House of Kwa

by Mimi Kwa

  Theresa has squirrelled away enough money to send Francis abroad to study. There are Kwa half-siblings and cousins in Germany, Canada and England now, some even earning their doctorates. This would be enough to make a Chinese tiger mother proud, although that is not Theresa’s style: she is only keen for Francis to improve his chances, since he has graduated from high school, thanks to even more intervention from First Brother. His college prospects are, thankfully, good – Canada was a little expensive, but Australia affordable enough, particularly outside its capital cities, and its proximity to Hong Kong means Theresa can keep an eye on her little brother. He will have room to spread his wings and establish some independence, while she watches over him from afar.

  ‘Make sure you always use your manners and always speak English,’ Theresa emphasises, speaking in Cantonese.

  At the dock she pulls over and winds down her window before saying something charming to a bewildered parking attendant, who opens the manual boom gate and lets her through. She winks at her brother and does her signature double-click tut-tut sound with a shoulder wiggle to go with it – a little ‘aren’t I the cat’s pyjamas?’ performance. She grins and Francis grins back. He is twenty-one, excited and nervous about the voyage ahead.

  There couldn’t be a more perfect degree waiting for Francis in Australia: he is off to study Mechanical Engineering. He has not only had a keen interest in this subject since he could crawl, but he has also witnessed Hong Kong’s structural resurrection. His fascination with tools has only grown since he worked at the blacksmith shop and cleaned weapons for the Japanese; he seizes any opportunity to examine and pull things apart – from cars, bicycles, and mowers to clocks, calculators and kerosene lamps – to see what makes them tick.

  When Theresa and Francis get out of the car, they are distracted by a commotion near the boom gate. Vehicles are banking up as they try to enter the carpark set aside for officials, dignitaries and, evidently, Theresa. A driver is arguing loudly with the parking attendant, insisting he be allowed to bring his important passenger closer to the vessel.

  ‘Such very bad behaviour,’ Theresa says in Cantonese, shaking her head. Then she winks and does her cat’s pyjamas routine again. ‘Smooth, smooth,’ she says in English. ‘Never lose your temper. Always stay smooth.’

  Theresa makes light of the farewell with her brother, hiding her deep concern for him. Francis doesn’t notice; he is not at all sentimental. As he gives his sister a stiff hug, his mind is already south of the Pacific. He is off to teach Australia a thing or two. He knows he could also teach his sisters a thing or two but is wise to keep that to himself.

  Theresa has worked hard for Francis’s fare and two years’ tuition. He is not travelling first class, as she deemed this unnecessarily expensive, but she has also given him a thousand pounds in cash to last him the twenty-four months to the end of his course. He has this excessive sum in a pouch around his waist, and he boards the vessel with only that, a small case and the clothes on his back. He waves to Theresa, then walks up the gangway and steps out of Hong Kong. He is leaving home for the first time.

  Aboard the ship, Francis’s friendly disposition and adaptable traits work well for him. What he considers to be a healthy amount of civil disobedience – his rebellious streak, which Theresa has tried hard to quell – is lauded here among these passengers. Nevertheless, word that he’s not really ‘one of them’ circulates.

  ‘He isn’t on the Australian government scholarship migration scheme.’

  ‘Well, if he isn’t on the program like the rest of us, he must be rich.’

  Four weeks later, on Boxing Day 1954, the great ship docks in Brisbane, and one crew member, who has been watching Francis with particular interest, follows him down the gangway.

  Water has been in short supply, rationed for drinking and cooking, so onboard showers are a luxury reserved only for those in first class. Francis and a group of his fellow passengers head straight for a YMCA for their first shower in over a month. Relishing the water flowing over his skin, he neglects to notice a hand reaching above the curtain and sliding his money pouch off the rail. The rushing of water and happy chatter mask the sound of a thief running out.

  Francis had diligently kept the pouch on him at all times, day and night, around his waist or strapped to his hand under his pillow as he slept; he fiercely protected the cash intended to feed and clothe him for two entire years. So as he steps out of the shower and finds the precious money gone, panic sets in.

