A Superior Man

by Paul Yee

  Grandfather’s letter brought bad news. Grandmother was seeking a husband for Younger Sister. I hurled his words into the fire. They should demand money from Father, not me. That shit-hole prick was the one hurting her search, making the need for money more acute than it need be. It was his great shame that we tried in vain to conceal. The go-betweens would report back to Grandmother that people fretted about Younger Sister’s motherless childhood and also feared that the suicide hinted at madness in our blood.

  To get a better match, Grandmother needed to send cakes and roast pigs to the prospective in-laws. She must enhance Younger Sister’s dowry before the wedding. If she entered her husband’s house empty-handed, then she would be seen as a concubine. She needed token pieces of gold and jade, new clothes, a storage chest, and household items.

  When fathers couldn’t protect their daughters, then brothers embraced the duty. Villagers watched our family, seeking new bruises where we could be poked and prodded. Once Younger Sister entered her new home, she could never come back, no matter how sharp-tongued her mother-in-law was, no matter how the backstabbing sisters-in-law ruined her cooking and gave her the worst chores. We had only one chance to make the best match. Younger Sister, timid and gentle, couldn’t speak for herself in a strange household. She would rather stay home and take care of Grandfather. But a spinster in the house also shamed our family name.

  Bookman refused to advance me any funds. “What if you fall sick and die?” he said. “Who will repay?”

  Only Poy might lend me money, but first he wanted token payments against my earlier debts. He wasn’t so stupid around money any more.

  If I didn’t get to America, Younger Sister might be forced to settle for some oaf who stuttered, bullied women, or smoked opium.

  An armed party waited at camp one afternoon. Soldiers had marched in, belts over their chests, rifles on their backs.

  “Everyone over age eighteen pays the school tax,” said the Chinese translator. “All redbeards pay it.”

  After coughing all day, I had no appetite and a bad headache. I would have gladly paid the tax in order to crawl into the sick tent. But the crew was set to fight: we had been threatened over the tax several times. Now, anyone who walked away was a coward and a traitor.

  We looked to Number Two or Poy to speak. To everyone’s surprise, Shorty called out, “We have no children here. Why should we pay?”

  “It’s only called a school tax.” The translator sighed with impatience. “It’s a provincial tax, only three dollars a man, a paltry amount.”

  “Go tell your boss that.”

  Shorty, Number Two, and the translator exchanged glances. The visitors strutted about, muttering. A captain barked, and the soldiers jumped into two lines. Men in the front row knelt, one leg up, the other down, their rifles pointing at us.

  Time to run. Or give up. Redbeard guns had shown no mercy in China.

  “Go on, open fire.” Shorty crossed his arms over his chest. “You can pound the rock and haul it away yourself.”

  “The soldiers will kill one man at a time,” drawled the translator. “Not you, you with the many mouths. No, you won’t be first. You, you will stand and watch your workmates die.”

  “Screw you,” Shorty spat out.

  “Will anyone pay the tax?” The translator addressed us. “Won’t you obey the rules?”

  “Don’t listen to him!” Shorty shouted. “He gets paid to trick you. He sells you out!”

  Bookman pushed his way to the front. “I’ll pay half the tax but the men must pay the other half.”

  “Two-thirds,” said Shorty.

  “One-half.”

  “Done.” Number Two, quiet up to now, cited a proverb. “At low doors, bend down.”

  After the soldiers left, crewmen surrounded Shorty to thank him. In a blink of the eye, the snivelling opium addict became a superior man. Now he had a high stage from which to denounce me.

  “Brothers, I cannot pay the tax and buy opium at the same time,” he said. “Who can help me?”

  His accident had happened before coming to the cut. One day, Crew Boss grumbled about slow progress. In the tunnel, a redbeard tamped powder. Crew Boss grabbed the hammer and pounded the rock face. Shorty backed off, knowing that blasters worked slowly and gently. The redbeard argued with Crew Boss but got shoved aside. He and Shorty crept away. Crew Boss hauled them back. He banged the tamping rod again, and the wall exploded. Shorty was behind the two redbeards and not hit. He fell onto the rocks. The blaster died right away but not Crew Boss. They carried him to the tunnel mouth. His arms were bloody stumps. He bled to death in the sunlight.

