The idea did not occur to me last year. Nor the year before.
The idea came to me in my very first fall in Canada, when I arrived in Calgary from Beijing, China, in September 1986.
It was a sunny afternoon. Leaves were turning a prism of colours for a final desperate show of life before winter killed them. We, my friends and I, were driving around the outskirts of the city to catch a last glimpse of autumn, when we had a flat tire. While waiting for assistance, I started to explore the surroundings. It was then that I noticed them, the tombstones, scattered among the knee-high grass and covered by moss and bird droppings. Most of them had Chinese names carved on them, some with fading pictures revealing the young but weathered faces with harsh cheekbones and hardly any smiles. Dates on the stones ranged from the second part of nineteenth century to the first part of twentieth century. These people died very young, possibly of unnatural causes. It didn’t take long for me to realize that they were early Chinese settlers, or coolies, as they had once been called.
What kind of lives did they lead in their villages in southern China? Whom did they leave behind when they decided to come to the “Gold Mountain,” a term they used to describe the wilderness of North America where gold deposits were discovered? What kind of dreams did they hold when they embarked on the harsh journey across the Pacific, not knowing whether they would ever return? What did they think when they first set eyes on the Rockies?
These questions started to form in my mind, dense and heavy. Of course I did not know that they would haunt me for many years to come.
A book. I could write a book about these people. I should, I told myself on the way home that day.
For the next seventeen years I flirted with the idea of such a book, but I was too busy. There were too many things needing my immediate attention: two academic degrees, a career as an audiologist, the right man to marry, a house I could call my own, a comfortable life in Canada. The idea of a Gold Mountain book got pushed down to the bottom of my to-do list. Every now and then, it would resurface, especially when I read in the news about the anniversary of the Vancouver riot, or the “Head Tax” compensation debate in the parliament, but I suppressed it as quickly as it appeared.
Then, in the fall of 2003, an unexpected opportunity presented itself to me. I was invited, together with a group of Chinese writers residing overseas, to tour one of the villages in Kaiping Canton, China, known for its unique residential dwellings called diulau, literally translated as “fortress homes.” These houses were built with the money the coolies sent home, to protect the women and children they left behind, since this area was susceptible to flooding and bandits roamed the countryside. Since the coolies were scattered all around the world, the style of the fortress homes bore clear marks of the country where the money came from. One could easily detect baroque, Roman and Victorian characteristics weirdly moulded into southern Chinese architectural expression, not exactly a piece of eye candy.
Through the help of a smart local resident, we were able to slip into a fortress home abandoned for decades, and not yet remodelled for public display. On the third floor of the house, we found an old wooden closet. To my great surprise, I found a woman’s dress. It was pink, embroidered with faded golden peonies and full of moth holes. I uncovered yet another surprise—a pair of pantyhose was hidden in the sleeve. They looked thread thin from repeated washing, with a huge run spreading from the heel all the way up to where the legs part. While my fingers were tracing the run, I was struck with a sudden surge of energy, like an electrical current. I could hear my heart pumping in my chest, loud as thunder, as I stood there, quivering with awe.
What kind of woman was she who owned this pair of pantyhose almost a century ago? Had she been the mistress of the household? On what occasion would she wear this elaborate dress? Was she lonely, with her husband away toiling in the Gold Mountain trying to make enough money so that she could afford such expensive things?
Once again I felt the urge to find out the answers to my questions.
Another two years would pass before I finally committed myself to writing this Gold Mountain book, an interval allowing me to complete my third novel, Mail-Order Bride, and several novellas.
