The Year of Finding Memory

by Judy Fong Bates

  Delicious smells filled the room. Jeen had taken a tray of food to her mother, and everyone else was seated at the round table. Once again, Jeen brought out a steamed patty made from minced salted fish, pork and ginger, which she presented to my husband. “Michael Uncle likes this. I remember,” she said, then waited for me to translate.

  Michael grinned, picked up his chopsticks, broke off a piece and popped it into his mouth. “Ho sec, delicious,” he said. Everyone around the table cheered.

  Partway through our meal, Jeen inquired whether I knew about a brother who “lives above my head.” A brother who lives above my head? But in that very instant, I understood that Jeen was referring to a son my mother had given birth to the year before I was born. He had lived only a few days. I had always known about this child but rarely thought about him.

  After I nodded in answer to her question, Jeen asked, “Did you know that if it hadn’t been for Lew, your mother would never have made it to Canada?” Once again, I felt as if a carrot was being dangled in front of me. Without waiting for a reply, Jeen went on. “When your mother was in Hong Kong with Ming Nee and you, the Canadian government had twice refused her application to enter Canada.”

  “Jin hai-lah?” I said—Really?—not so much as a response, but as a signal for her to continue.

  “Well, your mother decided to see a fortune teller. The fortune teller said that it was the spirit of her dead son who was preventing her from leaving the country. He was upset with his mother for leaving China and with the prospect that there was no one to carry on his lineage. Well, our mother, First Brother’s wife, was pregnant at the time. Your mother was told to adopt this child as her dead son’s offspring and make him her grandchild. So after Lew was born, we had a ceremony, making him the spirit son of your dead brother. This made the brother “who lives above your head” happy and shortly afterward the Canadian government granted your mother permission to enter. You can say whatever you want, but as soon as your dead brother got his son, your mother got the necessary papers.” I glanced over at First Brother’s Widow, and she nodded.

  I might have guessed that my mother would seek the advice of a clairvoyant. She was never a religious person, and yet I would be hard pressed to find someone more superstitious. She paid close attention to a person’s moles, convinced that an unlucky position could spell misfortune. She believed in hai thleng, which translates roughly as face reading. But hai thleng was more than that. It was the belief that by examining facial contours, the shape and symmetry of features, by reading a person’s chi, a fortune teller could not only see goodness or evil, but could also foresee the course of a person’s life.

  My father often used to tell me that in Chinese society, one always felt stronger kinship toward the father’s side of the family. This was why parents were always cared for by sons and not daughters. My mother retorted that we were living in the West and that none of those customs applied—though she did not dismiss those beliefs herself. Little by little my mother’s behaviour was beginning to make sense: the letters and the money that she sent to Lew, her insistence that this man whom she had never met be included in her will. I now understood why Lew treated me with such respect, why we had been invited so many times to his home for meals, why he and Wei made special trips to deliver late evening soup to us at our hotel. I looked across the table at my spirit nephew. For a moment our eyes met.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Michael unfolded the Chinese-language Kaiping tourist map and laid it on the desk in our hotel room. Earlier in the day, Bing had pointed out all the sites we had visited, and my husband then carefully circled the names and wrote down the English transliterations.

  Bing had told us that the northern part of Kaiping County was quite different from the south. Fewer people from there had travelled overseas, and the people from the south generally considered it to be a backwater. He knew all this because he’d been sent there for re-education during the Cultural Revolution.

  Michael pored over the map and noticed that the elevations in the northern section of the county were higher and that there were fewer roads. It indeed appeared to be an area of little development. I decided that I wanted to see it. I had returned to China to learn more about my parents, to get to know my family better. But there was more … Although I knew I was likely seeking something intangible that perhaps no longer existed, I was looking for the China that had belonged to my parents. If, in fact, it were to be found, it would be in small, unexpected glimpses. I convinced myself that if I gathered together enough of these vignettes, I might be able to patch together a quilt of mental images. And that would give me a suggestion of the China they had once called home.

  Kim and Bing hired yet another van to take us to Ai Sah, the most northern town in the county. From there we would explore the countryside and hike into the mountains. When the van arrived at the hotel, Kim’s younger sister, Su, and her husband, Ven, were with them as well. I had become used to new people materializing just for these excursions.

  Ven was a senior civil servant with a well-paying job that would eventually give him a government pension. He seemed to be the relative with the most status, a man whom everyone respected. I had observed during family gatherings that whenever he spoke, people listened. When he heard about our trip, he decided to take the day off work and accompany us. He had also asked a friend in the area to reserve a table at a local restaurant that specialized in wild game.