  Shorty returned to work but couldn’t sleep. Head Cook said that opium would dull the pain. This helped, and the bosses were happy. Number Two saw that this left Shorty no money to send home. He was told to quit the job, but his list of debts was a long one.

  At dinner, Poy stood to speak. “We thank Shorty for speaking against the soldiers. Everyone should donate a few cents to cover his tax. How much each man pays depends on how many men are willing. Let’s make it unanimous.” He looked around. “Who won’t join?”

  My hand shot up, and several men joined me.

  A furious Poy avoided me for days.

  Rain fell for a week, filling the cut with two feet of water. Cold winds shot through the canyon. The firewood got soaked so Head Cook served lukewarm food. The latrine collapsed and dumped two men into a putrid swamp of shit. On rest day, workers refused to hike into town because they would only get soaked. The smarter ones hurried off to find stores and game halls with roofs that didn’t leak. The men who were left behind clambered atop the logs that raised bedrolls from the ground and then shook loose cloths for games of chance. Stumps served as chairs and to keep goods off the soggy floor where insects thrived amid the tree branches and scraps of oil cloth. In a corner, deaf to all the shouting, a man might be mending his boot or rewrapping a bandage around his elbow.

  We heard a thunderous crash one night. Next morning, the skies cleared, as if to let puny mortals better marvel at the mountain’s mighty power. A landslide had dropped trees, boulders, and mud into the cut and the river. All our work vanished under the debris. Bosses and workers alike groaned. Mud was messy and slow to remove. We waded through it without seeing the sharp rocks beneath.

  From the top of the heap, we worked downward, tugging at rocks and chopping trees. The debris broke apart without warning, a monster suddenly opening its mouth, swallowing and crushing workers. No foothold could be trusted. We kept an eye on the mountain above, fearing another slide. When ancient human skulls and bones were found in the debris, we backed away. Word reached the Native people, who hurried to collect the bones. Crewmen predicted death.

  I awoke one morning with a bad headache. It was the same pain as from too much sun so I kept working. My nose started to bleed. By the afternoon my legs were wobbling. I took to my blankets and dropped into a deep sleep. I had short colourful dreams where masses of people rushed around me, all on urgent tasks. I was running through China, Hong Kong, and Centipede Mountain.

  Someone shook me awake. It was California.

  “I’m going to America,” he said. “It rains too much here. Want to come with me?”

  California hadn’t needed ship passage so his debt to the Company was much lower. I clutched his arm and begged him to wait for me. It would be no trouble to pack, I said, I had nothing to my name and would travel light as a goddess.

  I awoke wondering if he had come in a dream.

  My belly bloated like a ball, tender to the touch. The diarrhea that dripped green had been followed by bloody shit, so I was glad to be constipated and solid for a while.

  A fever gripped me. Poy pressed cold cloths to my forehead. Other men fell sick too: I heard someone shouting, “Drink this! If it’s not bitter, it won’t heal you.”

  The men talked about the rain, about Native men being hired to help clear the mudslide. California’s freedom to quit the crew was
envied by all. They cursed Head Cook, who refused to boil the herbal teas, leaving it for the men to do after their shifts. He even charged them for firewood.

  They brought bowls of bitter herbal tea to me. When Poy lifted me up, sharp pain surged from my abdomen.

  “Drink while it’s hot.” He spoke like Grandmother. “If it cools, it loses its power.”

  “Let me die,” I said.

  It took three weeks before I could stand up. Seven men had fallen sick. Half the crew fled to town. No one knew if the illness was contagious or not. Monkey died and his body was taken to the forest. Poy said he had weighed next to nothing.

  I was the last of the sick men to return to work. I had earned no money, only more debt. Charges for food and lodging never stopped, not even for stricken men. I slept in a tent and my meals were ready, even if they couldn’t be swallowed or kept down.

