by Wai Chim
Li was alive.
Finally, the shock and madness subsided, replaced by rapid-fire questions. ‘How though? When I got to the island, he was gone. He had disappeared.’
Tian scratched his head. ‘It was a shark. He was in bad shape, he said he had almost bled out but the guards from the patrol boat spotted him. It was lucky too because he had apparently passed out, so he was just bobbing there and they almost didn’t see him.’
I remembered the boat, holding my breath as I paddled past. They hadn’t even glanced in my direction, keeping their torches trained at something in the distance. One had shouted at the other and they’d sped off. Now, I wondered if it was Li they had seen in the water. What would have happened if I had looked back instead of pushing on? ‘What happened?’
Tian stubbed out the rest of his cigarette. ‘He was cut pretty bad so they had to take him to the big hospital in Tanshui to get patched up. He was there for a long while and because of the severity of his crimes, no-one was allowed to see him, not even his family.
‘Afterwards, when he was strong enough to leave the hospital, they sent him away. Labour camp, digging mud and firing bricks. All day, every day he pushed wheelbarrows of dried mud to the kiln. He was only there for two years. Still he was so skinny, so lean and brown, when he finally came back to the village, no-one recognised him.’
‘He came back to the village?’ I was stunned. I thought after all that he would have returned to the city. To be with his mother and family.
‘Yeah.’ Now, Tian looked nervous, fumbling a bit as he lit another cigarette. I was ready to leap up, seize him by shoulders but another part of me, the deep down in the pit of me filled with dread.
‘Li came back to the village for a reason.’ He was stalling, flicking ash everywhere. ‘He was ah – looking for someone. A friend.’
I was confused. ‘Who was he looking for?’
Tian took a long drag, sucking all the courage out of that little burning stick. ‘Fei. He was looking for Fei.’
I staggered and sunk into the chair. The name was too familiar and the memories were gushing through me, like the flood from a monsoon. I hadn’t thought about her in a while, likely years, but now the sound of her voice, the touch of her skin, the smell of her crashed over me one after the other.
There was a long silence. ‘She went back to the village?’ I asked.
Tian nodded. ‘Not long after you left, Aunt Shu married a man from another village and took the boys with her. I guessed that was why she was so desperate to see Fei go.’ He stubbed out the cigarette, only half smoked this time, and lit another.
‘What about her husband?’
‘He was – well, I don’t know, this is what some of the villagers said about him – he wasn’t all, right.’ Tian knitted his brow, racking his brain for what to say next. ‘They never had children. There were rumours that maybe he didn’t prefer her type.’ And in typical Tian fashion, he mimed his intent, crooked hands in front of his chest.
I choked on the air. Tian laughed awkwardly then grew sombre again.
‘It was a while before she came back. She and Li were writing to each other when he was at the labour camp.’ He sighed. ‘Mostly, I think it was because they missed you. I just can’t believe you’re here, why didn’t you write to us?’
I was quiet again, at a loss for words. Li was alive, Fei was back in Long-chi, nothing had changed. ‘Hongbing.’ I remembered suddenly. ‘And the other boys?’
Tian shook his head. ‘The Commander was promoted and allowed to return to the city. That creepy brownnoser, Feng, married a girl from another village and moved there. The rest of them, Kamshui, Ah-Jun, they’re still there. So is Wang. But Cho, he made the swim last. He’s just in Sham Shui Po. And when I heard he made it, I figured, why not?’ Tian pressed his lips into a grim line. He let out a heavy sigh. ‘Ming, Ming. It’s such a pity. I just wish you had let us know you made it. Everyone’s going to be so surprised you’re here.’
I stood and wandered over to the tiny barred window. We were in Tian’s apartment; he lived with two other Big Circle Boys. It was bigger than my cramped room, and they didn’t even have to share a kitchen; the life of a thug afforded some luxuries. The lights outside glared too brightly, the shape of them burning into my eyes. There were angry shouts and cussing from several stories below. This was the city Li and I had reached for. What would it have been like if he’d made it to shore? Would we still be friends? Living together, trying to make our fortune in the factories, another faceless Chinese worker in the congested chaos?
