by Li, Veronica
My thoughts turned to my own family. One of Brother Kin’s letters mentioned that Uncle Ben had opened a branch office in Hong Kong. My brother had notified me because I was a company shareholder. The pieces of paper in my dowry suddenly became more valuable than the gold and diamonds. I dashed off a letter to Uncle Ben, asking if he needed help in his new office in Hong Kong. Hok-Ching had little experience in business, but the head on his square shoulders was sound, and he was eager to learn. I jokingly added that given the fact that his wife was co-owner of the company, he would do his best to make the enterprise a success.
While waiting for Uncle’s reply, I could do nothing but dream of Hong Kong. In Nanking I was a fish in a gilded bathtub. In Hong Kong I would be a fish returned to the ocean. I would be swimming with my schoolmates, many of whom had become established professionals in the two years since the war ended. The colony’s best and brightest—doctors, lawyers, teachers, civil servants—were people I could call on any time.
My reason for staying away had also vanished. Yolanda, the thorn in my side, had lost her spike. She’d married her fiancé and given birth to a daughter. When we got together again, we would be interacting as two couples. A table with four legs was more stable than one with three.
Uncle Ben’s reply arrived shortly. He was looking for a cashier for his Hong Kong office. The position couldn’t be more ideal. For Hok-Ching, it would be a good entry point into the business world; for Uncle, one potential drain on the company’s income would be plugged. A family member could be trusted to keep his hands out of the till.
For the fourth time in two years, I was starting over in a new home. Although my expertise in packing had attained its highest degree, this move was more challenging than any other. Agnes was a year-and-a-half old, and Patrick was four months. On the train ride down, Hok-Ching and I would be running in circles around the two. As theft was common, I decided to leave the crown piece of my dowry, the diamond necklace, in Baba’s vault. The rest of my jewelry was squirreled away among the diapers, which, hopefully, no thief would want to touch.
Sometimes I wished I had a donkey. I could load everything on the animal and set off at a moment’s notice.
TAPE EIGHT
LIVING IN A PRISON
1
In postwar Hong Kong, finding a vacant apartment was as rare as striking gold. Reconstruction had been going on at full steam, but no amount of effort could have kept pace with the population growth. Thousands of refugees crossed the border every day—former Hong Kong residents who had fled the Japanese were coming home, and others who had always lived on the mainland were fleeing the communists. Every landlord in Hong Kong, no matter how small his property, was sitting on a gold mine.
Through Sam-Koo’s connections I located a sunny two-bedroom in HappyValley. The rent was on the high side for Hok-Ching’s salary, and the $8,000 deposit the landlord demanded was plain banditry. But desperate for a home, we signed the lease anyway. I had to sell some of my dowry to raise the cash. Sam-Koo came to live with us, and she brought along an amah called Number Five. This woman was a twenty-two-year-old fresh from her village in Kwangtung. Like thousands of her rural sisters, she’d come to Hong Kong to fill the vacuum left by the abolition of mui tsai slavery. This army of domestics all wore the same uniform of white pajama top and black bottom, and they all braided back their hair into single strands. But the most important thing that bound them was their vow of celibacy. Serving their employers was their only goal in life, and the families they worked for were their families.
With such good help, I soon turned the flat into a cozy home. Compared with the mansion in Nanking, it was as shriveled as a cube of dried tofu. But this tofu was mine, and I could do anything I pleased with it. Having been dependent on my in-laws these last years, I’d forgotten the simple joys of being the mistress of my own home. I could set my own menus, select my own furniture, and best of all, determine who the inhabitants were.
Aside from Sam-Koo, I also took in my childhood friend, Yung-Jen. The wealth of her baker father had vanished during the war. She and her mother had fled to Vietnam to stay with relatives. In Saigon, Yung-Jen ran into a different kind of war—the war for independence. A shell fell on her house, and shrapnel tore into her arm. The limb had to be amputated, leaving a stump that was still pink and raw like the meat in a butcher shop. Since her return to Hong Kong, her half brothers had been passing her from one home to another. Nobody wanted to take care of a cripple. When Yung-Jen wept on my shoulder, I held her only hand and said, "My home is your home. As long as I have a roof over my head, you don’t have to fear the beating of the wind and rain."
