The Year of Finding Memory (5 page)

Our party of thirteen and thirty-plus suitcases turned back and eventually went up and down one set of escalators at least three times. Simple decisions such as turning left or right became monumental and resulted in mass confusion,
with some going in one direction and some going in another. Several times, we were almost run over by buses. My brothers and their wives had travelled very little since their arrival in Canada, leaving them ill equipped to negotiate new surroundings. In exasperation, Michael and I, to Jen’s horror, left the group to search for the ticket booth, although neither of us knew how to speak Cantonese or read Chinese. We came back to find everyone worried that we had got lost, but all were relieved and impressed when we announced that we had found the elusive station.

The bus vibrated with loud voices, interrupted every so often by a cell phone ringing to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” “Jingle Bells,” “Frére Jacques” or “Für Elise.” Most of the conversation was in Cantonese, but occasionally I would detect my regional dialect. And suddenly, whether I wanted to understand or not, I would know what time one voice would be arriving home, or where another knew to buy cheap underwear.

It took a long time to leave Shenzhen, a nightmare of random development, with mile after mile of shabby, concrete high rises, factories and highways. Grime coated the buildings, even the newer ones, and looking out the bus window, I saw construction sites, cranes and scaffolding everywhere. The smog blanketing the city was so thick that buildings only a short distance away soon became indistinct. Smoke from factory chimneys hung in the air, and plumes of black cloud tailed many of the vehicles on the road. There was little greenery, and the few trees we saw appeared stunted and scrawny.

I had read about China’s rapid industrialization, and when I mentioned to a friend that I planned to visit my father’s birth village, she had greeted my enthusiasm with cynicism.
I wouldn’t expect much if I were you. That village has probably been flattened and replaced with a factory.
I had protested and said that our village was still standing; my friend shook her head, incredulous at my naïveté. But as I gazed out the window at this soul-numbing desolation, the unsettling, orange-coloured sun turning milky and incandescent behind the filthy smog, my spirits sank and I began to question if my friend had indeed been right.

But gradually we left behind the terrible urban sprawl and entered the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong Province—an emerald landscape of low, rounded hills and wide, flat valleys covered with lush rice paddies and thick groves of sugar cane, bananas and bamboo. Bright, flowering hibiscus bushes grew along the side of the road; clumps of orange and yellow lantana and jumbled vines of blue morning glory pressed against houses. The Pearl had already fanned out into many branches, some of them wide enough for large boats to navigate. Much of the countryside had been turned into large, rectangular fish farms divided from each other by long dikes, and many of the dikes doubled as walking paths dotted with small workers’ huts. Surrounding the dikes were fields full of carefully tended vegetable gardens and plantations.

But then I began to notice the apartment buildings and factories next to the fields and fish ponds. There seemed to be little concern about zoning; this was indeed a tarnished
paradise. And though I couldn’t imagine this place ever being anything but a source of plenty, I knew the region had suffered from both drought and floods, which throughout its history, had ruined crops and left its people starving. I pressed my forehead against the window of the bus and saw water everywhere: fish ponds, lotus ponds, streams and rivers all flowing into the mighty Pearl. Everything was fertile. Even the air seemed fecund, with its sparkling haze and humidity.

After two and a half hours on the bus, we arrived. From what I’d seen so far, Kaiping City was a scruffy industrial town, roads teeming with motor scooters, some carrying a single passenger, others an entire family, and trucks carting everything from bamboo to cages of live pigs. The curiously named Ever Joint Hotel, where we were to stay, is located on an island in the Tan Jiang River, which along with its tributaries flows through the city. The hotel is a large complex that dwarfs all the buildings in its vicinity. The moment our taxis stopped at the entrance, bell hops rushed over and opened the doors, gathered our luggage and led us through the large, glass front doors.

Inside the lobby, everyone in our group stood still. For a moment no one uttered a sound. Then there was a collective gasp. Standing in front of us and at strategic spots throughout the lobby were uniformed staff, looking ready to assist at a moment’s notice. The beige marble floors and pillars
dazzled our eyes, and the curved central staircase, leading to a second-floor balcony, was wide enough to fit a Cadillac. Jen had told us she’d made reservations for us at the best hotel in the area, and because of her connections via a friend of a friend, she’d been able to arrange a substantial discount. She’d assured us many times that the accommodations would be affordable. I had assumed that even though it was rated a five-star hotel, the Ever Joint would be a pale imitation of Western extravagance. I was wrong. The expressions on my brothers’ faces told me that this hotel was unlike anything they had ever experienced. As we stood gawking, Jen grinned from ear to ear. I noticed a couple of
lo fon
men in suits talking to a bell hop.
Of course
, these accommodations were built for foreign business travellers and for people like us, returning to the homeland with dollars to spend.

In one corner of the lobby, a large group of Chinese sat on chairs and sofas. Some of them looked anxious, and I wondered if they were waiting for us. Our party of thirteen people was still checking in when two women approached me. One was about my age, and the other was older, with greying hair parted at the side and held in place with a bobby pin. The older one was dressed in a loose, flower-print top and pyjama-style pants. She asked, in the local Four Counties dialect spoken by my family, if I was from Canada. There was something familiar about the rhythm of her speech, an echo from my early past. I knew this strong, throaty voice.
Yes, of course.
It belonged to my sister, to Jook. “Jook Dei, Jook Dei. My older sister, Jook,” I called. Without hesitation, she took me in her arms.

