3

Gold Mountain Promise

2004

Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China

“Tak Yin House diulau was built in 1913. It’s one of the earliest fortress homes in the area,” Auyung told Amy. “Everything needed to build it was shipped in all the way from Vancouver via Hong Kong by your maternal great-grandfather, Fong Tak Fat—the cement, the marble, the glass, the kitchen and toilet fittings. The workmen were hired locally, but they had to follow his plans to the letter. He even chose the designs for the carvings on the windowsills, doors and eaves.

“He sent over extremely detailed plans,” Auyung continued. “It took nearly two years to build and he spent fifteen thousand Hong Kong dollars on it, which was a fortune in those days. Because he ran up such huge debts building it, he couldn’t afford the boat fare back home to supervise the work. So he didn’t come back until after it was finished.”

Amy shook her head. “What a shame,” she said. “If you ask me, it’s a terrible mishmash of a building. The fact that it’s airy is one of its few good points.”

“The purpose of a building like this was to protect its inhabitants primarily against bandits, and secondly, against flooding. Spur-On Village was in a low-lying area. One rainstorm and all the villagers’ chickens and dogs might be washed away. All other considerations were secondary. In fact, the decision to build it was forced on your great-grandfather by a very serious event which happened to the family. As for its architectural style, you can’t ask too much of a peasant who hardly had any proper schooling.”

“What serious event?”

“Did your grandfather never talk about it?”

“I never saw much of him. My mother left home when she was very young. She couldn’t say more than a few words without getting into a fight with him, and one of those would be a four-letter word.”

“And what about you? Did the same apply to you and your mum?”

Amy looked startled. “How did you know?” Auyung gave a loud, toothy laugh: “Well, otherwise, how would you know so little about your family history?”

Amy laughed too. “Mr. Auyung,” she said, “under your excellent guidance, my interest in my family history is growing.”

Auyung showed Amy into the second-floor bedroom.

“This building has five floors. The locals had never seen buildings with several floors and apparently one of the builders, when he got four floors up, refused to build any farther. He said if he went any higher, he’d be able to touch the Thunder God’s family jewels!”

Amy looked puzzled. “What family jewels?” “I’m sorry,” said Auyung. “I should mind my language when I’m with a lady.” Amy suddenly understood, and could not help laughing.

“Apart from the balcony under the eaves, where the weapons were kept, all five floors were lived in. There was a courtyard in the centre with rooms arranged on all four sides. Every floor was the same: two passageways, a reception room, two bedrooms and a storeroom.

“On the ground floor were the kitchen and the servants’ rooms. Your great-grandfather’s mother and your great-aunt had their rooms on this floor. The shrine to Guan Yam, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, and the spirit tablets to the ancestors, were here too. That was to save the old lady from having to climb the stairs. When your great-grandfather came back from Canada for a while, he lived here too.

“Your great-grandfather’s uncle lived with his family on the third floor. Your great-grandfather’s daughter lived on the fourth floor—that was your grandfather’s younger sister. She was nearly twenty years younger than him, and was the only one of Fong Tak Fat’s three children who was born in this house. The fifth floor was originally empty but then when your grandfather’s younger brother came back and married, his wife and son lived there.”

Amy covered her mouth and gave a long yawn.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been talking too much,” Auyung said. “Let’s take you to the hotel. We can come back tomorrow.” “No, no, let’s get it over with as quick as we can. I’ve got a ton of things to do when I get back home.”

Amy walked into the bedroom. It held a bed and a wardrobe. The bed was of old-fashioned red rosewood, its four posts carved with designs. The original colour had long since faded—only in the deepest parts of the carving were there traces of yellowish-brown. Amy perched cautiously on the edge of the bed, running her fingers up the dragon and phoenix designs on the bedposts until she got to the wooden pearl in the dragon’s mouth. Even this light touch left her fingertips covered in a layer of dust. She examined them carefully. Could you talk about dust being old?

“Did my great-grandfather get married here?” asked Amy.

“Of course not. By the time Tak Yin House was finished, your great-grandfather’s eldest son—your grandfather—had already left for Gold Mountain. Even your great-uncle was thirteen years old.”