  He looks left and right in a fractured blur. This cannot be happening, he thinks. Other men in the change room seem oblivious, while Francis feels as though his whole life is crumbling around him. He flings aside a row of shower curtains, screaming in Cantonese, ‘Where is it?’ Then, in English, ‘Bag? Bag?’ He pushes people, overturning and rummaging through belongings, before collapsing on the tiles, screaming. A man slaps him across the face, returning him to his senses, and he discovers his shoes are also missing.

  He pulls on his clothes and returns to the vessel, barefoot. They set sail for Melbourne, and Francis notices a white Australian crew member wearing his shoes; they are unmistakably his – light-brown stitched leather, an expensively custom-made gift from Theresa. Francis rants in Cantonese and raves in English, embarrassing the sailor into returning the footwear before his captain hears the commotion. This is one small consolation for Francis, but the money is never forthcoming and the culprit never identified. He spends the rest of the trip eyeing everyone on board with suspicion, keeping to himself and falling asleep with his hand under his pillow where the pouch used to be.

  This incident nags at Francis. Perhaps it always will. Coming into that sort of cash would be life-changing. Losing it is too. Everything changed for Francis that day.

  Life has buffeted him every inch of the way to this point, but there has always been a Kwa to bring him in from the storm. Not now.

  On the surface, he displays the resilience of the little boy in Hong Kong who bore witness to war crimes and their aftermath. He had been full of optimism for his new life abroad, only to be humiliated before it had a chance to begin. When Ng Yuk would bring a cane down on his open palm for the hundredth time, Francis would make sure it was his last humiliation at his mother’s hand.

  He vows that the theft of his life savings – or, more accurately, Theresa’s – is the last time he’ll be shamed by anyone.

  As the ship docks in Melbourne, Francis has shoes on his feet but empty pockets. He’s a different person to the young man he left in Hong Kong. There has been a coming of age, and walking down the gangway Francis has determination in his eyes. He sets his sights on survival – not for the first time – as he steps onto land and enters a different kind of war.

  SPIT AND LAUNDRY

  THE COLLEGE FRANCIS IS TO ATTEND, THE GORDON INSTITUTE, is about two hours from Melbourne by road, in the portside town of Geelong. He can’t buy a train or bus fare, and there are no rickshaws here; he may need to resort to hitchhiking. Although he’s never done such a thing before, he has seen it in the movies. How he misses Hong Kong, where he could simply run after a moving tram, grab the rail, fling himself inside and travel for free. Melbourne is already beginning to feel inhospitable.

  Francis makes his way to an information booth. Fortunately, Australia is less foreign to him than it would be to a mainland Chinese person, given that for most of his upbringing Hong Kong has been part of the British Empire. In both places, cars drive on the left, police have batons not guns, street signs are in English and civic order appears intact. But Melbourne seems awfully quiet, less bustling than Hong Kong, with a lack of urgency and purpose.

  The woman at the information desk is chatting to a scruffy dustman or other menial worker, or so it seems to Francis. He puffs out his chest – still, he receives no attention. The woman keeps chatting, and Francis looks down at the information sign on the front of the booth. It’s on its last screw, so he bends to examine it. He looks behind and around it, a
ssessing the situation, then takes a toothpick from his pocket. He considers the thin wire that he used to fix his suitcase handle when it became loose on the ship, and unwinds some of it, bending it back and forth until it snaps. He twists the wire around the toothpick, coiling it tightly, and lines up the newly fashioned screw with the hole in the sign and the hole in the booth. He twists, and the thread of the wire-toothpick-screw grips perfectly. Voila! (A term he has heard Theresa use.) The sign sits straight again.

  Francis is pleased and stands up. ‘Your sign.’

  ‘YES, DEAR?’ the information woman shouts. Does she think he is deaf? ‘DO YOU KNOW ENGLISH? LITTLE BITTY THE ENGLISH.’

  ‘Gee-long,’ he says, more as a statement than a question. He hasn’t mastered English, despite Theresa’s insistence.

  ‘GEE-LONG,’ the woman mimics at triple the decibels. ‘BUS NUMBER FORTY-SIX. OVER THERE.’ She points to a bus stand. ‘That takes you to the city and then you need BUS NUMBER NINETY. They go twice a day. You’ve missed the early ninety-nine so you’ll have a TWO-HOUR wait in the city. TWO-HOUR WAITY. OKAY?’

