Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  It was the China-West Daily; he had bought it when he disembarked in Canton but this was the first opportunity he had had to read it. When he had left home for Canada, he did not even know what a newspaper was. He had only discovered them when the overseas Chinese from Malaya brought newspapers from back home to Victoria’s Chinatown. He opened it wide. The first page had a large half-page advertisement for a Dutch toilet spray made by Tai Luk Wo Pharmaceuticals: “Long lasting, aromatic and invigorating!”

  The next page had a Watsons Drugstore advertisement for Scott’s Emulsion Cod Liver Oil: “Tastes like milk, very palatable, more than three times as effective as pure cod liver oil. The best cure for consumptive diseases. Works every time.” On other pages there were advertisements for sugar, wine, kerosene, handkerchiefs and sweatshirts. On and on—there were more than a dozen of them. Ah-Fat was astonished. Nothing was the same as before he left. How was it possible for Western goods to be causing such a stir all the way up the Pearl River? He wondered about the towns and villages of Hoi Ping. Were they still as cut off as before, a different world from Canton?

  Among the advertisements, there was a column about the world of sing-song girls. The first item was a news report about a fire on the Guk Fau sing-song girls brothel boat, in which twelve prostitutes and six of their clients were burned alive. The second was about a pipa player called Bin Yuk, who excelled at Cantonese opera. The article read: “When Bin Yuk, ‘the oriole,’ begins to sing, she is exquisitely melodious, equal to our finest actresses. Few of her listeners are left unmoved.” The article then described at some length how she collected her fee from members of the audience: “She adopts a very severe mien when it comes to money. If someone gives her coins, she throws them to the ground—the sound they make tells her what their metal content is. If they give her copper coins or unusable tender, she gives it right back to them and demands silver. She will not take no for an answer. No matter how many times in an evening they ask her to sing, it is the same every time.” The article made Ah-Fat smile in spite of himself.

  Looking through the paper, he discovered it was all local gossip of this sort. There was very little about national politics. There was one small news item at the bottom of one page saying that Japanese “pirates” were defying the Imperial government in northeast coastal waters. General Li Hongzhang had reviewed the Beiyang fleet, and ordered that they should maintain calm and bide their time. Ah-Fat felt that nowadays the Peking of the Empress Dowager amounted to no more than a bit of windblown fluff. Even lowly Japanese pirates dared to lay their hands on it. And when news of these tumultuous events in the capital city of China finally arrived in South China, they merited no more than a brief exclamatory note following the advertising and tidbits on sing-song girls. He put down the paper, lost in thought, then quoted bitterly to himself two lines from the ancient poet Du Mu: “Singing girls care nothing if national calamity looms/As, on the far bank, they sing the lament Courtyard Blooms.”

  He suddenly thought of his childhood tutor Mr. Auyung, who would get into passionate arguments about national affairs, thumping the table until his writing brush jumped. He was never afraid to speak his mind. After Ah-Fat went to Gold Mountain, he kept up a correspondence with Mr. Auyung, and learned about his old teacher’s wanderings around China and beyond—from Canton to Shanghai, and south to Annam. Quite recently he had come home and reopened his tutor school in the town. In one of Ah-Fat’s twenty trunks there was a gift for Mr. Auyung—a map of the world. Mr. Auyung took a lively interest in Western sciences. Once he had recovered from the journey, he would go and pay his respects to Mr. Auyung.

  He got up from the chair and went into the reception room.

  The room was darker than the courtyard outside and it took a few moments for Ah-Fat’s eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.

  There was a young woman in the room. She was dressed in a long blue cotton gown with piping round the edges, and stood on a stool hanging a picture. Her hair was braided into a long, thick plait fastened with a red felt flower. She was holding a scroll painting depicting bright green bamboos tipped with fresh shoots, and guava trees. The reds, greens and blues were vivid and festive without being vulgar. The calligraphy on the painting read “What joy that the guava is about to set seed and the bamboo to give birth to grandchildren!”