The bed was covered with a fine-woven mat which was riddled with moth holes. The cord which bound it together had come unravelled, so that it flopped over the bed base like a boned fish. Amy carefully lifted one corner, and found underneath a slender length of bamboo. She took out—it was a silk fan. The silk was yellowed with age. On top of this background colour, there were areas of yellow which shaded darker at the edges, perhaps from water stains. On the fan was painted a landscape and a pavilion, but it was hard to make out the details. Some characters were still just about visible but Amy found them almost impossible to read. Auyung took off his reading glasses and held them over the fan. With the characters enlarged, they could just about make out two lines:

… this brush to write … words of love

And send them to … in Gold Mountain

“Your great-grandmother’s handwriting!” Auyung exclaimed with a cry of delight.

“Was she a painter?” asked Amy.

“She wasn’t just a painter. There was no one like her around here. You’d call her a ‘liberated woman’ if you were writing a thesis. Of course, that’s if there were liberated women a hundred or so years ago.…”

“Hmmm,” said Amy, and lapsed into silence. Then she went on: “Finally you’re really getting me interested, Auyung.”

She got up and went to open the wardrobe.

The wardrobe was made of the same red rosewood as the bed. A mirror was mounted on the door, and the mirror frame was carved in the same dragon-and-phoenix designs as the bedposts. But the mirror glass was covered with a sort of mottling, so that things were reflected dimly as if from a distance. Amy opened the door. It was empty except for a woman’s jacket decorated with a wide border around the edges, and flowers embroidered at the neck under the collar. The flowers were big and showy, probably peonies, but their colour was a dull yellow. Amy could not help sighing. Nothing could withstand the ravages of time. No matter how vivid the original colours, it reduced everything to this muddy hue.

Amy opened out the garment and discovered a pair of sheer silk stockings folded inside. She took them out and saw a tiny hole in the calf of one. It started out as small as a sesame seed, but had burst into a hole as big as her hand farther up the leg. Amy imagined her great-grandmother walking down the narrow village lanes in a pair of sheer stockings like this, and smiled in spite of herself. She put the jacket around her shoulders. It amply hid all her curves, and she guessed that her great-grandmother must have been a woman of generous proportions. How did she carry herself then, in this village of short people tanned dark by the tropical sunshine? Was she demure and self-effacing or did she walk tall and proud?

Amy stuffed the stockings back inside the jacket and began to button it up. These were traditional Chinese knot buttons, intricately made of fine strips of satin coiled into tight circles and sewn securely—although the stitching had long since come loose. Frowning intently, her thumb and forefinger joined at the tips, Amy carefully pressed the buttons against the front of the jacket,

Suddenly she stopped; her fingers froze, forming a circle in mid-air. She looked up to see a pair of eyes reflected in the mottled mirror.

Just eyes, two faceless eyes. Deep black in colour. Melancholy. Flickering. Staring out at her.

Amy felt a cold draught of air starting at her fingertips that crawled up her spine until the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

She shoved the jacket back into the wardrobe and hurried Auyung down the stairs. “Take me to the hotel to check in. We can come back tomorrow.”

Outside, Amy got quickly into the car, and curled up with her chin resting on her knees. Her hands would not stop shaking. “I expect the jet lag is catching up with you,” said Auyung. “You look like you need a rest.” Amy shook her head. “I don’t need a rest, I need a stiff drink.” “Well, as it happens, the O.O.C.A. is hosting a dinner for you tonight, and it’ll be awash with drink.”

They had booked Amy into the best hotel in town. She took a shower, then followed Auyung. The banquet was taking place in the hotel dining room and was, naturally, an ostentatious affair. She was given a glass of wine and her hosts started in on lengthy words of welcome. Amy interrupted almost immediately: “I don’t want this wine. I want something with a real kick—a whisky on the rocks.” There was general puzzlement at her request, until Auyung explained to the wine waitress: “She wants a glass of whisky with ice cubes in it.” She was given her drink and, without waiting to clink glasses with anyone, tossed it back.

It was a splendid meal. Abalone, sea snails, grouper fish, suckling pig, pigeon breast and other seasonal delicacies. But Amy ate little. She gulped at her whisky and, after two glasses, relaxed and found herself becoming quite garrulous.

She tugged at Auyung’s sleeve. “My mother told me that all of Great-Grandmother’s family died in Tak Yin House. Is that right?” Auyung nodded. “How did they die?” Auyung made an effort to distract her by raising his glass to hers. But Amy was not to be put off: “You think it’s inappropriate to talk about it here, is that it? Don’t try and fob me off just because we’re in company!” Auyung looked at their hosts, visibly embarrassed. Just then, the restaurant hostess came over and said: “There’s someone in the lobby asking for Ms Fong Yin Ling from Canada.” Amy scraped her chair back and stood up: “Who’s asking for my mother? I’ll go and see.” And without waiting for her hosts’ reaction, she stomped out of the room, Auyung trotting along behind her.

