Gold Mountain Blues (15 page)

The rain fell on Ah-Fat, but, at first, he did not find it painful. That came later. In fact, he longed for it to come down harder—and harder still—because it put the crowd to flight like startled birds. The street filled with the pattering of retreating footsteps. Ah-Fat sat on the ground and, screened by the rainfall, relieved himself with a long piss. He had wanted to hang on until he got back to Chinatown. When he was captured, his first thought was to wonder how he was going to deal with his bursting need to piss.

Now the rain had unexpectedly come to his rescue.

The warm urine leaked from his trousers and formed a rank-smelling puddle. His body was relaxed now and, since he had been tied up for some time, he began to feel hungry. During the whole of the previous day, he had
only eaten a couple of rotting potatoes the size of hens' eggs. He was racked by almost overwhelming hunger pangs. Even if he had eaten that fine, fat hen, he thought, it would only have filled a small corner of his belly. He could not think of anything which was capable of filling up that yawning cavity.

The rain poured down now. The whole of his body felt as if it was covered with nothing more than a thin membrane into which the rain drilled little holes. Every time he took a slight breath, each of the holes hissed with pain.

When he could not stand the pain any more he kneeled and faced east. He wanted to kowtow but his pigtail was tightly bound to the post and threatened to pull his scalp off. So he just placed his palms together and raised his face to the heavens.

“Oh, my emperor, my ancestors,” he muttered, “I, Fong Tak Fat, am forced to live in degradation.…”

Then he reached for the scissors.

A long howl echoed down the street.

The sound startled even those men of the neighbourhood who were seasoned hunters; they had only ever heard a starving wolf make such sound. It was so ear-splitting the city streets vibrated. The rain abruptly ceased, and the clouds cleared away to reveal a firmament full of stars.

Ah-Fat threw down the scissors and got to his feet. Far in the distance, he could hear a pitter-pattering noise brought to him by the wind. When there was a strong gust, it was as sharp and clear as corn popping; when the wind dropped, the sound was muffled, like toads blowing bubbles under water.

It was the sound of firecrackers welcoming in the Chinese New Year.

Ah-Fat slunk quietly off to the back door of the Tsun Sing General Store and sat down under the overhanging roof. His jacket ran with so much water it hung on him like a stiff board. He took it off, wrung it out and put it back on again. He trembled like a leaf in the wind. It was a good thing Ah-Sing's stove was still giving out a few miserable dregs of heat. He huddled close to it. It was at that point he discovered that he had dropped
the small bag. He still had the long bag, though the fiddle inside was wet through. The snakeskin had blown up and split open with the soaking, and the sound box was full of water.

Ah-Fat upended the fiddle to empty the water out and heard a clunk, as if something had fallen out of it. He felt around and picked it up. It was a stone.

Ah-Fat's heart gave a wild leap and began to hammer so hard the whole street could have heard it.

As soon as he felt the veins which streaked the stone, he knew exactly what it was.

It was a nugget of gold.

It was the nugget which Red Hair had hidden when he was panning for gold.

No wonder Red Hair had not let the fiddle out of his sight. That was how he had kept it hidden all those years. In fact, he had told Ah-Fat about it that evening in the camp, but Ah-Fat had not been paying attention.

That morning the sleepers in the Tsun Sing General Store were awoken by a strange noise. Ah-Sing pulled on some clothes, got out of bed, lit the lamp and went to open the back door. There he found a man, his clothes soaked through and his head covered with a cloth bag, sitting on his woodpile, sawing away at a broken fiddle and making blood-curdling screeching sounds.

“It's New Year's Day, so you won't refuse me a bowl of rice porridge, will you? And I'd like it hot.” Ah-Fat gave Ah-Sing a broad grin although his teeth chattered audibly.

In year thirteen of the reign of Guangxu (1887), on Dragon Boat Festival Day, a new laundry opened up in the city of Victoria. It was right on the edge of Chinatown, with one foot on
yeung fan
turf.

It was a lot different from the city's other laundries.

It had a different sort of name, for starters. The city's laundries were usually named after the owner. For instance there was “Ah-Hung's Wash House” and “Wong Ah-Yuen's Laundry” and “Loon Yee's Washing and
Ironing.” But this laundry had a strange name. It was called the “Whispering Bamboos Laundry Company.”

It was furnished and decorated differently too. Outside, there hung from the wall two hexagonal lanterns, each face of which was covered in delicate flower and bird designs. Unlit, the lanterns were an unassuming, restrained shade of red. But lit up, that red illuminated the whole street with an intense glow of colour. If you pushed open the door and went inside, scrolls hung to the left and right. On the west wall, there was watercolour of the beautiful Xi-Shi washing gauze. On the east wall, there was a calligraphy scroll with a poem written in a flowing cursive hand:

 

Bamboos whisper of washer-girls returning home,

Lotus-leaves yield before the fishing boat.

 

If it were not for the mountainous pile of clothes on the counter and the coal-fired iron on the wooden ironing board, the customers might have thought they were entering a tutor school or a shop selling paintings.

The laundry was registered under the name of Frank Fong.

A month before the laundry opened, Mrs. Mak, of Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County in Guangdong Province, China, received a long-awaited dollar letter from one of the “town horse” couriers. In the envelope, there was a cheque for three hundred dollars. The letter was short and was full of smudges. Mrs. Mak was illiterate so she took it to Mr. Ding, who ran the village tutor school, and he read it out loud to her:

My most esteemed mother,

Your son had a very hard year in Gold Mountain last year and had no money to send home. My hard-working mother must have been anxiously waiting. But this year, I came into a bit of money and am sending you three hundred American dollars. Please write to me as soon as you receive them so that I do not worry. One hundred and fifty dollars belong to Uncle Red Hair's wife and I hope you will immediately give it to her so that she can use it to send his boy Loon to school. The rest is for you to spend. Your son in Gold Mountain is fine, please do not worry yourself.