  After she had finished hanging the painting, she stepped down from the stool and took a few steps back to see if she had hung it straight. In her haste, she trod on the hem of Ah-Fat’s gown, almost falling over. She turned and then leapt back as if she had seen a ghost. Her eyes grew round as saucers and she clasped her hands over her heart.

  It was the scar which had startled her, Ah-Fat knew. Over the years, far from fading, it had grown more prominent and more twisted. Now it looked rather like a centipede. Ah-Fat put his hands over his face and laughed. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m not a ghost. Look at my shadow. Ghosts don’t have shadows, do they? I’m Fong Ah-Fat.”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. She relaxed her hands and rubbed them against the front of her gown. “So you’re young Master Fong! How did you get here so quickly? The steamship company said you wouldn’t be arriving until next market day. So your mum and your uncle and the family have all gone to the Tam Kung Temple in town to light incense and pray you have a safe trip.” Ah-Fat guessed the woman must be a servant. “Why didn’t you go along with the mistress?” he asked. “The mistress wanted me to stay and get all the calligraphy and painting scrolls properly hung so they’d be ready when you arrived, but you got here before I’d finished.”

  “Who wrote the couplets?” asked Ah-Fat. “He got it wrong. I’m obviously not a newcomer, I’ve just been away a long time.” She gave a slight smile. “The newcomer is not you, it refers to your … your … intended.” And two vivid spots, as bright as the red in the painting, rose up her cheeks. It suddenly dawned on Ah-Fat that the room had been hung with the scrolls for his wedding. He looked at her again. She was not bad-looking and seemed bright too. Perhaps she was the daughter of a good family who had been forced into service when her family fell on hard times. He was reminded of his little sister, Ah-Tou, sold all those years ago, and he made a special effort to speak kindly to her.

  “Would you show me to a room where I can rest and wait for the mistress to come home?”

  The girl did as he asked.

  The room she led him to was actually Ah-Fat and Ah-Sin’s old room. The bed was the very same bed they used to share. The bedding looked as if it had been freshly sewn. The cotton wadding inside the quilt was thick and soft and the quilt cover was stiffly starched. Ah-Fat pulled back the quilt and saw that the old pillow was still there. It had been filled with dried chrysanthemum flowers because his mother maintained that they regulated the body’s temperature and could cure Ah-Sin’s epilepsy. Ah-Fat felt the pillow—there was a slight indentation in it. Could this still be the mark made by Ah-Sin’s head? He lay with his head in this hollow and his nostrils were invaded by the smell of chrysanthemums freshly dried in the sunshine. He fell into the sleep of his childhood.

  Suddenly the heavens darkened and it clouded over. It began to rain very hard, and there was no shelter. He was getting soaking wet. He remembered his mother had given him brand new bedding and shouted for a servant to come and close the window. He shouted so hard he finally woke himself up. He knew it had just been a dream, but when he touched his face, it was wet. He opened his eyes to see a little old woman sitting at his bedside. She wore her hair in a sleek bun, with a white felt flower tucked into one side. She had a handkerchief tucked in the front of her grey cotton gown, and was just pulling it out to wipe her eyes.

  “Mum!” Ah-Fat gave a cry and, leaping out of bed, he straightened his gown, threw himself to his knees in front of her and kowtowed.

  “I haven’t been a dutiful son. I’ve been away in Gold Mountain all these years and you’ve suffered so much hardship.”

  The woman said nothing, but bent to take Ah-Fat’s ha
nd. Her own hand inscribed circles for some moments in the air before finally gripping his. Ah-Fat realized that his mother was now completely blind.

  He felt a surge of emotion. There was a lump in his throat which he could neither swallow nor spit out. It stuck there until it forced tears from his eyes. He kowtowed twice more, knocking his head hard on the grey flagstones. His mother could not see, but at least she could hear what he was doing, which was what he most wanted.

  He was going to kowtow again but was firmly prevented from doing so. The room was full of people kneeling—younger cousins, nephews and nieces on his uncle’s side. Someone passed him a small towel. Ah-Fat wiped his face, and saw red stains on the towel. He had made his head bleed knocking it on the floor.

  The only person not present from the household was the girl who had been hanging the pictures in the reception room.