An elderly man seated in a wheelchair was waiting for them in the lobby. He was completely bald, and his face was seamed with wrinkles. His eyes were clouded milky-white and the rheum had dried into shiny yellow crusts at the corners. He turned when he heard their voices and tried unsuccessfully to struggle to his feet. Then he banged on his armrest and shouted in a cracked voice: “Fifty years! I can’t believe it’s really taken fifty years for just one of you Fongs to come back!” His assistant, a dark-skinned man, looked on indifferently, making no attempt to calm him down.

“Grandpa Ah-Yuen, this isn’t Fong Yin Ling. Fong family business has nothing to do with her,” said Auyung. But the old man was deaf to his words. Instead, he reached out and gripped Amy’s sleeve: “You Fongs didn’t keep your word, did you? You abandoned Kam Sau and her mum. Give me back Kam Sau and Wai Heung,” and he began to weep loudly, his tears wetting Amy’s sleeve. Auyung hastily called the security men, who dragged the old man off. He was forcibly pushed back into his wheelchair and wheeled away.

Amy was rattled. The whisky she had drunk all of a sudden got to her. She sat down on the ground and was violently sick. Finally, when there was nothing more to come up, she wiped her runny nose and streaming eyes and got trembling to her feet. “Who is Kam Sau?” she asked. “Your great-aunt. Your grandfather’s little sister.” “Who was that old man?” “That was Kam Sau’s husband.”

Amy gave a sigh. “Auyung, how many people are we going to upset doing this?”

Auyung sighed too. “If your great-grandfather had married someone else, then perhaps the Fongs would not have left so many stories. Actually, Fong Tak Fat was supposed to marry a different woman, not your great-grandmother at all.”

Years twenty to year twenty-one of the reign of Guangxu (1894–1895)

Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province, China

At Ah-Fat’s command, the sedan chair halted at the entrance to the village. Ah-Fat wanted to do the last part on foot.

Ah-Fat could have done that walk blindfolded. To the right of the spot where the sedan had set him down, there was an ancient banyan tree. At the foot of the tree, there were the steps which led down to the river—three steps altogether. The river had no name. When the water was high, only half a step was visible. When all three steps were visible, it meant there was a drought. When he was a boy coming home from herding the cows or cutting grass, Ah-Fat would go down those steps to the river to wash off the mud and grass before going back home.

To get home, Ah-Fat did not go down to the water’s edge but walked straight along the riverbank. The path to the house was flanked by fields on one side and water on the other. The scenery on the river side was unchanging, while the fields looked different every day. The main crop planted in the two growing seasons was paddy rice, interplanted with a few green vegetables and squashes. If it rained, the paddy rice would be noticeably taller when he went home in the evening than it had been in the morning. Chickens and dogs often scratched around for things to eat among the great clumps of banana palms by the side of the road. Ah-Fat and his brother, Ah-Sin, knew every chicken along the road. The village dogs were a scatterbrained bunch and barked at every strange person or animal they saw. If the dogs at the roadside all barked in unison, then you knew that a stranger was approaching or new cattle were being herded into the village.

Ah-Fat went straight along the road, past the grey stone well that dated from the reign of the emperor Kangxi, and turned right again. The threecourtyard residence that his father had built and squandered, had been restored by his mother. It had taken her seven and a half years to reassemble all the different parts into a single residence where she and his uncle and the family now lived. It was exactly sixteen paces from the road to the front gate. That is, it was sixteen paces fifteen years ago—though probably not so many now. Ah-Fat knew every bump and every pebble on this path—in fact, he had often felt them under the soles of his feet in his dreams.

And now Fong Tak Fat was thirty-one years old. As he trod the path to his front door in the warm spring sunshine, he had the odd sensation that he had gone back in time.

His luggage would come later.

Twenty Gold Mountain suitcases, their corners reinforced with metal strips, all made of the same wood, painted dark red, and fastened with a two-leaf lock in the shape of the lips of a lion. When the lips were closed, the secrets of each case were locked inside. The cases contained all manner of things—from food to clothing and household items. There was Canadian honey, chocolate, olive oil and corn candy; there were clothes, hats and shoes for adults and children, all of course in the Western style, as well as all kinds of Canadian-produced fabrics; for the home, there was foreign soap, matches for lighting the stove, clocks which chimed the hour, and foreign-style knives for cutting cakes and vegetables, china tea sets and dinner sets. And so on and so forth. All these goods were packed into the first nineteen cases and would be given to his mother, uncle and aunt, nephews and nieces, as well their neighbours in the village and even the servants and hired hands.

