The Year of Finding Memory (33 page)

Kim was my niece, but our friendship was new and I did not know her well. There was so much I wanted to tell her. But, it was not my place. I told her to think carefully before she left her rich, independent life in China.

By the time we got back on the bus and arrived at the Ong Sun station, it was early afternoon. I had barely stepped onto the street when a motorcycle taxi, trying to hustle customers, came so close he almost ran me over. Jook had been standing nearby with her neck craned, watching for us to disembark. She rushed over and scolded the taxi driver.

It was market day, and on the way to my nephew’s home, Jook led us past a variety of outdoor stalls, selling everything from live chickens to “Jackie Chan” condoms. As usual, people would stop whatever they were doing to gawk at us.

Two teenaged school girls started to follow us, visibly curious about Michael. When we stopped in front of a fruit stall, Michael smiled at them and said, “Hello.” This friendly gesture encouraged the girls to finally approach us. They spoke to Michael in their halting English and asked to have their
picture taken with him. They gave their phone numbers to Kim, and we promised to mail her copies of the photo once we arrived home. By this time a small crowd had gathered around us. My sister was chuckling and announced to the onlookers that I was her
moi
, her little sister, and that my husband and I had returned from the Gold Mountain.

My sister linked her arm through mine, and we continued our happy stroll through the market. Jook smiled and waved at her friends. She had lived in Ong Sun for almost sixty years and knew most of the villagers. She wanted everyone to know that I had come halfway around the world to visit her.

We walked past a table display of seeds in paper envelopes with pictures of bok choy, gai lan, bitter melon, fuzzy melon and winter melon, all vegetables my father had grown in his garden. The vendor smiled at us and tried to convince us to buy, but we could buy seeds like these at home. Then, just as we were about to leave, my husband saw a package of
dow mew
, seeds for green pea shoots. We had routinely eaten these shoots in Chinatown restaurants, but Michael had been unable to find seeds to grow them himself. He picked up the package and started to turn it over, even though he couldn’t read the Chinese script. The vendor told us they were a superior variety. As soon as he gave us a price, my sister reminded him that she lived in the village and that she would not let him overcharge her brother-in-law just because he was from the Gold Mountain. The man laughed and offered a lower price. My sister nodded begrudging approval. I was sure we could find the seeds at a Chinese nursery back home, but
they often sold their goods in packages without pictures, and I couldn’t read the Chinese characters. Besides, my spoken Cantonese was inadequate. I chuckled to myself as Michael paid the vendor. We had our seeds, even though we’d come all the way to China to find them.

After a short stop at Su’s herbal pharmacy, we walked to Liang’s house, which is completely open to the street. The edge of his living room borders the sidewalk, and people can step in and out of his house without going through a door. Instead, a roll-up gate, much like a garage door, closes the house at night. While we sat drinking tea, a boy who was probably ten or eleven walked into the room. He stood for a few moments and stared at me and Michael. When I asked my nephew who the boy was, he answered that he didn’t know.
You don’t know?
I thought to myself. Who did this child think he was, walking into somebody’s house without being invited? I remember once being told that there is no word in Chinese for privacy. Privacy as I know it seems to be a Western concept. The boy remained for several minutes while my relatives carried on with their conversation and after a few more minutes he left.

Houses in Canada seal off the elements, but they also seal in their inhabitants. After living in homes where the line between outdoor and indoor was nearly imperceptible, had my parents found that those northern houses added to their isolation?

My nephew Liang works his land with a vehicle called a
gow-gung char
, which translates into “dog-work cart,” a small tractor with handlebars instead of a steering wheel. He told us to get into the wagon hitched to the back and drove us along a dirt road so rough that if I hadn’t hung onto the edge of the wagon, I would have fallen out. Once we arrived at his fields, we got out and walked along dirt paths and over narrow bridges, past fish ponds and a reforested area alive with butterflies. We crossed a high cement bridge over a stream and saw a derelict stone mill, a mill pond and a dam far below. Farther down the stream, two men were fishing. One was using a long, bamboo rod to propel a raft made from a large slab of Styrofoam, while the man at the front held a long, wooden pole attached to a metal rod wired to a large battery. His other hand gripped the handle of a small net. As he put the metal rod in the water, he activated an electrical current, making a musical whirr. Stunned fish would float to the surface, and he would scoop them up with the net. Michael and I watched this ingenious process for several minutes. I then remembered that on our walk up the mountain in Ai Sah, we had run across a toad catcher who was using an electrical rod in the same way. Once again, our fascination with such commonplace things amused my relatives.

