Journey across the Four Seas: A Chinese Woman's Search for Home

by Li, Veronica

  While his wife served us tea and cakes, we chatted about U.S. immigration policies. There were quotas for each country, Chung told me, and the allocation for Hong Kong was higher than ever before. Chung’s own application had been a breeze. All he needed to show was that he had an American sponsor—a sister in his case—good health, and no criminal record.

  Before we parted, I wished him luck in his gold-digging expedition in America. He cast his eyes down at his shoes and shifted his weight from one leg to another. "It’s too late for me to be gold digging," he said. "I’m emigrating for the children. My wife and I are very comfortable in Hong Kong, but the children are getting to college age. You know how hard it is to get them into university here. We can’t afford to send them overseas either, so the only way is to all go together."

  "I know exactly what you mean," I said with feeling. "My children’s future keeps me up at night too."

  Inside the elevator, the phrase "all go together" whined in my ears like a persistent mosquito. While sitting on the bus, I reviewed the events of the day. It had started with my going to the special mass to ask Saint Teresa to show me the way, and ended with the chance meeting with Chung and his parting words, "The only way is to all go together." Was that Saint Teresa speaking through Chung’s mouth?

  My eyes fell on Chris’s hand resting quietly on her knee. Wrapped in my own thoughts, I’d forgotten about her. She’d been such a good girl, contented to eat the cake that was offered her and sitting patiently through the grown-up conversation. Being a precocious child, she must have understood more than she let on. I took her hand and leaned down toward her.

  "How would you like to live in America?" I said.

  "Can I have a pet?" Her round, dark eyes sparkled up at me.

  "Of course you can have a pet. In America, everyone has a pet."

  Chris raised her eyebrows, half smiling and half testing, and said, "Let’s go then."

  The moment I got home, I went looking for my husband. He was sitting in the bedroom, every muscle relaxed and an after-tennis glow on his face. His thinning hair was wet and smelling of shampoo. Nothing soothed him more than an afternoon of tennis with Patrick. I closed the door and poured out everything that Chung had told me.

  "Chung is right," I said. "To pay for expenses in U.S. dollars we have to earn in U.S. dollars. That’s how we can educate all our children."

  "It’s not that simple," Hok-Ching muttered.

  Ignoring his remark, I went on. "Patrick is my biggest headache. Unless a miracle happens, he can’t get into Hong KongUniversity. He can while away his time in a third- or fourth-rate college, but his diploma won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on."

  Hok-Ching shrugged, as if he didn’t care. "I can’t understand you," I said. "You’re up all night worrying about something as small as a sesame seed, but when it comes to the future of your children, you think it’s trivia."

  "Why should I worry about Patrick? He creams everyone at tennis. A person who can do that can’t be stupid."

  "Is he going to earn a living by playing tennis?" I retorted.

  "If he gets good enough, he can make millions." Hok-Ching broke into a grin.

  "Be serious. You know Patrick has no future unless he goes overseas. In our current situation, this is impossible. We have to face reality. We’ve both reached a dead end in our incomes. Brother Kin can help us with my household expenses, but I can’t ask him to pay for our children’s education too."

  Hok-Ching winced at the poke into his sore spot. Before, he would be barking at me, but nowadays I had him by the tail. He was the one who’d put us in this predicament, and he knew it.

  "What kind of job would I find?" Hok-Ching said. "I’m not a young man anymore. Most people go to America in their twenties. By the time our application goes through, I’ll be fifty, and you’ll be forty-nine."

  It was my turn to wince. I’d been dyeing my hair for a few years now, but nobody other than my hairdresser needed to know. My skin was still fair and unblemished, which could fool people into thinking I was at least ten years younger.

  "There’s plenty of money to be made in the GoldMountain," I answered boldly. "People say that American college students can earn their tuition by cutting their classmates’ hair. Labor is expensive over there. Even street cleaners are paid more than I. That’s how everyone in America gets to own a house and car."

  "Not everyone makes it. Some have returned because life in America is too hard."

  "That’s only a minority of the minority. Listen to me. I have a ten-year plan. During this period, the two of us will unite our hearts and combine our strengths to achieve the same goal. We’ll bury ourselves in work. We’ll spend on ourselves only what is needed to keep us alive. We’ll think of nothing but putting our children through college and graduate school. Ten years is my estimate. The moment their education is completed, our mission will be accomplished, and we can come back to retire. Frankly speaking, I don’t look forward to doing housework. But for the sake of the children’s future, I’m willing to sacrifice everything."

  He heaved a sigh of surrender. My husband would never do me any favors, especially if they involved risk-taking. For his children, however, he always dug deep into his well of courage. This husband of mine is different from every other husband. The most mundane activities, such as sleeping and getting up to go to work, were as strenuous as going to battle against an army. He marched out of his fortress every day only because the children’s livelihood depended on it.

  "Which brother will you ask to be our sponsor?" I said. Baba’s patriotic fervor notwithstanding, he’d sent most of his children to America. There were altogether five U.S. citizens in the family, but Hok-Ching was on speaking terms with only the two brothers born of the same mother as he.