This was the largest amount of money Ah-Fat had ever sent Mrs. Mak. She used it to redeem the parts of their courtyard residence which had been pawned for Ah-Fat's passage to Gold Mountain. Then she got Ah-Fat's uncle to buy a few
mu
of land and hire labourers to cultivate it.

3

Gold Mountain Promise

2004

Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China

“Tak Yin House
diulau
was built in 1913. It's one of the earliest fortress homes in the area,” Auyung told Amy. “Everything needed to build it was shipped in all the way from Vancouver via Hong Kong by your maternal great-grandfather, Fong Tak Fat—the cement, the marble, the glass, the kitchen and toilet fittings. The workmen were hired locally, but they had to follow his plans to the letter. He even chose the designs for the carvings on the windowsills, doors and eaves.

“He sent over extremely detailed plans,” Auyung continued. “It took nearly two years to build and he spent fifteen thousand Hong Kong dollars on it, which was a fortune in those days. Because he ran up such huge debts building it, he couldn't afford the boat fare back home to supervise the work. So he didn't come back until after it was finished.”

Amy shook her head. “What a shame,” she said. “If you ask me, it's a terrible mishmash of a building. The fact that it's airy is one of its few good points.”

“The purpose of a building like this was to protect its inhabitants primarily against bandits, and secondly, against flooding. Spur-On Village was in a low-lying area. One rainstorm and all the villagers' chickens and dogs might be washed away. All other considerations were secondary. In fact, the decision to build it was forced on your great-grandfather by a very serious event which happened to the family. As for its architectural style, you can't ask too much of a peasant who hardly had any proper schooling.”

“What serious event?”

“Did your grandfather never talk about it?”

“I never saw much of him. My mother left home when she was very young. She couldn't say more than a few words without getting into a fight with him, and one of those would be a four-letter word.”

“And what about you? Did the same apply to you and your mum?”

Amy looked startled. “How did you know?” Auyung gave a loud, toothy laugh: “Well, otherwise, how would you know so little about your family history?”

Amy laughed too. “Mr. Auyung,” she said, “under your excellent guidance, my interest in my family history is growing.”

Auyung showed Amy into the second-floor bedroom.

“This building has five floors. The locals had never seen buildings with several floors and apparently one of the builders, when he got four floors up, refused to build any farther. He said if he went any higher, he'd be able to touch the Thunder God's family jewels!”

Amy looked puzzled. “What family jewels?” “I'm sorry,” said Auyung. “I should mind my language when I'm with a lady.” Amy suddenly understood, and could not help laughing.

“Apart from the balcony under the eaves, where the weapons were kept, all five floors were lived in. There was a courtyard in the centre with rooms arranged on all four sides. Every floor was the same: two passageways, a reception room, two bedrooms and a storeroom.

“On the ground floor were the kitchen and the servants' rooms. Your great-grandfather's mother and your great-aunt had their rooms on this
floor. The shrine to Guan Yam, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, and the spirit tablets to the ancestors, were here too. That was to save the old lady from having to climb the stairs. When your great-grandfather came back from Canada for a while, he lived here too.

“Your great-grandfather's uncle lived with his family on the third floor. Your great-grandfather's daughter lived on the fourth floor—that was your grandfather's younger sister. She was nearly twenty years younger than him, and was the only one of Fong Tak Fat's three children who was born in this house. The fifth floor was originally empty but then when your grandfather's younger brother came back and married, his wife and son lived there.”

Amy covered her mouth and gave a long yawn.

“I'm sorry, I've been talking too much,” Auyung said. “Let's take you to the hotel. We can come back tomorrow.” “No, no, let's get it over with as quick as we can. I've got a ton of things to do when I get back home.”

Amy walked into the bedroom. It held a bed and a wardrobe. The bed was of old-fashioned red rosewood, its four posts carved with designs. The original colour had long since faded—only in the deepest parts of the carving were there traces of yellowish-brown. Amy perched cautiously on the edge of the bed, running her fingers up the dragon and phoenix designs on the bedposts until she got to the wooden pearl in the dragon's mouth. Even this light touch left her fingertips covered in a layer of dust. She examined them carefully. Could you talk about dust being old?

“Did my great-grandfather get married here?” asked Amy.

“Of course not. By the time Tak Yin House was finished, your great-grandfather's eldest son—your grandfather—had already left for Gold Mountain. Even your great-uncle was thirteen years old.”

The bed was covered with a fine-woven mat which was riddled with moth holes. The cord which bound it together had come unravelled, so that it flopped over the bed base like a boned fish. Amy carefully lifted one corner, and found underneath a slender length of bamboo. She took out—it was a silk fan. The silk was yellowed with age. On top of this background colour, there were areas of yellow which shaded darker at the edges, perhaps from water stains. On the fan was painted a landscape and a pavilion, but it was hard to make out the details. Some characters were still just about visible but Amy found them almost impossible to read.
Auyung took off his reading glasses and held them over the fan. With the characters enlarged, they could just about make out two lines:

… this brush to write … words of love

And send them to … in Gold Mountain

“Your great-grandmother's handwriting!” Auyung exclaimed with a cry of delight.

“Was she a painter?” asked Amy.

“She wasn't just a painter. There was no one like her around here. You'd call her a ‘liberated woman' if you were writing a thesis. Of course, that's if there were liberated women a hundred or so years ago.…”