  Su is a gentle woman in her mid-forties. Being ten years younger than her sister, she was not as severely affected by the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. She was able to complete her education and went on to train as an herbal pharmacist. There is a quiet confidence about Su, the manner of someone who is secure in her position. For twenty years she worked for the government, but once laws governing the ownership of property were relaxed, she bought a shop in the market town of Ong Sun, a few miles south of Cheong Hong See. Her store, which Michael, my brothers and I had visited the year before, is a large, quiet space with a feeling of calm and order. Two of the walls are lined with wooden drawers, filled with dried roots, leaves, seeds, berries, dried geckos, seahorses and ground deer antlers. An L-shaped glass counter holds even more packages of Chinese herbal medicines. During our visit I’d watched her serve customers, listening to their symptoms, opening drawers, carefully scooping out ingredients to be weighed on a hand-held scale and finally wrapping everything in crisp, white paper tied together with thin, red string. I often wondered if Su’s life was what my mother had at one time possessed, working behind the counter of the store in Cheong Hong See. Oddly enough, my niece with her overbite and intelligent eyes actually looks like my mother, yet they are not related by blood.

  As we travelled north out of Kaiping City, the land started to rise and the sandy soil turned a rich, ochre colour. Over time the hillsides had been dramatically sculpted into large, terraced rice paddies. From a distance they looked like giant steps, carpeted with crops of ripening rice, the green stalks gently swaying in a humid haze. As the city fell farther and farther behind us, the villages became more dilapidated. Most of the houses were constructed from yellow mud bricks, rather than the familiar narrow grey ones. I’d also become accustomed to seeing rural dwellings built on a grid, with the walls of the outside homes forming the perimeter of a village compound. But many of these houses seemed randomly situated, with meandering paths between them. The hamlets were nestled against verdant hills and cold mountain streams, and they looked magical despite the obvious poverty.

  I noticed a winding dirt path between some of the terraced fields, and asked the driver to stop so that Michael and I could explore. As we were walking, Michael noticed a Paris Peacock, a velvet black butterfly with flashes of iridescent blue and red in each wing, almost the size of a hummingbird. As soon as he saw this butterfly he tried to photograph it, but found it extremely difficult because of its tendency to hover rather than settle while feeding. We then heard Bing rushing to catch up with us.
Since there was no signpost, we were not aware that there was a village at the end of the road. Just as Bing arrived, a man appeared, apparently out of nowhere, and confronted us. Bing quickly spoke up and said that we had travelled from overseas to study Chinese butterflies and pointed at Michael’s field guide and camera. The man hesitated for a moment, then left.

  Bing later told us that some of the people in these remote communities had likely never even been to Kaiping City, much less seen a lo fon. We were only about ninety minutes from the county capital, and yet some of these people may have spent a lifetime venturing no more than a few miles from their birthplace. In cities like Shenzhen, the development couldn’t move fast enough; here, time seemed to have stood still.

  The outdoor market at Ai Sah was raucous with the sounds of dogs barking, fowls squawking and people calling attention to their offerings. We walked up and down aisles where mats were laid on the ground, crowded with items for sale: chickens, ducks, geese, frogs tied by their legs into groups of three and four, dogs in cages, vegetables, fruit, various dried foods, seeds, clothing, snakes, hats, pots and pans. The owners who crouched next to their wares and produce stared as our group walked past and beckoned to us, hoping we would stop. Except for the plastic tarpaulins covering the ground instead of woven bamboo mats and apart from the occasional sound of motorized vehicles, I was sure my parents would have wandered about a market just like this, bargaining for food and other necessities.

  Kim passed several chicken merchants before deciding which one to patronize. She squatted without effort and started to scrutinize several of the vendor’s birds, clutching them by the feet and touching their bellies and under their wings. She made a point of poking the birds’ crops, feeling for evidence that they’d been fed grain. Grain-fed chickens, she told me later, tasted the best. After several minutes she told the seller that her chickens were not very plump. The seller protested indignantly. They argued quietly back and forth for a while, but in the end my niece bought the three that she thought were the best, the fattest.

  Even though I believe in using fresh ingredients and rarely buy prepared groceries, compared to my Chinese nieces’ and nephews’ diets, my food is far removed from its source. Only in the summer can I eat directly from our garden. Kim was pleased with her purchase and proudly told me that she preferred live fowl. The reason was simple. They tasted better. Bing and Su each carried a chicken, grabbing it by its wings and folding them behind its back. The fowl were calm and quiet, no squawking, no resisting. Bing and Su held the birds as casually as if they were grocery bags. The previous day Michael and I had walked through a large, Western-style food store in Kaiping City, but I could not imagine any of my relatives pushing a metal grocery cart and buying food wrapped in plastic on a Styrofoam tray.

  Ven took the third chicken to the restaurant, where it would be killed and plucked for our lunch. He would tell the restaurant owner how he wanted the chicken cooked and choose the other dishes that would accompany our meal. These discussions were typical of our outings with the family. Whenever we went into a restaurant, the host would sit down with us and tell us what food was available. One of my relatives, usually Kim, would then decide what we wanted, how it should be cooked and negotiate how much we should pay. Except in the hotel restaurant, I never looked at a menu.