  "I guess we can ask Hok-Jit," he said.

  His suggestion made sense. Hok-Jit and Wai-Jing had been my friends. We’d played together in Chungking, and recently they’d been taking Agnes into their home during holidays. For once, my husband and I saw eye to eye.

  My wait had come to an end. The bus I wanted had arrived. It was traveling at full speed, but it must also stop at all the stations en route. I told myself to be patient; I would get to my destination in the fullness of time. Hok-Ching wrote to his brother in California to express his wish to emigrate to America. Hok-Jit agreed to sponsor us. He submitted a petition on our behalf. On our end, we filled out a volume of paperwork. Two months later, the embassy sent us instructions on where to go for physical checkups.

  So far the bus ride had been as smooth as Chung had described. The physicals were the last roadblock. Barring any surprises, our visas should be issued shortly after. My bout with TB was a long time ago, and I’d shown no symptoms for more than two decades. Surely the Americans couldn’t be strict beyond reason.

  The six of us trooped into the doctor’s office. We had our vitals checked, our blood drawn, and our chests X-rayed. Then we were told to go home and wait.

  We waited and waited. I went to the embassy several times, only to have a different staff member give me the same stone-faced reply, "Your application is being processed. Go home and wait for your turn." Days merged into weeks and weeks into months. The envelope bearing the logo of the American eagle failed to show up. I began to imagine the worst. Did the doctor find something in my lungs? Did one of us have a terrible disease we didn’t know of? Had someone at the embassy mislaid our papers?

  I tried to go about my daily life as usual. The last thing I wanted was for the principal to replace me before I had someplace to go. None of my colleagues could be trusted except one. Her name was also Teresa; she was also Catholic, and also a graduate of Hong KongUniversity. Although she was young enough to be my daughter, our common traits sparked a spontaneous friendship between us. She alone knew the reason for my time off on the day of the physical.

  One afternoon when only the two of us were in the teachers’ workroom, I updated her on my immigration saga. My young friend
had a way of stopping everything she was doing to give another person her full attention. As I started to speak, she put down her pen and shifted her body to face me. The thoughtful eyes on the angular face were wise beyond their years.

  "That’s most unusual," she said after I finished. "A year after your physical and you still haven’t gotten your visa. If there is a problem, the embassy should at least notify you."

  "I don’t even know whom to talk to at the embassy. The Chinese clerks at the front desk have their noses turned toward heaven. Just because they work for the U.S. government, they think they’re a class above everyone else. They won’t answer my questions, nor will they let me talk to the consul. Some people say I should give one of them a red lai si envelope. But it’s rather awkward, and I don’t know how much money to put in it." With a frustrated shrug, I stuffed a pile of student essays into my bag.

  "I know somebody who may be able to help you," my friend said. "It’s the American priest for whom I do secretarial work on Saturdays. He’s in Macao right now, helping to settle a new group of refugees from the mainland. I’ll talk to him when he gets back. He knows a lot of people at the embassy."

  That he did. It was all hush-hush, but everyone knew about these missionaries who shuttled around doing charity among refugees from communist China. CIA agents were what they really were. Teresa was kind to offer to recruit his help, but I couldn’t see why he would want to get involved with my problems. He would most likely promise to look into it, just to be polite, and then let the matter die.

  I’d forgotten about this priest when Teresa pulled me aside at a class break. The story she told was amazing. Upon hearing about my case, the priest went to the embassy and rummaged through the stack of pending files. He found mine buried at the very bottom. The priest pulled it out and put it on top. "This family has been cleared a year ago. Why haven’t they received their visas yet?" he asked the officers present. One of them replied, "Oh, their records must have been lost in the pile."

  Teresa and I laughed. What a blatant lie! The real reason was because I didn’t pay a bribe. Those who paid were put on top and those who didn’t were stuck at the bottom.

  A week after the priest’s intervention, the long-awaited letter arrived. Too much time had lapsed since our last physicals, the letter said; we had to have them done over again. We filed into the doctor’s office once more, and in no time at all we got our visas. I immediately sent Joe to my hairdresser to learn the basics of barbering. One never knows: he could very well earn his tuition by cutting his classmates’ hair.

  *

  A few weeks before my departure, while I was preparing for my next class in the teachers’ room, the sky turned black as night. White clumps the size of pingpong balls flew across the window. A chain of loud thuds resounded. It was as if an angry mob were pelting the building with rocks. The fury of the noise was frightening. I’d heard of hailstorms, but never had I seen one in all my years in Hong Kong. I gazed at the sky to read its meaning, and everywhere I saw disaster befalling my birthplace.