I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the little house that
Ma and Ba had built. I tried to picture them in the hut, Ma preparing the family meal. But instead, all I could see was Li, his beautiful face twisted in frustration as he blew on the embers, coaxing them to its full dragon’s breath. He broke into a smile when they finally caught alight and somewhere I could hear a baby’s laughter and a woman’s voice calling his name.
‘Ming, are you okay?’ Tian’s voice was full of worry.
Finally, I could speak. ‘It’s okay. Let it stay that way.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I mean, don’t say anything. To Li or Fei or anyone back home.’ I turned to face him, and used the most serious voice I could manage. ‘Just let them keep thinking I was lost at sea. That I never made it. Not a peep that you saw me, not to anyone. Not even Cho. Promise me, you won’t tell.’ My voice cracked then, betraying me a little, but I shook my head. ‘Promise me, Tian.’
Tian nodded. And he stood and reached for me, always the big brother.
Tian took me out for noodles. We shared a cheap bowl of broth and he told me about the gangster life while I recounted my time in the factory and showed him my shortened finger. Soon, we were back to joking and laughing together but a certain heaviness remained in the air. We weren’t children anymore.
‘So you never told me, what’s with the pouch?’ he asked, lighting up another cigarette.
I blushed, remembering our earlier encounter. ‘Is it really obvious?’
‘Well, we didn’t think you were pregnant.’ My face went redder and Tian guffawed. Even after all this time, we had slipped right back to being brothers. The bottle of baijiu Tian had ordered was certainly helping.
‘I … I’m saving money.’ I stammered. In Hong Kong, it felt like everyone had secrets but also that no-one cared. But my humble village roots meant I was paranoid that my intentions would be misconstrued.
‘What for?’
‘I want to move abroad. I want to move to America.’
Tian leaned forward, squinting his eyes. ‘Are you drunk? How would the likes of you get a pass to America?’
I shook my head. ‘I heard there was a way; someone at the factory went. He found an immigration lawyer in the Walled City that could help him go to America.’
Tian raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
I figured Tian had dismissed my admission as drunken talk, so I was surprised when he came to me a few days later.
‘You were right, Ming.’ His eyes were wide and shining, a playful smirk on his lips.
‘Right about what?’
‘Going to America.’ He threw his arms up. ‘I asked my dai lo, and he says that he heard about someone else who did it. He just needed a passport, to answer a few questions, then paid a lawyer some money and before you knew it, he was gone. In fact, I know where to find the lawyer.’
My heart skipped. I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘Do you – do you think you can introduce me?’
His name was Mr Gee. Instead of the upper-class, British-sounding lawyers in those long white wigs in the Hong Kong movies, Mr Gee was a bit rough around the edges. His hair was slicked back and the tattoos showed under his collar, a gangster in an ill-fitting suit. He worked for all the gangs in Hong Kong – 14K, Wo Shing Wo and Tian’s band of Big Circle Boys. Anyone with two cents to rub together was an immediate friend and dear client.
‘So you left Mainland four years ago? Freedom swimming?’ Mr Gee was sitting at a beat-up old desk in in a cramped office, though it wasn’t so much an office as much as a crumbling shed with tacky faux-leather furniture jammed into every corner.
‘Y – yeah.’ I’d handed over a heap of grubby paperwork, nervously chewing on my lip, certain I’d filled the pages out incorrectly. The questions had been insanely complicated, using phrases and language I had never come across before – ‘current status not withstanding’, ‘including any and all relations, past and present’. If this was how city boys learned their letters, it was no wonder that Li had always sounded so eloquent.
‘Hmmm.’ Mr Gee ran his tongue along his top row of teeth, showing off the gold cap that glittered up front. ‘The good news is that with all the ruckus that has been happening with Mao and the Communist Party in China, the US government is now allowing more political refugees into the country from Hong Kong.’