The last case, however, held things which were purely decorative: ladies’ lipsticks and nail varnish, perfume, embroidered brassieres and other underwear, linen tablecloths from Victoria in all shapes and sizes, English and French silver, gold rings and earrings. He was not going to share round the contents of this case; in fact, he would not even open the lion’s-head lock. He would give the entire case, just as it was, with all its secrets, to a woman upon whom he had never set eyes. He had only a fuzzy, thumbnailsize photograph of her, although her image often haunted his dreams.

This was the woman to whom his mother had betrothed him six months previously, and he had made this long sea trip back home in order to marry her. He did not know much about her, only that she was the eldest daughter of a family called Sito from the town of Cek Ham. She was fifteen years old. The family ran a tailoring business. The horoscopes of Ah-Fat and the girl had been cast and matched perfectly. The fortune teller said that the girl was destined to make her husband rich, and any family she married into prosper. The fortune teller also said that the girl was destined to have nine and a half sons (the half, of course, being a son-in-law). It was not only these reasons that had persuaded Ah-Fat’s mother though—she had her own as well. She knew that the parents had taught the girl to sew and she had become an excellent seamstress. Even though Mrs. Mak could no longer sew, she still stubbornly believed that a woman who could not sew and embroider was not a proper woman.

In the eyes of the villagers, these reasons for choosing a bride were perfectly acceptable. But Ah-Fat wanted to know a bit more than that. Was this girl literate? He had asked his mother this when he wrote to her. She had had the village letter-writer write back but she had not answered his question. Instead, she had simply asked, what was the point of having wife who could read and write? The proper duties of a wife were to serve her in-laws and her husband, produce children, and feed and clothe them. From this letter, Ah-Fat inferred that the girl probably could neither read nor write.

He knew there was not one in a hundred among these country girls who could read and write. Or, if they could, they could only write their own names and read a few numbers. It was the same with all the country folks. They all walked a road which others had made for them; they had only to follow in those ancient footsteps. Because it was such an old, well-trodden road, it saved them a lot of trouble. The new road that Ah-Fat had taken, however, had to be hacked out by Ah-Fat alone, and it had been a gruelling process. He had left his youthful vigour behind on the railroad in Canada. At thirty-one years old, he bore the scars of his ordeal all over his body, and he was halfway to being an old man. At his age, the village men were grandfathers, while he was not yet even a father. He had lived a tough life and what he needed now was a woman who would nestle close to him and lick his wounds. Any woman could do that, no matter whether she could read or write—and that was the reason why he had finally agreed to his mother’s choice of wife for him.

He just wanted an honest wife who could endure hardship and who would serve his mother as a dutiful daughter-in-law should.

Or so he repeatedly tried to persuade himself. But he still had lingering regrets. They niggled like a tiny muscle in his back which every now and then gave him a twinge, but which did not stop him working or walking.

Ah-Fat had seen not a soul in the village. The only sound was the scuffing of his footsteps on the stony surface of the lane. The sun gradually rose higher and the wind got up, making his long gown flap around his legs. The earth felt as hard under his feet as it always did at the end of winter yet he also had the feeling that under that solid surface, there was a world of creatures marshalling themselves for spring. As he passed the old well, he spotted a child squatting on the ground having a crap. “Where’s everyone got to?” said Ah-Fat. The child looked scared. After a long pause, he said: “Market … it’s market day, isn’t it?” Of course, it suddenly dawned on him that today was the eighteenth of the first lunar month—a big market day. Everyone would have gone there.

Half a dozen hungry strays snarled around him and snapped at his trouser cuffs. From the front opening of his jacket, he got out a lotus-leaf dumpling stuffed with sausage and rice, left over from his journey, and threw it down. The dogs forgot him straightaway and scrambled for the dumpling. Ah-Fat laughed: “Sonofabitch, Ginger!” He suddenly realized that he had shouted the name of another dog—one he had never forgotten in all these years, the one who had saved all of them in the tent, who had actually licked his hand with his last breath. After Ginger, he had never beaten a dog that came begging for food.