  Better to have died like Monkey, like my chance to get to America. Illness would have been a worthy end, a death ordained by the gods, unlike suicide.

  9

  IS IT THE MOUNTAIN OR RAILWAY THAT KILLS? (1881)

  We awoke one morning, shivering in the sudden cold of autumn, and found Head Cook gone. The bastard had grabbed his clothes, blankets, and a week’s supply of rice and fish. That shit-hole prick never faced sharp boulders or black powder, so what the hell was he fleeing? Of course he needed money in a hurry, but who didn’t?

  Second Cook moved into that job and Little Touch replaced him, a fine change for the crew. Number Two had been too polite, too snivelling to confront Head Cook’s bad temper and fondness to brawl. Men refused to drink the water that Head Cook claimed was boiled; they demanded that Second Cook vouch for it. Head Cook labelled the complaints fussy womanly nagging. Mountain water was plenty clean, he’d said.

  Right away, Onion’s Native customers brought fresh meat to trade. First to arrive was a flank of deer that flavoured a week of stews and soups. Two weeks later came Eighth Month Fifteen: the autumn moon at its fullest. Back home, children lit paper lanterns for an evening parade. Their fathers twisted long grasses into a giant snake, then jabbed the serpent full of incense sticks. The dragon swayed through the night, the ends of incense bristling in a million pin-pricks of orange light, summoning the stingy gods to hear our prayers for a better harvest next year.

  We had no parade, but the new cooks stewed two wild pheasants stoutly seasoned with herbal roots and nuts. We feasted and cursed the former cook.

  “At summer solstice,” reported Four Square, “other camps sipped old-fire soup laced with Brave Yellow brew.”

  “If Head Cook had served us that,” said Long Life, “no one would have died during the illness.”

  Dried salmon remained the staple, but now pickles, fresh herbs, and sauces flavoured it. A few men, never content, grumbled that the cost of meals would rise. Onion and I exchanged knowing glances with Little Touch. We three had slyly devised this miracle.

  Onion had long challenged the former Head Cook about the vile food. During my illness, Onion visited me alone one day.

  “Better meals are needed, my friend, healthy foods to dispel the winds inside you,” he said. “Otherwise there is no healing and you will get fragrant while young.”

  “Is that so?” At that time, my appetite chased my diarrhea.

  “Little Touch tended horses at an inn near Foshan,” he said, “but loitered in the kitchen like a hungry beggar and helped the cooks. He and Second Cook can make better meals, for sure.”

  Little Touch yearned to work in the kitchen. He and Second Cook often walked to town and ate fine dishes at the teahouse frequented by the bosses. The smallest man in the crew, Little Touch was viewed as a weakling by bosses and workmates. “Shouldn’t you be a tea boy?” they asked. “Why don’t you come back when you’re grown up?”

  In the kitchen, Head Cook often complained about his family, woes that Second Cook brought to Little Touch and Onion during bouts of late-night drinking.

  Head Cook was the younger of two brothers. Their ailing father frowned on the older one’s plan to sell the family land and buy a shop in town. Tensions were thick at home. In the letters that I read aloud to Head Cook, the father often moaned, Trust the earth, but not a merchant’s words.

  Onion told me to write a letter that looked to be from Head Cook’s mother stating that dear Father had fallen very ill and pleading for the younger son’s help because his brother was courting eager buyers.

  Second Cook slipped my envelope into the bundle of letters that Bookman brought from town. On rest day, I read the letter to Head Cook, who cursed and stalked away to think. Not long after, he vanished.

  Bookman announced that we were moving back to tunnel work. The crew argued about everything and agreed on nothing. A few idiots cheered because they took Monkey’s death as a warning to leave this site of illness. The wet air lingered among the coughing, along with fears of more landslides. But others did not want to work in darkness; outside work offered bright light and cleaner air. Coolies had no say, so two unwilling fellows slipped away. The ones who were left behind fell sullen, too proud to admire the deserters’ bravery, too afraid that the runaways would be proven right about future dangers. Me, I enjoyed the better meals.