  Francis doesn’t understand a thing she is saying. ‘Map,’ he says. ‘Please,’ he adds, remembering his sister’s instruction to be polite.

  ‘OKAY. A MAP OF MELBOURNE OR A MAP OF VICTORIA, DEAR?’

  ‘Gee-long.’

  ‘OKAY. HERE YOU ARE. I’LL GIVE YOU BOTH.’ She hands him a parcel of folded green paper and turns back to her conversation with the dishevelled dustbin man. ‘Those Chinese,’ she says, rolling her eyes, ‘don’t any of them have a word of English? They all come here to take our jobs, and they don’t even know where Geelong is.’

  The White Australia Policy laws are slowly being chipped away. Until recently, migrants other than Europeans have been mostly barred from coming into the country in order to eliminate the threat of ‘cheap Chinese labour’. Francis doesn’t yet know what an oddity he is.

  He gently tugs at the sign to test his handiwork before walking towards the number forty-six bus stop.

  ‘Sorry, matey, no money, no ticket. No ticket, no comey on the bussy, see.’ A conductor speaks to Francis in a slightly quieter tone than the information lady.

  ‘Money, stolen, thief,’ Francis offers, pulling his pockets inside out to illustrate.

  The conductor steps into the bus and speaks to the driver, who looks down from behind the wheel at Francis. He shakes his head. ‘Sorry, mate,’ says the conductor, a little less condescendingly this time. ‘We’re not a charity, mate, and we can’t just let people on without paying even if they have no money.’ Then, in a dramatically ironic statement, ‘There’s a phone booth over there. Go and call someone to pick you up.’

  Francis watches the bus pull away.

  Hitchhiking isn’t all that bad. It’s free and adventurous. Francis deciphers the map – which is easy for him to do, being such a visual person – and works out a direct route to Geelong. Cars speed past, and people lean out windows with advice like ‘Go home, chink.’

  Eventually a middle-aged couple approach in their Ford. They can tell from the man’s clothes and the awkward way he stands by the road – arm rigid and thumb out in a Hollywood imitation of hitchhiking – that he is probably educated and definitely harmless. They slow down to rest beside him and ask where he is headed. The couple are well travelled, one a lecturer in antipodean history and the other a schoolteacher. It’s Francis’s lucky day.

  Three hitched rides and five hours later, Francis arrives in Geelong. He steps down from a truck cab, his ‘thank you, sir’ barely audible over the engine’s roar. He swings shut the door, using all his might, and watches the truck pull away from the kerb. It’s late and all the shops are shut. Alone in the centre of Geelong, Francis surveys the deserted country town.

  Francis completed a semester at Hong Kong Technical College before he left, and summer holiday bridging classes will commence at the Gordon Institute in a week, so he has little time to find suitable accommodation, let alone settle into the ‘Australian way of life’. Acclimatising to this environment is an overwhelming proposition – language and cultural differences will surely take years to manage – but Francis is practical. As he stands in the middle of sleepy Geelong, he prioritises his basic needs just as he once did under the Japanese: food and shelter.

  He wanders the quiet streets looking for a sign. Not a sign to mend, by the way, although if one was broken, no doubt he’d fix it. He examines the buildings he passes, muttering to himself that they would be far more structurally sound had he project-managed their creation. Years of watching Hong Kong rebuild have given him a high degree of confidence in his limited skill set. He runs a palm along walls and up posts, tapping and examining, exploring the town’s constitutional integrity like a doctor listening to a pulse.

  Geelong’s population is in the tens of thousands compared to Hong Kong’s two and a half million. However, Theresa thought Francis might feel at home in Geelong because they are both textile and manufacturing hubs by the sea. The Australian town, just like Hong Kong, has experienced a depression-driven economic slowdown followed by strong post-war growth. But Francis finds it hard to believe he has arrived at a prosperous time – to him, there is no hint of it. Unlike in Hong Kong, where everything stays open until late into the night, in Geelong almost everything is shut by six. Francis imagines a tumbleweed blowing along the centre of the street like in the American Western movies he enjoys so much.