Some people might think that I shouldn’t have taken extra people into my small apartment. I would tell them this: where there’s harmony, there’s always room.
Sam-Koo and Yung-Jen were my loyal friends. We could bump into each other without feeling hurt, breathe the same air without feeling stifled. Furthermore, we had no cause to hide from each other, leaving the room when the other entered or going opposite ways in the corridor. After living with my in-laws, I’d learned that it wasn’t the size of the home that mattered, but the people who lived in it.
In this congenial atmosphere, even Hok-Ching seemed happy. He had no complaints against the people in the office, and the people in the office had no complaints against him. Word got back to me that the manager was most satisfied with his new cashier. At last, Hok-Ching had found a job that was perfect for his cautious character. He never let the cash box out of his sight, and every cent that went in and out was recorded, checked, and rechecked. At the end of the day, the debit and credit columns always tallied.
I could only hope that this situation would last, but three months into his new job, Hok-Ching’s career was interrupted again. This time, it was for good reason. Brother Kin was getting married. Enclosed with the invitation was a fat check for our plane fare.
I was overjoyed. Almost three years had flown by since my reunion with my mother and brothers. Without Brother Kin’s generosity, many more would have passed before I could have saved up enough for the next trip. I was also overjoyed for my brother. He’d put off marriage till his late thirties so that he could put all his energy into making money. More than anything in the world, he wanted Mother to live in style. Now that she had everything she ever wanted—a large house with a huge backyard for her dogs, rabbits, ducks, and whatever creature she fancied—his time to take on additional responsibilities had come. His bride was a Thai-born Chinese, also of Swatow ancestry and many years his junior.
*
On the day of the wedding, the center of attention wasn’t the bride and groom. It was my son, Patrick. At nine months old, he was a devil with two little front teeth sticking out of his gums. Active and packed with calcium, he was all boy. Up till then, there had been only girls in the latest generation: I had Agnes, and cousin Nancy had three girls in succession. Patrick was the first boy in the clan, and everyone was ecstatic over his masculine antics. My relatives gathered around just to watch him crawl, which was quite a sight. He could scuttle on all fours faster than I could run, and when one of my cousins placed a chair in his path, he bulldozed it away.
After the crawling circus was over, Sam-Koo carried Patrick into the bridal chamber to look at the decorations. The wedding bed was draped in brocade and covered in a red satin sheet. Placed on it were bowls of fruits and seeds, symbols of fertility. Tired of holding the fidgety baby, Sam-Koo put him on the bed. Right then and there, Patrick peed. A stream of urine leaked onto the mattress. "A good omen!" Sam-Koo cried. "With boy urine on the bed, the newlyweds are going to have a son!" Seeing the delight on the grown-ups’ faces, Nancy’s little girls thought the bed was their playground too. They scrambled on it, jumping and squealing in their shrill female voices. "We don’t want girls," Sam-Koo shouted, and shooed them away.
Toward the end of the day, we all lined up on the lawn for family photos. The women stood in the front row, the men in the bac
k, and the children sat on the lawn. I held Patrick in my arms. While everyone’s eyes were on the camera, Patrick wriggled and reached backward, pulling the nose of our patriarch. Uncle Ben burst out in laughter, clearly pleased to have such indignity performed by the precious boy.
Already my mother was crying. "What am I going to do when my grandson leaves? He’s my only grandson. He should be staying by my side during the day and lying in my bed at night. Have mercy on me, Buddha! Grant me my wish. Let me sleep with my grandson until he grows up." She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and glanced at me.
As the month wore on, Mother was pestering me more and more about staying. I only smiled and said, "We’ll see." But inside, I’d already made up my mind. Even Mother’s dreams and her sighting of omens couldn’t persuade me. A month’s vacation was all Hok-Ching could get, and he was getting it because the company belonged to Uncle Ben. At the end of the month, I would fly home with my husband. The mistake I’d made years ago—leaving him to the lures of Yolanda and her kind—would never be repeated.