  We trekked north through winds and pelting rain. The men complained that we should be heading south, given the dropping temperatures. Dark forests and mountains stretched into the misty distance. All along the river, rock yielded to hammer and black powder as massive slopes of breaking stones crashed into the water. The changing landscape promised future riches and better times, but the redbeards didn’t expect China men to stay. Nor could we wait. Generations of people needed to be planted and settled before towns and cities could grow and prosper like those of home, those with hundreds of years of trade and history. When we laughingly asked Bookman which rich clan was paying for this road, he said it was the government. No wonder it had pressed us for the school tax.

  Crews at the new site had clawed open a tunnel using machines that we had not seen before. Workers heaved coal and wood into a sturdy furnace linked to two thrumming metal cases. The heat was welcomed by all men. Heavy pipes snaked out of the cases and into the tunnel. At the dimly lit rock face, the tubes merged into a single narrow hose that fed into a small keg. It gripped a thin spike that started spinning, turning so fast that it blurred and vanished. The redbeard lifted the keg and pressed the spike to the rock. It bit into the granite and sprayed out fine dust. We covered our ears and noses until the redbeard pulled away.

  We raised our lanterns and saw nothing. Then the redbeard pushed a hand drill into the fresh hole. It was deep enough to take the powder.

  That machine disposed of two hours of hand work in less than a minute, using little muscle or sweat.

  Only redbeards were allowed to use the marvellous tool, a pointed reminder of whose people had invented it. In response, crew men cursed it and sought to avoid it.

  “Redbeards will use it against China, just you watch,” Long Life muttered. “It will topple city walls and slaughter our people. Now it flushes out dust and sand, but blood and bone will be next, just watch.”

  “The Emperor bought plenty of guns and cannons from the west,” said Poy.

  “So why do we keep losing wars?”

  Poy had joined a campaign that was collecting money to buy a pair of cannons for Guangzhou. Our provincial capital had been looted during the Opium War. Now some braggart down the line claimed that if every coolie donated a day’s wages, then it was enough to buy the big guns from Germany and ship them to China. Poy recited a bunch of tired arguments: China needed modern arms to defend itself; China must copy western methods; China needed to strengthen itself and fight back. If not, foreigners would soon enslave our nation.

  Four Square shook his head. “Fight the west with something else, not cannons. If you fight the redbeards with their own weapons, then they will win, for sure. They built those things, didn’t they? So of course they know how to use th
em best. You think they passed all their secrets to us China men? You think a master chef shares his recipes with his underlings? Don’t be so stupid.”

  “The bookmen here are crooked, and officials in China are corrupt,” said Little Touch.

  When Poy asked me to donate, I told him that my every penny was being sent home. “Haven’t you noticed? I avoid women, wine, and opium.”

  “You still gamble,” he snapped.

  Other men moaned that the machine drills would put an end to our work.

  “They will pierce the mountain in a week’s time and leave us jobless.”

  “More machines will be brought in to get rid of us.”

  Number Two tried to quell the alarm. “In America, the railway employed China men for three years.”

  “That was fifteen years ago! Did they even have machine drills then?”

  Number Two didn’t know. They asked Bookman how long the work would last but got no answer.

  What did it matter? If the job ended early, then we would all have a better chance of getting home alive. We could stroll into our villages with heads held high, having built a great road, having handled steel shinier than our ancient mirrors.

  When Old Skinny, the first deserter from our forest days, was found among the other crew of the new site, our crew mobbed him, jabbering about what a lucky omen it was, a direct challenge to the Company’s steady loss of men by death or desertion. Old Skinny’s return reminded us of the ungiving nature of Gold Mountain. He hadn’t found gold or steady work in the north, so he came back. The Company rehired him with no penalty, so that meant we China men were badly needed. But that was because the work was shit and we needed wages.

  After the well-wishers melted away, I went to him.

  “Hok, you’re still here.” He seemed surprised. “You’re not stupid, you could have escaped.”