The Year of Finding Memory (4 page)

Once my brothers and I had agreed to travel back to China together with our spouses, our next decision was the date. Spring was too wet and summer was too hot, even into the month of September. My brothers had strong memories of summers in southern China relentless with heat and oppressive humidity. So in my role as “obedient youngest sister,” who negotiated with the outside world, I booked us seats on a direct flight from Toronto to Hong Kong, leaving on Friday, October 6, 2006.

The enormity of this return journey would soon have physical dimensions as well. By the time we left Toronto for China, our original party of six had expanded to include my niece Linda; my nephew Raymond; Lily, a friend of Shing’s wife, Jen; Jen’s aunt, Pearl; Pearl’s sister, Mai; and Mai’s husband, Kang—twelve people in all and more than
thirty pieces of luggage, including one suitcase filled with North American ginseng and another with old clothes for our relatives back home.

Until that point, whenever I travelled abroad, I had often taken maple syrup or candy, firm in the belief that this was a natural offering from Canada. Not so, according to my sister-in-law Jen, who found my ignorance amusing. “If you’re going back to China, take ginseng. That’s what this country is famous for. Maybe not worth as much as the kind from Korea, but still worth a lot of money.”

My mother, Fong Yet Lan, once told me her life was like a table that had been sawn in two: one half had stayed in China, the other half had been sent to Canada. I was nine, perhaps ten, when she told me this. And ever since, I have remembered the image of those two collapsed pieces of table. In my child’s mind, I had imbued them with feelings; I pictured them like a Disney cartoon, both sad and comical, each failing miserably to stand upright. I yearned to bring those two stranded parts together.

In the elementary school where I attended grade five, there was a roll-down map of the world hanging over a section of the blackboard. My teacher took a pencil and made a dot near the tip of Lake Ontario that jutted out over Lake Erie. That was where we lived. Acton, Ontario, she said. But my classmates weren’t paying attention; they were busy sneaking glances out the window at the falling snow. It was almost
recess, and everyone was eager to put on their winter coats and boots and run outside to play. Everyone except me. While they got ready, I walked up to the map, mesmerized by this large, pink country and the tiny, black dot that represented our town. I put my finger on it, then traced up to the top of Lake Superior, across the Prairies, over the Rockies and then over the blue Pacific Ocean. I felt a knot of desperation tightening in the pit of my stomach; so much land, so much water separating our small town from the south of China, where, I had been told, it never snowed. The distance felt insurmountable. How would my mother ever bring the two halves of her table together?

We languished in Hong Kong for only two years, but in my hazy remembrance the time feels longer, another lifetime belonging to someone else. I have no memory of Doon living with us, and yet I know he did. He was in his late teens and spent his days exploring the city on his own and with other young relatives who were waiting to emigrate. That period of my life has left me with a vague but persistent impression of that city’s excitement, a memory of constantly turning my head and looking, my mother holding me by the wrist while we walked along congested sidewalks and through outdoor markets swarming with people. Often, by the end of the day, I was a sullen child.
My legs ached as I dragged my feet and followed my mother from temple to temple, walking among massive stone statues of gods, staring up at their silent faces, the air smoky and fragrant with incense, my mother making offerings, her hands clasped in prayer.

My mother clenched my hand inside hers while I struggled to keep up as we pushed our way through another noisy market until she reached a particular fortune teller. Ming Nee and I stood on either side of our mother and watched the man toss sticks into the air. He then read them after they landed on a smooth, wooden table. Once he was finished, we rushed to another clairvoyant, who released a small, white bird to choose a tiny square of folded paper with black writing on it. The writing would be interpreted by the clairvoyant, who then told my mother its meaning. I waited, holding my breath with anticipation, but hoping for what? Both times my mother handed over money, never smiling, the worry lines cutting deep furrows across her forehead. She grabbed my hand and pushed her way back through the crowds, Ming Nee following behind. Whatever it was my mother was told that day she never shared with me.

Not long after our arrival, we started to visit a family with four daughters who seemed about the same age as Ming Nee. They were from our home village and we called the mother Auntie. After my mother and I left Hong Kong, Ming Nee would live with them. She was not my father’s daughter and would have to endure another three long years for our mother to attain Canadian citizenship in order to sponsor her immigration.