Several days before our scheduled departure, a telegram from China arrived. It was addressed to Hok-Ching. Everyone staying at Brother Kin’s house got excited, for urgent news usually meant bad news. We all stood around Hok-Ching as he read it. His face paled. I was sure one of my in-laws had died.
"Baba has resigned as finance minister. He has moved to Canton with Ah Ma, Ah Yi, and Hok-Jit’s baby. They’re now staying at a relative’s home."
I was stunned. Chiang Kai-Shek had given Baba the all-important post of finance minister a year earlier. By doing so, Chiang had invested the nation’s hopes in Baba’s ability to stabilize the economy. If hyperinflation were to continue, the communists could win the war without firing another bullet. Baba’s resignation didn’t bode well for the country. He was a man who loved his prestige more than life. For him to resign, things must have gone very wrong.
Brother Kin was the first to find his tongue. "The news coming out of China is dreadful," he said. "First the Nationalists lost the northeast, and now they’re fighting communist troops just outside Nanking. When Nanking falls, the rest of the country will follow." Turning to me, he added, "You can’t go back to Hong Kong. It may belong to the British today, but the communists can take it back just by saying so. If you go back now, you’ll be running again in a few months."
My head was spinning with questions. Where are the Americans? How can they stand by while the communists gobble up China? If they can defeat Germany and Japan, why can’t they get rid of a bunch of hoodlums?
"We can’t just leave our apartment in Hong Kong," Hok-Ching said. "We’ve deposited a large sum for a one-year lease."
Brother Kin’s eyes flashed as they always did when he thought of a bright idea. "How about this? Tell your father to travel down to Hong Kong. He can stay in your apartment while waiting to see what happens next. In the meantime, you and the children will be safe here. You can stay as long as you want."
I put a hand on the wall to steady myself. The whir of a distant engine hummed in my mind. I could again see a pellet dropping from the tail of a Japanese plane and the island exploding in flames. It seemed that the invasion of Hong Kong was happening again. I stood by helplessly, watching my life swerve into an unplanned course.
"Let’s do this," Hok-Ching said. "Flora will stay here with the children. I’ll go to Canton to pick up my parents and settle them in our apartment."
A charge of energy surged through me. I was once again young and fearless, trekking on my own in interior China.
"I’ll go with you," I said to my husband. "I can clear out our belongings to make room for your parents. There are matters about the home that you don’t know."
"But you have to stay and take care of the children!" he said.
I looked at the two sitting on the floor. Patrick was scooting along with his little toy car, while Agnes was struggling to button up her doll. My heart felt a pang. How could I make them understand that I would be leaving them for only a few weeks and not forever? I knew they would be crying for me every day I was gone.
My disappointment was as great as when Ngai told me I couldn’t travel to Chungking with him. But while I could defy him and find my own way then, my hands and feet were tied now. My motherly duties were my shackles. The world was turning upside down again, and all I could do was stay home with my children.
"Whatever you say is fine with me," I muttered.
Mother clapped her hands. She plunked herself on the floor next to Patrick and hugged him tightly. "Thank you, Buddha, for answering my prayer. Now I can sleep with my grandson every night."
*
Before Hok-Ching left, I made him promise to come back as soon as his duties were done. My chief concern about his traveling alone to Hong Kong, which I was sure he understood without my saying so, was Yolanda. In our recent get-togethers, I’d noticed that her behavior hadn’t changed with her marital status. Even in front of her husband and me, she could look deeply into Hok-Ching’s eyes and call him "my dear brother Hok-Ching." I couldn’t imagine what she was capable of doing when I wasn’t around.
My husband was gone for six weeks. During this time, the face of China changed completely. The Nationalists continued to suffer defeat in battle, but more distressing to them was that major Chinese cities were surrendering to the communists without a fight. When the hearts of the people had gone over to the other side, there was little hope left. On January 21, 1949, when Patrick was celebrating his first birthday, Chiang Kai-Shek resigned as president of the Nationalist government.
