Gold Mountain Blues (2 page)

I would like to take this opportunity to thank professor David Lai of University of Victoria, a member of Order of Canada, for his outstanding achievements in investigative work on the history of Chinatowns, who generously let me share his research on early Chinese immigrants in Canada; Dr. James Kwan, whose fascinating childhood tales in Kaiping village have given my inquisitive mind great pleasure—I hope I did not bore him to death with my endless questions; professor Xueqing Xu at York University and Dr. Helen Wu at University of Toronto for letting me share their access to university libraries, which helped to build the framework of my research; professor Lieyao Wang at Jinan University and his lovely graduate students for taking me to tour the villages in Kaiping and arranging for my accommodation there; my writer friend Shao Jun for accompanying me, like a true gentleman, on the tour; professors Guoxiong
Zhang and Selia Tan of Wuyi University for sharing with me their in-depth knowledge of the contents of the Museum of Overseas Chinese; my dear friend Yan Zhang and her well-known newspaper
The Global Chinese Press
as well as the Chinese Canadian Writers' Association for facilitating my research in Vancouver and Victoria; professor Henry Yu of University of British Columbia for sharing his knowledge in native Indian subjects; Mr. Ian Zeng and Mrs. Jinghua Huang for proofreading my first draft; Ms. Lily Liu, a well-published author herself, for sharing with me stories of her coolie ancestors; and many other friends who kindly offered me photos and information on related subjects. Last but definitely not least, I'd like to thank my family for constant emotional support without which I could not have endured the difficult and sometimes despairing journey of writing such an expansive book.

God bless you all!

P.S. Two years after the publication of
Gold Mountain Blues
in Chinese, I am very pleased to see the launch of its English edition in both Canada and Great Britain. I'd like to express my gratitude to my agent, Mr. Gray Tan, and the people he works with for placing their faith in me as an artist; to my translator, Ms. Nicky Harman, for her tireless explorations of the exciting but sometimes treacherous space between the two great languages in the world; to Ms. Adrienne Kerr for helping me through every step of the way with her in-depth knowledge as a seasoned editor; and many friends whom I can't possible name in such a limited space for their unfailing emotional support during some of the darkest moments in my life as the book was being born.

NOTE ON NAMES

Surnames come first: Fong or Tse or Au or Auyung.

Given names have two parts: a generation name (the same for each member of the same generation of a family) and a personal name, which comes last. People are known familiarly either by their nickname or by a diminutive formed by adding Ah- to the personal part of their given name. So, Kwan Suk Yin (surname Kwan) is known by her nickname, “Six Fingers,” or Ah-Yin (by her husband) or, later in life, Mrs. Kwan.

Cantonese and Mandarin (pinyin romanization)

We have used a Cantonese spelling for all names of people who spoke Cantonese to each other, and local places in South China. For national figures (for instance, Li Hongzhang) and names of provinces, we have used Mandarin pinyin romanization. The exception is the Chinese Revolutionary commonly known in the West as Sun Yat-sen (Mandarin pinyin: Sun Zhongshan).

GOLD

MOUNTAIN

BLUES

PROLOGUE

Guangdong Province, China, in the year 2004

Amy elbowed her way through the bustling throng in the arrivals lounge at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport and stopped in front of two gentlemen holding a sign which read “Ms Fong Yin Ling.” They stared at her, dumbstruck. What on earth was this foreigner with her chestnut hair and brown eyes doing here?

The Office for Overseas Chinese Affairs had sent two men to pick her up: Ng the young driver, and an older one, the head of the local O.O.C.A., Auyung Wan On. “You, you, you're.…” Ng began, stuttering in flustered astonishment. He found he was speaking to her in English.

“That's me,” Amy said in decent Chinese, indicating the sign. It was enough to reassure Ng and Auyung and together they escorted her out to the airport carpark.

Although it was only May, the weather was blisteringly hot. To Amy, accustomed to the lukewarm sunshine of Vancouver, the sun in Canton seemed to be full of tiny hooks which pricked her painfully all over. She got quickly into the black Audi and waited for the chill of the air-conditioning, wiping her sticky forehead with a tissue.

“How far is it?” she asked Auyung.

“Not far. The car can easily do it in a couple of hours.”

“Are all the documents ready? I'll sign them as soon as we arrive. Can you get me back to Canton this evening?”

“Won't you stay one night? That way you can check over the antiques you've inherited tomorrow morning.”

“I can't see the point. Get someone else to box them up and ship them to me.”

Auyung looked taken aback for a moment. Then he said: “No one's been in the building for decades. There's a lot of stuff which dates from the time it was built. You need to make an inventory because they're antiques. Apart from what is strictly personal and private, we hope everything will be left for display. Of course, you can take photographs to keep as mementoes—that's clearly stated in the contract.”

Amy sighed. “Looks like I'll have to stay one night then. Have you booked me into a hotel?”

“Yes, that's all fixed,” said Ng from the front seat. “It's the best one in town. Of course it's not up to Canton standards, but it's very clean, there are hot springs and it's got internet.” Amy said nothing, and just sat fanning her sweaty face with a book.