  Distant talking and laughing grows louder as Francis turns a corner to see a neat row of restaurants and a cinema: exciting signs of life. One dining venue is called a ‘Chinese’ restaurant, which is perfect because he is hungry. He expects he can wash dishes in return for dinner, like in the movies. Perhaps the owners even speak Cantonese.

  Half a dozen men and women walk past. ‘Go back to your own country,’ one man says, spitting on the ground.

  ‘Bloody chink,’ says another, and they disappear around a corner.

  Francis swings the restaurant door open, letting the warmth and appetising scents envelop him. A laughing-eyed Chinese woman greets him in Cantonese and introduces herself as Mrs Chew, the restaurant owner. The kindly woman takes him in and feeds him on this first night. The spicy noodles are hot and delicious. Careful not to spill anything on the white tablecloth, he watches the steam from his bowl rise up against a red wallpaper backdrop patterned with roses.

  It turns out that as well as a restaurant, Mrs Chew owns a Chinese laundromat. He can start there in the morning.

  ‘Why should we pay for you to go to school? Go back where you came from, bloody chogie.’

  It is a daily obstacle course of torment. Francis must circumnavigate ignorance, outrun resentment, skirt spite, hurdle hatred, shot-put cynicism, scale scourge, bounce belligerence. He likes to think of it in these terms taken from the English dictionary he studies every night – a word Olympics. Somehow the sport references make him feel as though he’s ‘going for gold’. Each time he gets over the finish line unscathed, unbruised and unaffected, he can chalk up one more day of survival in this foreign promised land.

  Kwa tenacity and resilience help keep his spirits high. And he hasn’t forgotten his vow not to be taken advantage of again, which makes some Geelong attitudes all the more challenging.

  Mahjong-playing ancestors and gods watch over Francis, pleased that things are beginning to work out for him. He increases his workload to a double degree, with Mechanical and Electrical Engineering the perfect streams for his interests. Over the next two years he studies hard, and he supports himself by working at Mrs Chew’s laundry; he delivers clean, pressed linen and towels on a pushbike to local hotels and elite private houses.

  He still can’t admit to Theresa that he lost her money in a YMCA shower and writes to her irregularly, omitting key facts. He never mentions supporting himself or the racist remarks directed at him whenever he leaves his dormitory – he writes only of study and scenery.

  Francis has had a string of girlf
riends and, to the fury of the local white men, they have all been young local white women. He has assimilated by behaving like a white man courting their own, and the girls appreciate his handsome face and charming, funny demeanour. They like the way he shrugs off cynical and racist remarks by retaliating with self-deprecating humour, and that he is never afraid to dance. He’s a refreshing alternative to the macho jocks, but his popularity with the ladies comes at a cost: the white men are out for blood.

  ‘You slope heads come and take our jobs and steal our women, you bastard Chinaman.’

  Francis is escorting his girlfriend Anne towards the Geelong Town Hall for a biannual dance. He ignores the angry man shouting at him.

  ‘I said, you bloody chinks come in and take our jobs and our girls. Go back to where you came from, bastard.’ Angry Man is with two other men who don’t look quite so sure, but they jeer their support anyway.

  ‘Now, now,’ says Francis. ‘Look, I do not come to take your job or your women.’ He straightens his posture to prepare for his next comment. ‘If you’re not smart enough to keep your job or your women, then that’s your problem.’

  Angry Man runs up the steps and pushes Francis against the stone wall.

  Francis can tell the man has been drinking alcohol. ‘Mate, mate, mate.’ Francis uses his best Australian English.

  But it’s too late – Angry Man is punching him in the stomach. Anne screams.

  Other couples on their way into the dance appear reluctant to intervene, until finally a few men step in and break up the one-sided brawl. As they pull the aggressor away, Francis brushes himself down and straightens his bow tie, taking Anne’s hand to lead her up the remainder of the stairs.

  Angry Man stands with his companions and glares up at the couple. Francis shakes with humiliation and rage. Adrenalin courses through his body. He raises his fist and wags a finger violently at the men. ‘And don’t you come back,’ he manages to say before disappearing inside with Anne on his arm.