Several days later, Brother Kin’s chauffeur drove me to the airport to pick up Hok-Ching. As he walked out of the gate, his shirt and pants flapping loosely, I could see that he’d lost weight. His face was long and tight. When he saw me, his lips relaxed in a wistful smile. He walked over and put his hand on my shoulder. I could feel that it was slightly trembling.
"I’ve moved everyone safely into our apartment," he said as soon as we got into the car. "They’re in good health, but they’ve lost everything. Baba managed to take out some of his savings, but his books, paintings, and antiques, and most of all his writings, are gone."
"What a pity," I said with heartfelt sympathy. "What is he going to do now?"
"He’s talking about starting a publishing business in Hong Kong."
"So he thinks there’s no hope for the Nationalists?"
"The game is over," Hok-Ching said, shaking his head.
My heart felt a pinch. Although the outcome of this chess game had been clear for some days, I was still hoping that the Americans could reverse the situation.
"At this point, all Baba wants is a quiet life of reading, writing, and publishing. He’s through with government, any government."
"I thought government was his life. He wanted so much for his name to be recorded in the annals of history." I wasn’t being sarcastic, but merely repeating what Hok-Ching had once told me.
Hok-Ching gave a bitter chuckle. "That depends on who’s writing the history. If it were up to certain people in the Kuomintang, Baba’s name would stink for ten thousand years. They’re blaming him for the gold yuan fiasco. They’re even blaming him for losing the country to the communists. How ridiculous!"
"What went wrong with the gold yuan?" I asked. The "gold yuan reform" was implemented after I’d left Nanking. The papers had reported on it, but nobody seemed to have a clear idea about how it was supposed to bring down inflation.
"The principle was flawed to begin with. The reform was Chiang Ching-Kuo’s brainchild, and you know what Baba thinks of his intelligence." Hok-Ching smirked. Baba had been open about his opinion of the president’s son, Ching-Kuo. He loved to boast about how once, when Little Chiang came visiting, he’d walked out in his underwear to receive his guest.
Hok-Ching went on about the reform: "The idea was to make the public sell their gold and foreign currency to the government. In exchange, they received the new gold yuan. Somehow, Little Chiang
thought the new currency would stop inflation. But prices kept going up, and people who bought the gold yuan lost their life’s savings. Little Chiang pushed Baba to the front to take the heat. Baba wasn’t even home at the time. He was in Washington, D.C., chairing the annual meeting of the IMF."
There might be truth in what my husband just said, but from what I’d heard, Baba wasn’t completely innocent either.
"Wasn’t there a leak from the ministry? Somebody who knew about the reform before it was announced made a huge killing in the stock market. Did Baba ever get to the bottom of it?"
Hok-Ching let out an angry huff. "Let’s not talk about it," he said, yet went on: "Baba immediately launched an investigation. The speculator was arrested. Under interrogation, he gave away the source of his information. It was Baba’s secretary!"
"That man by the name of Cho! I knew he was a bad egg! He was always pretending to go to the office when he was really going to the mahjong parlor. And Baba believed him. Your father can be so blind!"
Hok-Ching was silent, his face turned toward the window. I looked out the other way, stunned to hear myself criticize my venerated father-in-law. Yet in my head I couldn’t stop saying everything I’d always wanted to say. Baba was a megalomaniac. People who flattered him could do no wrong, while those who challenged him could do no right. This had been his attitude in both public and private life. His favoritism had created bitter rivalry among his children, setting brother against brother even when they were born of the same mother. I used to think that the women were responsible for the squabbles. After living with him, I’d discovered that Baba was the real culprit.
A long time passed. Hok-Ching was clearly offended at my remark about his father. I, too, felt guilty. Baba could be as faulty as I thought he was, but this was no time to criticize him. Only a heartless person could flog a drowning dog.
"How’s Yung-Jen?" I said, changing the subject.