  Michael found a stall where a man was selling hand-forged, metal billhooks. As he approached, the vendor’s eyes widened, and he held out one of his utensils for inspection. My husband examined a few of them, turning them over and checking the blades to see that they had a uniform thickness. He then compared the way each knife was curved into a hook a the tip of the blade. He held several in his hand, comparing the grip of the handles. My husband turned to me and said that these knives were exactly what he had been looking for, just the ticket for cutting those thistles behind our barn. The vendor smiled and made encouraging gestures. Once Michael decided which one he wanted, I asked the merchant for the price. While he told me, he wrote a number on a scrap of paper for Michael’s benefit. My husband was about to pay the written amount when Bing, still holding the chicken in his hand, rushed over and scolded the man, telling him that he was charging too much and that it was wrong of him to take advantage simply because the customer was a lo fon. He later told us that if we hadn’t been there, he would have been able to buy it for even less money. After a moment’s polite hesitation, he added that we should never pay the opening price.

  “Even for you, it would be high,” Bing said to me. “But for Michael Uncle … ridiculous!” Bing shook his head, unable to believe that Michael was willing to pay the first suggested amount. It seemed that wherever we went with my relatives, they hovered over us, saving us from an unscrupulous world, eager to take advantage of two defenceless people. As it was, Michael paid the equivalent of 1.44 American dollars. The initial price had been close to two.

  Once we returned to the van, Bing took out a pocket knife and cut several holes into a cardboard box before putting the two remaining chickens inside. After the precious cargo was locked in the vehicle, we walked to the restaurant where Ven was waiting.

  A table had been set for us on the third floor. Ven had consulted with the owner ahead of time to make sure we’d sample locally caught game. We started with land frog (toad) soup. Later came two dishes wrapped and steamed in lotus leaves. Ven folded the leaves back from one dish and revealed small chunks of frog meat. Kim unwrapped the other package, and inside were chunks of the chicken she had chosen, steamed in a ginger and black bean sauce and arranged in a pattern of concentric circles. There was wild mountain pig stew, fresh fish from a nearby reservoir, local tofu and a variety of vegetable dishes from the restaurant garden. This was not cuisine that I would have chosen to eat. But I knew it had been selected with care, and I knew it would be found nowhere on the tourist map. The aroma was heady and strong. Michael smiled at me, picked up his chopsticks without hesitation and started to eat.

  Not long ago Kim had gone to visit a friend who lived in the area and who took her to a place in the mountains called Yellow Olive. She told our driver where she thought it might be, and he knew it was not that far from Ai Sah. We returned to the van and this time drove into the mountains, where the roads became steeper and rougher. We encountered several small villages that again had no signposts indicating their names. The road eventually became so difficult that we told the driver to park while we continued our explorations on foot, taking a well-trodden yellow path that snaked around the mountainside.

  At this point I didn’t imagine we’d encounter any more villages, but we eventually came across a cluster of dwellings. A small stream of sparkling water ran beside it, and two people from the village were squatting on the bank, cleaning a chicken. We were surrounded by green terraces filled with rice fields, vegetable gardens and banana groves, all set against a backdrop of misty hills and low mountains. Kim finally recognized a path leading off the main one and led us to another mountain creek that meandered between massive granite boulders, and in some spots left pools of water perfect for swimming. My niece suddenly dipped her head into the water. She encouraged me to do the same, telling me that the mountain water contained minerals that were beneficial for hair. When I declined, she smiled her silvery smile and shrugged her shoulders.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in the sun. Kim pointed out the physical formation that surrounded us: narrow at the top and bottom, wide in the middle. “Just like an olive,” she said, “and yellow because of the soil.”

  I looked around and felt blessed to be able to see this little corner of the world. Colourful butterflies basked in water left in the shallow hollows of the rocks. Bing lit a cigarette and leaned back on a warm rock.

  We had left Yellow Olive and were on our way back to the van. Michael was still taking pictures of butterflies, and Bing and Ven had gone on ahead. Su noticed some red berries and peeled one, telling me that it was effective in treating diabetes. I took the offered berry from my niece
and bit into it. The juices tasted tart and made my mouth pucker. My nieces, especially Su, had a great deal of knowledge about the curative qualities of wild plants and herbs and pointed out various medicinal ones growing along the mountain slope. Further along, Kim saw a particular grass and said that it was often boiled to make a brew and then used to bathe jaundiced babies.

  When we came to a turn in the path, we stopped for one last chance to gaze at the beauty of Yellow Olive. For a while no one spoke. Then Su said, “Your mother chased my grandfather.”

  Here we go, I thought to myself. Another village myth about my father, the Gold Mountain guest, and my mother, the schoolteacher with the elevated background. “That’s what your mother told me,” I finally said.

  Kim then added, “Everyone knows our grandfather liked your mother because she was clever. At least that’s what our mother says. Your mother had knit hats for her and her older brother, Shing Uncle. Doon Uncle was not yet born. People say that our grandfather used to invite your mother to his house for meals. She lived in a dormitory for single women. It wasn’t far from my grandfather’s house. So she could have a meal with them and go back to her room very easily. People say that my grandmother didn’t like your mother.”

  I glanced at Su, then at Kim. I didn’t know what to say. This was new information. I had always thought that until they were married, my parents had had only a professional relationship. It was difficult to picture them being social and friendly with each other. I hesitated, then said, “Well … I guess it would be hard to like a woman whom your husband had eyes for.” The sisters exchanged a glance. I then added that I didn’t blame First Wife.