It took him only thirteen paces today to get from the road to their house. He must have grown in the years since he left. The old stone lions still stood by the door. His father had bought them from a Fujian stonemason at the time he had the house built. Carved on the back of the lions’ ears were the mason’s name and the year the work was finished. When he and Ah-Sin were children, they often used to ride these lions as if they were horses, eventually making a shiny patch on the back of each beast. When their father smoked his opium, and was in a good mood, he would call for a boy to bring out a reclining chair so he could lie in the entrance, sunning himself as he watched his sons riding the lions and shooting sparrows in the trees with their toy bows and arrows.

Ah-Fat gave the lions a rub. They seemed smaller and somehow less fierce. There was a fine crack along the back of one.

The stones have got old too, thought Ah-Fat.

The main entrance was shut tight. The brass rings of the door knockers seemed like two eyes peering shyly at him. The door was still painted in vermilion red, although it was not the same vermilion he remembered. The old red had known his father, his brother, Ah-Sin, and his sister, Ah-Tou, and had seen many things happen to the family. But this fresh red had wilfully covered everything up. It knew nothing of tears and death and was utterly superficial. Heartlessly ignoring the family’s past, it prepared to celebrate the long-awaited homecoming of the master of the house.

There were couplets pasted to the pillars on either side of the door. The one on the right said, “Pairs of swallows on the wing greet the newcomer,” and the one on the left: “With a rat-a-tat-tat, firecrackers chase out the old year.” The horizontal one across the top read: “Good fortune comes with spring.” It was only the first month of the new year, and although the corners had curled up a little with the wind, they were still bright and new. The four dots at the bottom of the character for “swallow” had been done as thick blobs and looked as if the ink might drip at any minute. Ah-Fat touched them with his finger, but they were quite dry. He looked at the calligraphy of the couplets, which was elegant and spare, rather like the Slender Gold style of the Song dynasty. Old Mr. Ding, who used to write couplets for the villagers in the old days, must surely be long dead. Who was the author of this fine calligraphy? he wondered to himself.

Ah-Fat banged the door knocker but no one answered. The door was not locked and opened with a gentle push. He went in. The courtyard was completely empty. The sun had risen to the forks in the tree branches and their shadows bobbed about on the ground. Although it was a windy day, the courtyard was warm. In the corner, beside the bamboo drying poles, stood a crudely made pottery vase. Someone had picked a great bunch of all-spice blossoms and stuck them into the vase, and their gorgeous colour seemed to set the whole wall on fire. Ah-Fat took the flowers in his hand and sniffed—they gave out a lingering perfume. He sat down heavily in the bamboo chair by the drying poles and it gave a loud creak. He settled into it cautiously, and then pulled a newspaper out from the folds of his jacket and opened it.

It was the China-West Daily; he had bought it when he disembarked in Canton but this was the first opportunity he had had to read it. When he had left home for Canada, he did not even know what a newspaper was. He had only discovered them when the overseas Chinese from Malaya brought newspapers from back home to Victoria’s Chinatown. He opened it wide. The first page had a large half-page advertisement for a Dutch toilet spray made by Tai Luk Wo Pharmaceuticals: “Long lasting, aromatic and invigorating!”

The next page had a Watsons Drugstore advertisement for Scott’s Emulsion Cod Liver Oil: “Tastes like milk, very palatable, more than three times as effective as pure cod liver oil. The best cure for consumptive diseases. Works every time.” On other pages there were advertisements for sugar, wine, kerosene, handkerchiefs and sweatshirts. On and on—there were more than a dozen of them. Ah-Fat was astonished. Nothing was the same as before he left. How was it possible for Western goods to be causing such a stir all the way up the Pearl River? He wondered about the towns and villages of Hoi Ping. Were they still as cut off as before, a different world from Canton?

Among the advertisements, there was a column about the world of sing-song girls. The first item was a news report about a fire on the Guk Fau sing-song girls brothel boat, in which twelve prostitutes and six of their clients were burned alive. The second was about a pipa player called Bin Yuk, who excelled at Cantonese opera. The article read: “When Bin Yuk, ‘the oriole,’ begins to sing, she is exquisitely melodious, equal to our finest actresses. Few of her listeners are left unmoved.” The article then described at some length how she collected her fee from members of the audience: “She adopts a very severe mien when it comes to money. If someone gives her coins, she throws them to the ground—the sound they make tells her what their metal content is. If they give her copper coins or unusable tender, she gives it right back to them and demands silver. She will not take no for an answer. No matter how many times in an evening they ask her to sing, it is the same every time.” The article made Ah-Fat smile in spite of himself.