My sister loosened her embrace and held me at arm’s length. She smiled, and the lines around her mouth and eyes deepened. I saw the years of sun and wind etched into her face. The last time I’d seen this woman, she was in her early twenties and I was a child of three. Now, more than fifty years later, I was well past middle age, with my hair turned silver, and my sister was seventy-six. This woman was once the beautiful child my father had loved and had given a poetic Chinese name meaning “Jade.” My eyes grew wet with tears.

My father loved stories and language. While he worked at his hand laundry, he would compose lines of verse inside his head. He kept a book, made by sewing together cut-up sheets of brown wrapping paper, and in it he would write down his compositions, other thoughts and images that he might later use. I knew that when he bestowed this name upon my sister, he must have seen in his newborn daughter the beauty and luminescence of that precious green stone. He might not have guessed that it would be the stone’s other qualities, strength and durability, that would ultimately prove more valuable. Whatever grievances we may have had about our lives in Canada paled beside the existence Jook and the rest of our family had endured under the Communist regime, most harshly during the unrest and violence of the Cultural Revolution.

My father always claimed that Jook was a great beauty and had been regarded as a prize catch, especially since he was a Gold Mountain guest someone who could provide a good dowry. But if he had been able to predict the Communist Revolution in China, he would never have married her off. If
only she had remained his responsibility. For his oldest son, Hing, it was already too late because of his age. But for his daughter … if only he had known. Then only one and not two of his children would have stayed in China, forever trapped by the Communists. Whenever my father told me these things, he would shake his head, his anger with life’s injustices seething underneath his sigh.

Jook could not stop smiling. And the woman beside her was grinning and nodding. She seemed familiar to me, too—the way her eyes crinkled into the shape of crescent moons, the curve of her mouth when she smiled, her row of stainless-steel-capped teeth notwithstanding. “This is your niece Kim,” my sister said. “You used to play together when you were children. Before you left for Hong Kong, I used to visit your mother at the family store in Cheong Hong See. You and Kim used to hold hands. I had to teach her to call you
Yee
, little aunt on mother’s side.” My sister explained that although I was younger, I was Kim’s aunt and belonged to an earlier generation. Therefore, I had more status and the right to call her daughter by name.

I was overwhelmed by this rush of information and said, “I don’t mind if Kim calls me by my name.”

“No, no,” said Kim, flashing her smile of silvery teeth. “I can’t do that. I must respect the fact that you are of the same generation as my mother and call you by your proper title.” My sister was nodding in agreement, and I saw that I would have to cast aside my Western assumptions. I was in China. Here, everyone had a place within the family and was mindful of that position.

My sister and her daughter were tall for Chinese women. They were about the same height as my brothers, and I remembered being told that my father’s first wife had been tall. My sister and I smiled at each other again, neither of us believing that we were finally together. Her resemblance to our brother Doon was uncanny. But I also began to see something of our father in her. It was in the rhythm of her speech and in the way she swung one arm as she’d walked up to me. As Jook took both my hands in hers, it occurred to me that in all likelihood, no one in China knew how our father had died. No one in Canada would have written to tell them. It had remained our secret shame.

When I look at all the photos taken from that first encounter, I am reminded of the number of relatives who were at the hotel to greet us: nieces, nephews, their spouses and children. Yet I have a solid recollection only of my sister and Kim. I have no memory of my sister greeting my brothers, or of meeting Kim’s husband, but the photographs show me that my memory is incomplete. I have seen pictures of all the siblings together—other photos, with various combinations of the many family members, Jook’s other sons and daughter, and the adult children of First Brother Hing. And each time I come to a particular image of Jook holding Doon’s hand, it catches my breath. A big sister after so many years of being apart, once more able to hold her little brother’s hand in hers.

FOUR

W
hen I returned to China, I had few facts in my possession about my Chinese history. I knew we were from Kaiping County, and I knew that Sze Yup, the Four Counties dialect I spoke with my parents, was distinct from the Cantonese that is spoken in most of the province. When my mother and I first arrived in Canada, Sze Yup was commonly spoken in Toronto’s Chinatown, but as immigration patterns changed after the early 1970s, Mandarin and Cantonese began to dominate—both deemed far more urban and sophisticated. In Chinese restaurants I became reluctant to use the Sze Yup spoken in my childhood home, since I knew it would only earn me the scorn of waiters. But here in Kaiping, the dialect of my parents was everywhere, spoken by the hotel staff, the taxi drivers, the shop keepers. For the first time in my life, I felt bilingual and no longer embarrassed by my parents’ language.

Beyond knowing that it was in the south of China somewhere and in Guangdong Province specifically, my
understanding of Kaiping’s exact location had always been fuzzy. But as soon as I unfolded a map of the Four Counties on a coffee table in the lobby of the Ever Joint Hotel, I saw how close the area was to the ocean. And that explained why this region was home to most of the Chinese who went to the Gold Mountain in the early part of the twentieth century. Just beyond the sea lay that mythical kingdom where fortunes sat waiting to be made.