Liang pointed out which of the fields around us belonged to him; they were close to each other, but not all adjacent. I marvelled that his farm is productive twelve months of the
year. He grows rice, sugar cane, bananas, lychees and garden vegetables and raises pigs, chickens, ducks and fish. The fertility of the Pearl Delta never ceased to amaze me.

After our tour Michael and I spent the afternoon sitting under a lychee tree, eating bananas that Kim and Liang’s wife had harvested earlier that afternoon. I pointed to some mountains in the distance and was told that they were named for their shapes: Cow Mountain, Horse Mountain and Goose Mountain. When it was time for dinner, my nephew and his neighbour each held an end of a long fishnet, and by pulling it through his pond caught two large fish. Liang’s wife picked vegetables and dug up some ginger root, and Kim caught a duck. Holding the duck with both wings behind its back, she bent back its neck so its wings and head could be gripped in one hand. With her feet apart and her knees slightly bent, my niece looked like a performer in a martial arts movie. She took up a cleaver in her other hand and in one swift, fluid motion, she slit the bird’s throat. Kim then held the duck upside down as the blood dripped slowly onto the ground.

Every Saturday while I was growing up in Acton, a farmer delivered a chicken inside a brown burlap bag. My father then kept the unsuspecting fowl inside the drying room behind the kitchen for the night. On Sunday he would catch it, slit its throat and hold it over a bowl to collect the dripping blood, which my mother would later steam into a pudding. He had figured out that this should not be done in
our backyard, where the neighbours would witness what they might consider to be a primitive slaughter. One weekend my father ordered two chickens, and when they’d both been plucked and cleaned, he wrapped one of them in brown laundry paper and told me to take it to a neighbour who had been especially kind to us. I did as instructed in spite of being deeply embarrassed by what I thought was a most inappropriate gift. A few days later, when I saw our neighbour in a store on the main street of Acton, I tried to sneak past her. But she saw me and told me that my father’s chicken was the best she’d ever had. I wanted to get away as fast as I could, but she insisted on talking and made me promise to thank my father for her.

The table was spread with food from my nephew’s farm. Kim had steamed the duck with hoisin sauce and slices of
muk see
, the yam-like root. Liang’s wife had fried the fish whole, so the skin was brown and crispy, then smothered it with garlic and ginger. Early in the afternoon, Su had started making a medicinal soup of berries and roots simmered in chicken broth. “We don’t have much money,” my nephew said, “but we always have lots to eat.”

With a broad grin across her face, his wife added, “Today we have lots of money. We sold two hundred yuans’ worth of bananas at the market!”

Partway through dinner, Liang invited us to spend the night at his house. He had extra beds. I was touched by his
hospitality but ended up declining, saying that we’d already paid for the hotel room. But that was not the only reason. Earlier in the afternoon, I’d been in their bathroom, where I’d seen the wooden tub and ladle. Even though I’d camped and canoed in the Canadian outdoors, I could not face using the washing facilities in that home. I felt terrible turning down my nephew’s offer because my reaction was so irrational. But that basin and ladle reminded me too much of bathing in my father’s laundry, crouching inside a wooden laundry tub next to an enamel basin of warm water, rinsing the soap off my skinny, shivering body with a wet cloth.

Later, Liang’s wife brought out a photo album of her daughter’s wedding. My sister told me to sit beside her on the wooden sofa. They were eager for Michael and me to see pictures of this auspicious family occasion. The album was full of studio photographs of the bride and groom in wedding clothes and in fairytale-like ball gowns and tuxedos, all taken against a backdrop of painted formal gardens. This wedding in rural Kaiping wasn’t all that different from what I knew in Canada: a single day of living out a fantasy. But what struck me were the group photos. Everyone, even the parents of the couple being married, was dressed in everyday clothes. Kim was actually now wearing what she’d had on that day. It suddenly occurred to me that even though I’d been with Kim almost every day for the month we’d been in Kaiping, I’d seen her in only two different shirts. And here I was living out of a suitcase and still in a different outfit each day of the week.