It was an all-consuming journey, digging into the rock-hard crust of history. I travelled to Victoria, Vancouver, and villages in Kaiping, China, trying to find people with knowledge, direct or indirect, of the era of my book. I frequented archives at all levels, both in person and through the internet, as well as university and public libraries. I found myself shaking with anticipation whenever I spotted a special collection on this subject, or heard a friend mention someone who was the offspring of a Pacific Railway builder. I spent many a sleepless night thinking about a better way to find the answers to my questions haunting me for so long. However, I never really found the answers. Instead, I found stories. From endless pages of books and many a conversation with descendants of Chinese coolies, stories started to surface of people who braved the ocean to come to a wild land called British Columbia, leaving their aging parents, newlywed wives or young children behind, to pursue dreams of wealth and prosperity that always eluded them: stories of champagne parties celebrating the last railroad spike, while the builders of the railroad, the Chinese coolies, were not even mentioned; stories of husbands and wives separated by the head tax, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the great vast ocean, who kept their marriages alive for decades with a strong will to build a future for their children. I heard stories of a lengthy and profound journey of two races finally becoming reconciled after a century of distrust and rejection.
The actual writing was not any easier. My train of thought was constantly interrupted and distracted by my addiction to accuracy: accuracy of historical fact and accuracy of detail. To find out a particular style of camera used in 1910s, for example, I would surf the net night after night to find a detail that would yield just a few sentences in my book. For information about pistols popular at the turn of century, I would engage my friends with military background in endless discussions until they absolutely dreaded my phone calls. I finally came to the realization that I was a hopeless perfectionist, something my friends had told me long before.
It was a cold December afternoon in 2008, a week before Christmas, when I stood up from my computer desk, stretching out my fatigued body with a sigh of relief; I finally had completed the draft of a novel entitled Gold Mountain Blues. Snow started falling. With Christmas music permeating the air, and juicy white snowflakes kissing my windowpanes with a gentle laziness, I felt the kind of peace that I had not known for a long while. I knew that I had accomplished a mission; I had given voice to a group of people buried in the dark abyss of history for more than a century, silent and forgotten.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank professor David Lai of University of Victoria, a member of Order of Canada, for his outstanding achievements in investigative work on the history of Chinatowns, who generously let me share his research on early Chinese immigrants in Canada; Dr. James Kwan, whose fascinating childhood tales in Kaiping village have given my inquisitive mind great pleasure—I hope I did not bore him to death with my endless questions; professor Xueqing Xu at York University and Dr. Helen Wu at University of Toronto for letting me share their access to university libraries, which helped to build the framework of my research; professor Lieyao Wang at Jinan University and his lovely graduate students for taking me to tour the villages in Kaiping and arranging for my accommodation there; my writer friend Shao Jun for accompanying me, like a true gentleman, on the tour; professors Guoxiong Zhang and Selia Tan of Wuyi University for sharing with me their in-depth knowledge of the contents of the Museum of Overseas Chinese; my dear friend Yan Zhang and her well-known newspaper The Global Chinese Press as well as the Chinese Canadian Writers’ Association for facilitating my research in Vancouver and Victoria; professor Henry Yu of University of British Columbia for sharing his knowledge in native Indian subjects; Mr. Ian Zeng and Mrs. Jinghua Huang for proofreading my first draft; Ms. Lily Liu, a well-published author herself, for sharing with me stories of her coolie ancestors; and many other friends who kindly offered me photos and information on related subjects. Last but definitely not least, I’d like to thank my family for constant emotional support without which I could not have endured the difficult and sometimes despairing journey of writing such an expansive book.
God bless you all!
P.S. Two years after the publication of Gold Mountain Blues in Chinese, I am very pleased to see the launch of its English edition in both Canada and Great Britain. I’d like to express my gratitude to my agent, Mr. Gray Tan, and the people he works with for placing their faith in me as an artist; to my translator, Ms. Nicky Harman, for her tireless explorations of the exciting but sometimes treacherous space between the two great languages in the world; to Ms. Adrienne Kerr for helping me through every step of the way with her in-depth knowledge as a seasoned editor; and many friends whom I can’t possible name in such a limited space for their unfailing emotional support during some of the darkest moments in my life as the book was being born.