Looking through the paper, he discovered it was all local gossip of this sort. There was very little about national politics. There was one small news item at the bottom of one page saying that Japanese “pirates” were defying the Imperial government in northeast coastal waters. General Li Hongzhang had reviewed the Beiyang fleet, and ordered that they should maintain calm and bide their time. Ah-Fat felt that nowadays the Peking of the Empress Dowager amounted to no more than a bit of windblown fluff. Even lowly Japanese pirates dared to lay their hands on it. And when news of these tumultuous events in the capital city of China finally arrived in South China, they merited no more than a brief exclamatory note following the advertising and tidbits on sing-song girls. He put down the paper, lost in thought, then quoted bitterly to himself two lines from the ancient poet Du Mu: “Singing girls care nothing if national calamity looms/As, on the far bank, they sing the lament Courtyard Blooms.”

He suddenly thought of his childhood tutor Mr. Auyung, who would get into passionate arguments about national affairs, thumping the table until his writing brush jumped. He was never afraid to speak his mind. After Ah-Fat went to Gold Mountain, he kept up a correspondence with Mr. Auyung, and learned about his old teacher’s wanderings around China and beyond—from Canton to Shanghai, and south to Annam. Quite recently he had come home and reopened his tutor school in the town. In one of Ah-Fat’s twenty trunks there was a gift for Mr. Auyung—a map of the world. Mr. Auyung took a lively interest in Western sciences. Once he had recovered from the journey, he would go and pay his respects to Mr. Auyung.

He got up from the chair and went into the reception room.

The room was darker than the courtyard outside and it took a few moments for Ah-Fat’s eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.

There was a young woman in the room. She was dressed in a long blue cotton gown with piping round the edges, and stood on a stool hanging a picture. Her hair was braided into a long, thick plait fastened with a red felt flower. She was holding a scroll painting depicting bright green bamboos tipped with fresh shoots, and guava trees. The reds, greens and blues were vivid and festive without being vulgar. The calligraphy on the painting read “What joy that the guava is about to set seed and the bamboo to give birth to grandchildren!”

After she had finished hanging the painting, she stepped down from the stool and took a few steps back to see if she had hung it straight. In her haste, she trod on the hem of Ah-Fat’s gown, almost falling over. She turned and then leapt back as if she had seen a ghost. Her eyes grew round as saucers and she clasped her hands over her heart.

It was the scar which had startled her, Ah-Fat knew. Over the years, far from fading, it had grown more prominent and more twisted. Now it looked rather like a centipede. Ah-Fat put his hands over his face and laughed. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m not a ghost. Look at my shadow. Ghosts don’t have shadows, do they? I’m Fong Ah-Fat.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. She relaxed her hands and rubbed them against the front of her gown. “So you’re young Master Fong! How did you get here so quickly? The steamship company said you wouldn’t be arriving until next market day. So your mum and your uncle and the family have all gone to the Tam Kung Temple in town to light incense and pray you have a safe trip.” Ah-Fat guessed the woman must be a servant. “Why didn’t you go along with the mistress?” he asked. “The mistress wanted me to stay and get all the calligraphy and painting scrolls properly hung so they’d be ready when you arrived, but you got here before I’d finished.”

“Who wrote the couplets?” asked Ah-Fat. “He got it wrong. I’m obviously not a newcomer, I’ve just been away a long time.” She gave a slight smile. “The newcomer is not you, it refers to your … your … intended.” And two vivid spots, as bright as the red in the painting, rose up her cheeks. It suddenly dawned on Ah-Fat that the room had been hung with the scrolls for his wedding. He looked at her again. She was not bad-looking and seemed bright too. Perhaps she was the daughter of a good family who had been forced into service when her family fell on hard times. He was reminded of his little sister, Ah-Tou, sold all those years ago, and he made a special effort to speak kindly to her.

“Would you show me to a room where I can rest and wait for the mistress to come home?”

The girl did as he asked.