  The market-goers did not return to the village until nightfall, and they had not eaten all day. They hurried home the dozen or so li to the village with rumbling bellies, and the women were in such a hurry to light the cooking fires and cook the soup and rice that they did not even take a moment to go and piss. They had just got the fires lit when they heard the dogs bark.

  Most of the time, the village dogs barked in a desultory, sporadic sort of way for no particular reason. But today they seemed to have come to an agreement. One after another, they took up the cry, echoing each other’s barks and seemingly prepared to go on all evening. It was the way dogs barked when they were presented with something wholly unfamiliar, something which had come in from the big, wide world; they were hysterical with excitement and fear.

  The women threw down the dried grass and twigs with which they had been feeding the cooking fires and ran outside. They were met by the sight of dozens of porters, all dressed in black livery, laden with heavy cases suspended from carrying poles. They were filing along the narrow village street like an undulating black centipede so long that you could not see its head or its tail, enveloped in clouds of the dust which they were kicking up beneath their feet.

  The villagers trailing behind the dust cloud saw them put down their burdens in the Fong family courtyard. Blind old Mrs. Mak sat on a low stool feeling the lion’s-head lock in the centre of each case as it was put down. One. Two. Three. Three cases were piled on top of each other and there were seven piles, the last of which only contained two cases.

  So there were twenty trunks, Mrs. Mak muttered to herself, and her wizened lips parted in a gap-toothed smile.

  “Off you go and cook your dinners,” she ordered the crowd of onlookers. “Ah-Fat will fix a day when every one of you, young and old, will be invited over for a banquet to celebrate his homecoming.” She kept waving her handkerchief, but her attempts to send them away were futile. An ever-increasing number of people anxious to see Ah-Fat pressed in, as impossible to brush off as stove ashes stuck to a bean cake.

  She tried again: “Ah-Fat’s been on the boat home for weeks and he hasn’t had a single good night’s sleep. He fell asleep as soon as he got here, without even waiting for dinner. He needs a good rest in the comfort of his own bed. Leave him be and come back tomorrow and you can greet him properly.”

  The crowd finally began to disperse.

  Mrs. Mak went into the house, elbowed the bedroom door open and felt her way over to the bed. Knocking the tip of her walking stick on the floor a few times, she said: “Ah-Fat, what are you frightened of? You still count as a Gold Mountain man, even if you’re a scar-face. Those twenty cases prove what a man you are. How many people have been able to do what you’ve done? Tomorrow we’ll go out of the house together. Everyone’s got to see you sooner or later.”

  There was no movement from the bed. After a few moments, Ah-Fat gave a chuckle. “Mum, how did you know I’m a scar-face?”

  Mrs. Mak smiled too. “I pushed you out of my belly and you can’t lift a leg without me knowing what kind of fart’s coming out. From the moment you came into this house, you haven’t looked at me when you spoke.”

  Ah-Fat sat up with an exclamation of surprise. “Mum, you may be blind but your eyes are still sharper than everyone else’s. I can see all the servants are neat and tidy and the way they speak and behave, it’s obvious they’ve been well taught.” “Your aunt takes care of all that,” said his mother. “I can’t see anything and I can’t be bothered with overseeing the servants.” “That young woman you got to hang the scrolls up, she’s prettier than all the others, and smarter too.” “Huh,” said his mother. “Leave her out of it. She’s not a servant. That’s Six Fingers, Red Hair’s wife’s little sister. All the calligraphy and the paintings in the house were done by her.”

  Ah-Fat’s eyes filled with astonishment at her words. Now he had so many questions on the tip of his tongue, he just had to find a way to ask them. Finally, he thought of a way to begin:

  “She’s quite grown-up now! Who taught her to write and paint?”

  His mum sighed. “She’s had a hard life. Writing and painting is the only thing that keeps her alive.”

  Six Fingers had come to live in Red Hair’s house along with his bride, Mrs. Kwan. She was much younger than her sister—only three when their son, Loon, was born. Before Red Hair went back to Gold Mountain for the second time, he impressed on his wife that she must get a private tutor to come and teach Loon to read and write when he was old enough. It was several years before the news of Red Hair’s death reached his wife’s ears. She was not unduly worried because, although there were no letters from him, every now and then bank drafts would arrive. It was only much later that she found out that it was Ah-Fat who had been sending them.