This was news to me – that even without any relations in America to help me and support my application, I could claim my status as a refugee.
I hadn’t considered that term before. I had accepted the term ‘new immigrant’ and what that meant in the Hong Kong social hierarchy. But refugee was new. Mr Gee began asking me about my political ideas and lifestyle, how I had felt living under Communist rule.
Even after all my time in Hong Kong, living in a ‘free society’, I found myself struggling with my responses.
‘What do you think of the Communist Party and Mao Zedong?’ Mr Gee asked me.
‘They are the ruling Party of the People and Mao is the Chairman and benevolent leader,’ I said straightaway.
Mr Gee shook his head. ‘But do you think they are fair? That what they do is right?’
‘I – I don’t know.’ I had never once been asked this. None of the new immigrants or the Hong Kongese had ever asked me about the Party or this notion of fair. As new immigrants, we all had our reasons for leaving and the only thing that mattered was that we had survived.
Tian saw me struggling. ‘Big boss, what about the freedom swimming? Ming’s a criminal now in the eyes of the Communist Party. It doesn’t matter what he thinks about their leadership, he’d be arrested and tortured if he went back.’
I winced, trying not to think of what Li would have gone through when he’d been caught.
Mr Gee mulled this over. ‘A boy who can’t return to his country. Do you have family back home?’
I shook my head. ‘They … they died a while back.’ Almost twelve years.
The lawyer clicked his tongue, scribbling furiously. ‘So it is.’
So I completed my application to enter America as a refugee. Even then, there was no guarantee. Preference was given to people who were trying to reunite with their families in the US and those with recognised professional skills – like doctors and lawyers. Refugees were at the bottom of the pile; we were the undesirables.
But I had hope.
And after nine months, it turned out hope was on my side.
The ship was enormous, a proper ocean liner that could have transported the entire population of Long-chi and more. I’d seen these ships traversing the harbour, looming over the tiny little fishing boats and junks but, until recently, I had never thought I would be boarding one, setting off to a distant foreign land.
That I would be leaving Hong Kong.
I reached into my jacket pocket again, feeling for the crisp sharp edge of my ticket and crease of my approval papers. ‘Valid for one time entry.’ I’d traced the lines of those English letters over and over, until my fingers could draw them from memory.
‘Relax. Anything you forgot, I’ll look after for you.’ Tian gave me a wink. ‘Girlfriends too.’
I had begged Tian to come with me but he had refused, in typical Tian fashion. ‘I’ve got my eyes on a girl. Or certain parts of her, anyway.’
Said girl was hanging on to Tian’s other arm and was now playfully punching him for his lewd remark.
‘Hey, remember to write this time,’ Tian chided. ‘I don’t need to think you drowned again.’
‘Yeah, you going to learn how to read it?’
‘You wish.’ He laughed and pulled me into a quick hug.
‘Be careful, Little Brother. Take care,’ Tian said. His eyes were rimmed with tears. I felt a sob building up.
Tian, my first protector. My oldest friend. After all that we had shared, what could I say to him now?
I smiled and said the most inappropriate thing I could think of. ‘Sik si laa.’
Tian cracked up, taken aback by my brashness. ‘Well, you’re no longer the shy boy in the dorms.’ He hugged me again, this time long and hard, both of us holding on to each other because we couldn’t bear to let go. We were true brothers, the ones who came together by choice, not by birth. And for us, the orphans, the fan ge ming undesirables, we were more family than we could ever have asked for.
And then finally I was on my way.
I joined the rest of the passengers out on the deck, waving goodbye to their loved ones gathered on the pier. I watched the sea of faces. Each one wore the same mark of loss and fear underneath the stiff polite mask of well-wishing and glee.
The blow of the horn shattered our attention, calling us away from the port and our assembled memories as we were pulled out to sea. I stayed on deck, gazing out over the churning of the waters.