Then one day my mother purchased a large, hard-sided suitcase with metal clasps, and without being told, I knew that our life in Hong Kong was about to end. I watched as she filled it with dried herbal medicines; a warm, brown woollen blanket with a shiny satin binding; new clothes for me, yards of fabric; and skeins of wool. She had heard that Canada was a cold country, where the people were large, and that it would be hard for her to find clothes to fit her small frame. My mother consulted a tailor and had a navy-blue travel suit made, and she went to a beauty salon, where someone permed her hair into a nest of tight curls. All these things my mother did in preparation for our journey across the Pacific. She approached her chores methodically and without complaint. But she never smiled. On the day we left Hong Kong, she wore her new suit and a gold necklace with a heart-shaped pendant that had the word HAPPY embossed on it. I wore a gold bracelet with the letters L-U-C-K-Y linked in a chain. At the time they were only a collection of
lo fon
ABCs.

When we left for the airport in Hong Kong, my mother wept, not letting go of Ming Nee until we had to board the airplane. A tall
lo fon
stewardess ushered us into line; my mother held my hand the entire time, but her head was turned away from me. She was staring at her oldest daughter, who remained on the other side of the gate, tears streaming down her face, shoulders heaving. We stood to the side for a few moments, allowing other passengers to embark. Auntie, who had been waiting beside Ming Nee, finally led her away, and my mother and I walked through the portal. I looked up and saw my mother’s face all twisted. She gripped my hand even
tighter. It wasn’t until I was an adult with children of my own that I began to have a real understanding of the anguish my mother must have been feeling; she was leaving behind her thirteen-year-old daughter.

My mother never touched any of the food the flight attendants brought. But for me it was an adventure, and when I first tasted tiny cubes of soft fruit floating in a small bowl of clear, sugary syrup, I thought it was delicious. There were other Chinese women on the airplane, some of whom seemed to be about my mother’s age. And, like my mother, they were about to join husbands from whom they had been separated for many years. But there was one woman who I could tell was younger. Her complexion was smooth, and there was a nervousness about her. She reminded me of Ming Nee and was probably not much older. My mother said she was a mail-order bride, that she would marry her husband once she arrived. I noticed that all the women, even the mail-order bride, had their hair permed into curls, just like my mother, and that every one of them was wearing gold necklaces, bracelets and earrings.

It was night when the airplane landed in Vancouver. I remember only bright-coloured lights against a dark sky. A smiling Chinese man took a group of us on a bus, first to a hotel and then to a restaurant, where my mother ate almost nothing. The next day, we boarded another flight. This time there were fewer Chinese people on the airplane. Everybody was going to a big city, my mother told me. We were the only ones bound for a hand laundry in a small town.

The Cathay Pacific airbus was crowded with overseas Chinese. My brothers and their wives sat together in the middle aisle. The four of them had brought out their U-shaped foam supports and adjusted them around their necks in preparation for the long flight. Doon’s voice kept rising with excitement, and every so often his wife, Yeng, would give him a gentle jab, telling him to lower his voice. Though it was past midnight when the airplane lifted off, the laughing and chattering did not subside for at least another hour. I was excited, but my anticipation paled next to their jubilant mood. As I sat next to my husband, I could not stop thinking about that long-ago journey in the propeller-driven plane that had taken my mother and me over the Pacific all the way from Hong Kong. I thought about the many times my father had crossed the ocean, how much my parents must have yearned for that place, both of them destined to die in a land that was never home. And for my mother, the exile was permanent, for once she left China, she never returned.

THREE

A
s our large group passed through Chinese immigration into Shenzhen, located on the southern border of Guangdong, my father’s home province, the smooth and efficient train ride from Hong Kong became a distant memory. We found ourselves in the middle of what appeared to be a huge shopping mall, and somewhere in this massive complex, we had to find the station for the bus to Kaiping City, also in Guangdong. My sister-in-law Jen had asked a former schoolmate who now lived in Hong Kong to accompany us to Kaiping. But even Schoolmate was confused by the signs, and so were all the members of our party who could read and write Chinese. We ended up in a garage full of buses being serviced, and Shing, who is asthmatic, started to cough from the fumes.