It was quiet in the car. Auyung broke the silence: “Mr. Wong, our director, has been expecting you since last spring. He had plans to entertain you himself. Then we heard you were ill and the trip was postponed a few times. Now you've arrived, but Mr. Wong has just gone to Russia on business. He left a message asking you to wait until he returns. You're the only one left out of all Fong Tak Fat's descendants. It wasn't easy tracking you down.”

Amy gave a laugh. “I'm not the Fong Yin Ling your director was expecting. She's my mother. She's still ill, so she sent me instead.” She got a business card out of her handbag and handed it to Auyung. It was in English, but he could read it:

Amy Smith

Professor in Sociology

University of British Columbia

Auyung tapped Amy's card lightly against the palm of his hand. “Now I understand,” he said, “no wonder.…”

“Do I really look that old?” asked Amy.

Auyung laughed. “It's not that. I just couldn't understand why Fong Yin Ling didn't want to go and pay her respects at her grandmother's grave.”

Amy looked blank for a moment, then remembered the bag her mother had pushed into her hands before she left.

Amy's mother had been getting letters from an office in Hoi Ping for over a year. They were official letters stamped with the municipal red seal and were about her family's home. The Fongs' was one of the oldest
diulau
,
or fortress homes
,
in the area, they said. It was currently being registered as a World Heritage Site, and was to be renovated and turned into a tourist attraction. The letters requested the Fong descendants to return and sign an agreement assigning trusteeship to the regional government.

As a small child, Yin Ling had been brought home by her parents on a visit and had lived in the
diulau
for two years. She was too young for it to make much of an impression on her, and the passage of some eighty years had almost completely effaced the memories. The Fong family had not lived there for many years, and besides, the use of the word “trusteeship” sounded too much like compulsory repossession. So Yin Ling had simply thrown every letter into the wastepaper bin without saying a word to anyone about them.

To her surprise, the authorities in Hoi Ping had been persistent, sending more letters and even making several international phone calls—though she had no idea how they had found her number.

“This is a heritage site, nearly a hundred years old. How can you bear to see it crumble to dust like this? If it's taken into public trusteeship, it will be restored to the way it was, and will be a fitting monument to the Fongs. You won't need to spend a cent, or put in an ounce of effort, but you retain all the rights. It's the perfect outcome.”

The words, constantly repeated, gradually wore down Yin Ling's resistance. However, just as she was warming to the idea, she fell ill. She had been confined to bed for over a year now.

Up to age seventy-nine, Yin Ling had been as unmarked by age as a tree luxuriantly covered in pristine foliage. But then overnight, it was as if she had suddenly been felled by a hurricane.

It happened on her seventy-ninth birthday. She had invited some of her usual mahjong friends to eat at an Italian cafeteria, and then back to her house for a game of mahjong. When Yin Ling was young, she used to get annoyed watching her mum playing mahjong with her cronies, but in old age her own few friends were all mahjong players. Amy had not been there that day and, without her daughter present, Yin Ling really let her hair down, chain-smoking and knocking back the booze until she was uproariously drunk. The party did not break up until midnight. Yin Ling went to bed that night but did not get up in the morning. Overnight she suffered a stroke.

After the stroke, Yin Ling could not speak English any more. As a child she had attended the city school, and all her boyfriends had been White Canadians, so whether at home or at work, she rattled away in English. Now, bizarrely, it was as if some tiny perverse hand had meddled in her brain, erasing it all. When she woke up in the hospital and heard the doctors and nurses talking to her, she looked completely blank. And her speech, when it came, was so garbled it was incomprehensible. At first, they thought the speech centre in her brain had been affected. It took several days for Amy to solve the mystery: Yin Ling's squawks were actually Cantonese—the Cantonese her granddad had spoken at home when she was a child.

Yin Ling was a different woman after her illness. She left hospital for a convalescent home and then, a few months later, was transferred to a nursing home. Every time she arrived at a new place, there were furious rows. Amy pulled out all the stops and eventually got her mother into a Chinese nursing home. Here she could make herself understood, and things seemed to calm down.

One day, Amy was in the middle of teaching a class when she received an urgent phone call from the home. She dropped everything and rushed there—to see the old lady strapped into a wheelchair with a leather belt, her face streaming with tears. Her mother got up that morning, Amy was told, and suddenly started yelling that it would be too late, too late! When
the nurse asked what would be too late, she made whooping sounds and, when this was not understood, Yin Ling picked up her walking stick and bashed the nurse in the face with it.

“We can't cope with a patient like this—it's not safe for the nurses or the other patients,” the director told Amy.

Seeing her elderly mother in the wheelchair, straining to break free of the belt and foaming at the mouth like a fish tied in twine and gasping for breath, Amy fell to her knees beside her and wailed. “Oh God, whatever do you want me to do with you!”

Yin Ling had never seen her daughter cry like this before. The shock seemed to calm her down. Then, after a moment, she put out her hand and said to Amy: “You go.”

In Yin Ling's palm was a letter, crumpled and damp, and stamped with a Chinese red seal.

Amy had to read it through a number of times before she understood what it meant. “OK,” she sighed, “I'll go, but you have to promise not to get into fights with the nurses.” Her mother grinned, showing tobaccostained teeth.