I shut my eyes and imagined that instead of being up above, I was down below, naked and kicking. I could hear Li’s strokes beside me as we swam, our bodies moving swiftly, our hearts pushing us forwards. I could feel the water all around us, soothing the fire that burned within as it brushed against our skin.
I opened my eyes and I was still swimming. There were no lights this time to guide me, no beacon reaching out to me as I yearned for the promise of freedom. There was nothing but a vast expanse of ocean, brimming with potential.
And so I swam.
Epilogue
Guangzhou, Guangdong
LI — Spring 1977
The Cultural Revolution was officially over. Mao Zedong had died in September of the previous year and, with his death, some of his longstanding policies were let go. Schools had been reopened so Pearl was able to continue her studies. My brother Tze was due to marry a peasant girl from a nearby village.
And I was finally allowed to return home to Guangzhou with my young family.
It was New Year and we were gathered in my mother’s little apartment for the holidays. Ma looked so much older, her skin crinkled and ashen, and she walked with a stoop. ‘Aiyo, little Ming watch out.’ Fei rushed to right the vase that had almost tipped over. Our son, Ming, remained oblivious, blowing spit bubbles and gurgling as he crawled around the room until his aunt Pearl scooped him up and gave him a big wet kiss.
Dinner was a feast for the eyes and the soul; dishes upon dishes of the finest meats and seafood from across the province. With the end of the Cultural Revolution, we could enjoy such luxuries again and no expense was spared. The smells mingled together over the tiny cramped table. We slurped and dug at delicious crab, enjoying each other’s company. It was the first time our family had come together since I had been sent to Dingzai. And it was the first time we had done so without my father.
After dinner, my mother handed me a thin envelope. ‘I have a bit of mail for you and Fei. It’s postmarked from overseas. From America. And registered too! What an expensive piece of mail.’ I cocked an eyebrow, curious. The only person I knew from outside of the Mainland was Tian in Hong Kong, and we only kept in touch via the rare postcard since he couldn’t read or write.
Pearl peered over my shoulder and made a grab for the envelope. ‘Wah! Look at all those stamps!’
But I kept it away. ‘Wah, Pearl,’ I teased. ‘Your future husband will be appalled at your childish antics.’
She stuck out her tongue and went to help Ma in the kitchen.
Fei bounced Ming on her hip and gazed up at me. ‘Wow, wh
o do you know from America, Li?’ Her eyes were wide and wondering.
‘Who do we know?’ I traced the letters of both our names across the front of the envelope, trying to discover the secrets of their author.
And as I slid my fingers under the flap, the baby cooed.
Author’s Note
From the 1950s until 1974, thousands of Chinese youths braved shark-infested waters, not to mention severe punishment if they were captured, to make the gruelling swim to the then British colony of Hong Kong. They were risking life and limb to escape famine, poverty and political persecution in the hopes of having a better life and greater opportunity. Collectively they were known in the media as Freedom Swimmers.
One of them was my father.
Freedom Swimmer is largely inspired by my father’s story. Growing up, I knew very little about how he had come to America. Aside from telling us that he had lost both of his parents and an older sister before he turned sixteen, my father was generally quiet about his past.
Writing this book gave me the chance to not only learn about my father’s story, but to understand more about this very significant and tumultuous time in Chinese history. I learned that he had survived not one but two famines that claimed so many lives – including his family. The experience has left me eternally grateful and amazingly humbled by the incredible lengths he and the other Freedom Swimmers went through to find a better life.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I have to thank my father, Kam Shui Chim, who was willing relive the details and spend tireless hours helping me over the phone out of fatherly love and devotion. And as much as this book is about my father, it would not have been remotely possible without my mother, Yuk Kiu Chim, who gave me the courage to write it and always offers her undying support for everything I do.
My eternal love and gratitude goes to Phil Towers, my rock, my anchor, my keel, who kept me steady throughout the process and for reading the work through all of its renditions and re-drafts.