The room she led him to was actually Ah-Fat and Ah-Sin’s old room. The bed was the very same bed they used to share. The bedding looked as if it had been freshly sewn. The cotton wadding inside the quilt was thick and soft and the quilt cover was stiffly starched. Ah-Fat pulled back the quilt and saw that the old pillow was still there. It had been filled with dried chrysanthemum flowers because his mother maintained that they regulated the body’s temperature and could cure Ah-Sin’s epilepsy. Ah-Fat felt the pillow—there was a slight indentation in it. Could this still be the mark made by Ah-Sin’s head? He lay with his head in this hollow and his nostrils were invaded by the smell of chrysanthemums freshly dried in the sunshine. He fell into the sleep of his childhood.

Suddenly the heavens darkened and it clouded over. It began to rain very hard, and there was no shelter. He was getting soaking wet. He remembered his mother had given him brand new bedding and shouted for a servant to come and close the window. He shouted so hard he finally woke himself up. He knew it had just been a dream, but when he touched his face, it was wet. He opened his eyes to see a little old woman sitting at his bedside. She wore her hair in a sleek bun, with a white felt flower tucked into one side. She had a handkerchief tucked in the front of her grey cotton gown, and was just pulling it out to wipe her eyes.

“Mum!” Ah-Fat gave a cry and, leaping out of bed, he straightened his gown, threw himself to his knees in front of her and kowtowed.

“I haven’t been a dutiful son. I’ve been away in Gold Mountain all these years and you’ve suffered so much hardship.”

The woman said nothing, but bent to take Ah-Fat’s hand. Her own hand inscribed circles for some moments in the air before finally gripping his. Ah-Fat realized that his mother was now completely blind.

He felt a surge of emotion. There was a lump in his throat which he could neither swallow nor spit out. It stuck there until it forced tears from his eyes. He kowtowed twice more, knocking his head hard on the grey flagstones. His mother could not see, but at least she could hear what he was doing, which was what he most wanted.

He was going to kowtow again but was firmly prevented from doing so. The room was full of people kneeling—younger cousins, nephews and nieces on his uncle’s side. Someone passed him a small towel. Ah-Fat wiped his face, and saw red stains on the towel. He had made his head bleed knocking it on the floor.

The only person not present from the household was the girl who had been hanging the pictures in the reception room.

The market-goers did not return to the village until nightfall, and they had not eaten all day. They hurried home the dozen or so li to the village with rumbling bellies, and the women were in such a hurry to light the cooking fires and cook the soup and rice that they did not even take a moment to go and piss. They had just got the fires lit when they heard the dogs bark.

Most of the time, the village dogs barked in a desultory, sporadic sort of way for no particular reason. But today they seemed to have come to an agreement. One after another, they took up the cry, echoing each other’s barks and seemingly prepared to go on all evening. It was the way dogs barked when they were presented with something wholly unfamiliar, something which had come in from the big, wide world; they were hysterical with excitement and fear.

The women threw down the dried grass and twigs with which they had been feeding the cooking fires and ran outside. They were met by the sight of dozens of porters, all dressed in black livery, laden with heavy cases suspended from carrying poles. They were filing along the narrow village street like an undulating black centipede so long that you could not see its head or its tail, enveloped in clouds of the dust which they were kicking up beneath their feet.

The villagers trailing behind the dust cloud saw them put down their burdens in the Fong family courtyard. Blind old Mrs. Mak sat on a low stool feeling the lion’s-head lock in the centre of each case as it was put down. One. Two. Three. Three cases were piled on top of each other and there were seven piles, the last of which only contained two cases.

So there were twenty trunks, Mrs. Mak muttered to herself, and her wizened lips parted in a gap-toothed smile.

“Off you go and cook your dinners,” she ordered the crowd of onlookers. “Ah-Fat will fix a day when every one of you, young and old, will be invited over for a banquet to celebrate his homecoming.” She kept waving her handkerchief, but her attempts to send them away were futile. An ever-increasing number of people anxious to see Ah-Fat pressed in, as impossible to brush off as stove ashes stuck to a bean cake.

She tried again: “Ah-Fat’s been on the boat home for weeks and he hasn’t had a single good night’s sleep. He fell asleep as soon as he got here, without even waiting for dinner. He needs a good rest in the comfort of his own bed. Leave him be and come back tomorrow and you can greet him properly.”

The crowd finally began to disperse.

Mrs. Mak went into the house, elbowed the bedroom door open and felt her way over to the bed. Knocking the tip of her walking stick on the floor a few times, she said: “Ah-Fat, what are you frightened of? You still count as a Gold Mountain man, even if you’re a scar-face. Those twenty cases prove what a man you are. How many people have been able to do what you’ve done? Tomorrow we’ll go out of the house together. Everyone’s got to see you sooner or later.”