  Indeed, a month after I came to America, riots broke out in Hong Kong. Caught in the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution, leftists in Hong Kong agitated for the return of the British colony to China. Bombs exploded in public places and policemen were ambushed and hacked to pieces with cargo hooks. Stock market and real estate prices plummeted. People couldn’t leave fast enough for the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

  I can’t say that I possess the power to foresee the future. If I did I wouldn’t have made the mistake of moving to Taiwan. But sometimes a mother can smell danger in the air long before it appears. While watching the hailstorm that afternoon, I was convinced that my children had no future in Hong Kong. The colony was a piece of rental property. Whenever the landlord wanted it back, all he had to do was serve the tenant a month’s notice. I shuddered to think of my children living under the erratic Chinese regime. I’d seen enough turbulence in my lifetime; my children shouldn’t have to suffer the same. All my doubts about the move to America vanished, and I was convinced I’d made the right decision.

  On April 18, 1967, I said goodbye to the crowd of friends and relatives at the airport. A storm of emotions was raging inside me. I was sad to leave my beloved hometown, and yet I was happy to go to a new home where my children would strengthen their wings and take off. This journey across the four seas was the longest I’d ever taken. A land full of unknowns awaited me, and yet I’d never felt as fearless. After all these years of searching for home, I’d learned my lesson, and so had my husband: you can’t rely on your father, uncle, or brother to build your home for you. You have to do it with your own two hands. They say in America that as long as you have two arms and two legs and are willing to work, no riches are unattainable, no goal too high. It’s true if you believe it. I believed it.

  Epilogue

  During their first decade in California, my parents did exactly what they said they were going to do. They worked and saved for college tuitions; they slept, ate, and breathed for college tuitions. Mom took up keypunching in a data processing firm, and Pop was office manager for an area branch of U.S. Steel. Toiling steadily, they completed Mom’s ten-year plan right on schedule. Agnes, the leader of the pack, became a social worker. Patrick, inspired as much by Father Cunningham as the desire to prove the skeptics wrong, became a lawyer. Joe became a dentist, coming closest to fulfilling Mom’s dream of having a doctor in the family. I disappointed Mom by becoming a journalist, not the doctor or scientist she’d wanted. She has only herself to blame for passing me her story-telling genes. Chris became an accountant with a double major in fine art.

  In 1978 my parents made a triumphant homecoming to Asia. In Hong Kong friends and relatives flocked to admire the visiting émigrés. The highest compliment came from a millionairess, Mom’s cousin Helen. "Flora, I envy you!" she blurted. Although Mom claims that she doesn’t understand why her wealthy cousin should envy her, the pleasure on her face indicates otherwise.

  The most gratifying compliment, however, came from her father-in-law. After two weeks in Hong Kong, my parents flew to Taiwan to celebrate the patriarch’s ninetieth birthday. His first words to Mom were, "Flora, you were right. Taking the children to America was the best thing you could do for them." This was the closest he could come to an apology, and it was, as Mom described it, "sweeter than a cool breeze on a hot summer day."

  My parents retired soon afterwards. Pop was forced to because his company was closing its Bay Area office. Mom had hoped to work till sixty-two, when she could start collecting social security benefits. But after a decade of pounding away in a room full of the mammoth machines, the then state-of-the-art technology, she was half-blind and half-deaf. She also suffered from hypertension and severe back pain. Patrick prompted her to take early retirement. "You don’t need social security," he wrote to her. "You have five social securities in us." Mom took his advice, but instead of retiring in Hong Kong as stated in the original ten-year plan, she decided that her home was where her children were.

  As of the completion of this manuscript, my parents are still living with me. Pop has been diagnosed with depression, paranoia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. After eighty years of wrestling with the demons on his own, he’s finally getting help. Mom has grown fragile and is constantly in a drugged stupor to numb her arthritic pain. But even on her worst days, she’s never too sick to read me a chapter from her book. When all else fails, her stories take on a life of their own.

  Glossary of Chinese Names and Places

  Chinese Names of Characters in the Book:

  Li, Shing-Ying (Flora) The heroine

  Flora’s brothers:

  Yung Eldest brother

  Kin Second elder brother

  Ngai Younger brother

  Flora’s husband and in-laws:

  Hok-Ching Flora’s husband

  Wang, Yun-Wu Hok-Ching’s father

  Hok-Jit Hok-Ching’s brother

  Wai-Jing Hok-Jit’s wife<
br />
  Flora’s children:

  Man-Kuk (Agnes) Eldest daughter

  Kin-Yip (Patrick) Eldest son

  Tai-Loi (Joseph) Second son

  Tai-Ying (Veronica) Second daughter

  Kum-Lun (Christina) Third daughter

  Others:

  Sam-Koo Flora’s godmother

  Fei-Chi Flora’s half brother

  Yung-Jen Flora’s childhood friend

  Wun-Mui and Wun-Lan Sisters who hosted Flora while she was a refugee

  Names of Chinese Places in the Book:

  Romanization Used in the Book and Pinyin Equivalent

  Chengtu Chengdu

  Chungking Chongqing

  Gumsingong Jinchengjiang

  Hua Hsi Hua Xi

  Kukgong Qujiang

  Kwangtung Guangdong

  Kweilin Guilin

  Kweiyang Guiyang

  Liuchow Liuzhou

  Seiwui Sihui

  Sian Xi’an

  Swatow Shantou

  Szechwan Sichuan

  Wenchou Wenzhou