier in the day, Bing had pointed out all the sites we had visited, and my husband then carefully circled the names and wrote down the English transliterations.

Bing had told us that the northern part of Kaiping County was quite different from the south. Fewer people from there had travelled overseas, and the people from the south generally considered it to be a backwater. He knew all this because he’d been sent there for re-education during the Cultural Revolution.

Michael pored over the map and noticed that the elevations in the northern section of the county were higher and that there were fewer roads. It indeed appeared to be an area of little development. I decided that I wanted to see it. I had returned to China to learn more about my parents, to get to know my family better. But there was more … Although I knew I was likely seeking something intangible that perhaps
no longer existed, I was looking for the China that had belonged to my parents. If, in fact, it were to be found, it would be in small, unexpected glimpses. I convinced myself that if I gathered together enough of these vignettes, I might be able to patch together a quilt of mental images. And that would give me a suggestion of the China they had once called home.

Kim and Bing hired yet another van to take us to Ai Sah, the most northern town in the county. From there we would explore the countryside and hike into the mountains. When the van arrived at the hotel, Kim’s younger sister, Su, and her husband, Ven, were with them as well. I had become used to new people materializing just for these excursions.

Ven was a senior civil servant with a well-paying job that would eventually give him a government pension. He seemed to be the relative with the most status, a man whom everyone respected. I had observed during family gatherings that whenever he spoke, people listened. When he heard about our trip, he decided to take the day off work and accompany us. He had also asked a friend in the area to reserve a table at a local restaurant that specialized in wild game.

Su is a gentle woman in her mid-forties. Being ten years younger than her sister, she was not as severely affected by the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. She was able to complete her education and went on to train as an herbal pharmacist. There is a quiet confidence about Su, the manner of someone who is secure in her position. For twenty years she worked for the government, but once laws governing the ownership of property were relaxed, she bought a shop in the market town of Ong Sun, a few miles south of Cheong Hong
See. Her store, which Michael, my brothers and I had visited the year before, is a large, quiet space with a feeling of calm and order. Two of the walls are lined with wooden drawers, filled with dried roots, leaves, seeds, berries, dried geckos, seahorses and ground deer antlers. An L-shaped glass counter holds even more packages of Chinese herbal medicines. During our visit I’d watched her serve customers, listening to their symptoms, opening drawers, carefully scooping out ingredients to be weighed on a hand-held scale and finally wrapping everything in crisp, white paper tied together with thin, red string. I often wondered if Su’s life was what my mother had at one time possessed, working behind the counter of the store in Cheong Hong See. Oddly enough, my niece with her overbite and intelligent eyes actually looks like my mother, yet they are not related by blood.