  When Loon was six or seven years old, his mother duly found a tutor for the boy. Six Fingers was always around and she picked up a smattering of learning too. Her elder sister had learned to read and write from her father and did not object when she saw how much effort Six Fingers was putting into her studies. The tutor was keen on calligraphy and painting and liked nothing better than to divert himself with a little painting practice. It was a quirk of his that he would do it only when he had Six Fingers in attendance—the boy was too much of a fidget. So Six Fingers was constantly being called on to light the incense, grind the ink and lay out the paper. When the tutor had finished painting, she would wash his brushes and the ink stone and bring him tea and cakes.

  One day, the tutor took his refreshments and went for a siesta. Six Fingers picked up the brush and, with the leftover ink and paper, did a quick sketch of some pine trees and bamboos, as she had seen her teacher do. When he awoke, came out of his room and saw the painting, he stood twiddling his beard thoughtfully in his fingers. Finally he sighed: “Such a pity you weren’t born in the body of a boy.” After that, if he was in the right mood, he would teach Six Fingers a thing or two about composition, about making a painting appealing and even about mounting techniques. Neither of them realized that the day would come when Six Fingers would be in dire straits, and that what she learned from this idle chit-chat would be the saving of her.

  In the spring of the year in which Six Fingers turned twelve years old dysentery plagued the village. It was only many years later that the survivors learned that its proper name was cholera, and that the cause was contamination of the waters farther upstream. The first afflicted with it in Red Hair’s family was his son, Loon. He succumbed after three days without so much as uttering a word. He gave it to Red Hair’s mother who, after getting better and then relapsing, sank into unconsciousness and died after a couple of weeks.

  Mrs. Kwan was already ill by the time her mother-in-law died. She had it mildly and could have recovered but she did not want to live any more. Six Fingers prepared rice gruel for her elder sister, but when she tried to feed it to her, Mrs. Kwan shut her mouth firmly and twisted away. “What do I have to live for? My husband and son are both dead.” (The news of Red Hair’s death had reached her by then.) “If you care for me, let me die. It’s a lot less bother than living.” Six Fingers burs
t into tears: “What about me? Don’t I mean anything to you?” Mrs. Kwan’s eyes were as dried up as well holes. She looked dully at her younger sister and did not shed a tear.

  “Dad gave you to me to rear, and at least I let you learn to read and write a bit. You might be able to use that to get along in life—depends what fate has in store for you.”

  These were her parting words to Six Fingers.

  Within one month, three of Red Hair’s family had died, and there was not a cent to bury them. Finally, the village elders took the business in hand. They mortgaged the family’s three-room house and used the money to get the rites performed, to set aside the burial plot, buy coffins and bury the bodies.

  After Mrs. Kwan died, the villagers sent word to her family that they should come and fetch Six Fingers. But there was no word from her parents and they never came to claim her. It was Mrs. Kwan’s parting words to her sister which threw the girl a lifeline.

  Old Mr. Ding, who used to write letters and do couplets on scrolls for the villagers, was too old by now to hold a brush. The villagers knew that Six Fingers could write and they felt sorry for her, so they asked her to do the work instead. They discovered that she was better at it than the old man— her calligraphy was steady and full of vigour. She also had a skill Mr. Ding did not have—she could paint. They would call her in for all sorts of jobs, from ordinary letters and New Year couplets, to calligraphy and paintings to celebrate births, deaths, weddings and old folks’ birthdays. The motifs she painted of course varied according to the occasion: for a wedding, it would be a dragon and phoenix in harmony, and a guava tree setting seed. For a funeral, it would be cranes flying west towards the setting sun. To celebrate the birthday of an elderly person, it would be celestial ladies or a lucky bird offering a longevity peach in its beak. For the one-month celebration of the birth of a son, she would illustrate a fairy story like Noh Tsa playing in the sea, or paint a unicorn bringing good luck. She adapted her calligraphy and painting to the circumstances and tastes of her customers.