There was no movement from the bed. After a few moments, Ah-Fat gave a chuckle. “Mum, how did you know I’m a scar-face?”

Mrs. Mak smiled too. “I pushed you out of my belly and you can’t lift a leg without me knowing what kind of fart’s coming out. From the moment you came into this house, you haven’t looked at me when you spoke.”

Ah-Fat sat up with an exclamation of surprise. “Mum, you may be blind but your eyes are still sharper than everyone else’s. I can see all the servants are neat and tidy and the way they speak and behave, it’s obvious they’ve been well taught.” “Your aunt takes care of all that,” said his mother. “I can’t see anything and I can’t be bothered with overseeing the servants.” “That young woman you got to hang the scrolls up, she’s prettier than all the others, and smarter too.” “Huh,” said his mother. “Leave her out of it. She’s not a servant. That’s Six Fingers, Red Hair’s wife’s little sister. All the calligraphy and the paintings in the house were done by her.”

Ah-Fat’s eyes filled with astonishment at her words. Now he had so many questions on the tip of his tongue, he just had to find a way to ask them. Finally, he thought of a way to begin:

“She’s quite grown-up now! Who taught her to write and paint?”

His mum sighed. “She’s had a hard life. Writing and painting is the only thing that keeps her alive.”

Six Fingers had come to live in Red Hair’s house along with his bride, Mrs. Kwan. She was much younger than her sister—only three when their son, Loon, was born. Before Red Hair went back to Gold Mountain for the second time, he impressed on his wife that she must get a private tutor to come and teach Loon to read and write when he was old enough. It was several years before the news of Red Hair’s death reached his wife’s ears. She was not unduly worried because, although there were no letters from him, every now and then bank drafts would arrive. It was only much later that she found out that it was Ah-Fat who had been sending them.

When Loon was six or seven years old, his mother duly found a tutor for the boy. Six Fingers was always around and she picked up a smattering of learning too. Her elder sister had learned to read and write from her father and did not object when she saw how much effort Six Fingers was putting into her studies. The tutor was keen on calligraphy and painting and liked nothing better than to divert himself with a little painting practice. It was a quirk of his that he would do it only when he had Six Fingers in attendance—the boy was too much of a fidget. So Six Fingers was constantly being called on to light the incense, grind the ink and lay out the paper. When the tutor had finished painting, she would wash his brushes and the ink stone and bring him tea and cakes.

One day, the tutor took his refreshments and went for a siesta. Six Fingers picked up the brush and, with the leftover ink and paper, did a quick sketch of some pine trees and bamboos, as she had seen her teacher do. When he awoke, came out of his room and saw the painting, he stood twiddling his beard thoughtfully in his fingers. Finally he sighed: “Such a pity you weren’t born in the body of a boy.” After that, if he was in the right mood, he would teach Six Fingers a thing or two about composition, about making a painting appealing and even about mounting techniques. Neither of them realized that the day would come when Six Fingers would be in dire straits, and that what she learned from this idle chit-chat would be the saving of her.

In the spring of the year in which Six Fingers turned twelve years old dysentery plagued the village. It was only many years later that the survi-vors learned that its proper name was cholera, and that the cause was contamination of the waters farther upstream. The first afflicted with it in Red Hair’s family was his son, Loon. He succumbed after three days without so much as uttering a word. He gave it to Red Hair’s mother who, after getting better and then relapsing, sank into unconsciousness and died after a couple of weeks.

Mrs. Kwan was already ill by the time her mother-in-law died. She had it mildly and could have recovered but she did not want to live any more. Six Fingers prepared rice gruel for her elder sister, but when she tried to feed it to her, Mrs. Kwan shut her mouth firmly and twisted away. “What do I have to live for? My husband and son are both dead.” (The news of Red Hair’s death had reached her by then.) “If you care for me, let me die. It’s a lot less bother than living.” Six Fingers burst into tears: “What about me? Don’t I mean anything to you?” Mrs. Kwan’s eyes were as dried up as well holes. She looked dully at her younger sister and did not shed a tear.

“Dad gave you to me to rear, and at least I let you learn to read and write a bit. You might be able to use that to get along in life—depends what fate has in store for you.”

These were her parting words to Six Fingers.

Within one month, three of Red Hair’s family had died, and there was not a cent to bury them. Finally, the village elders took the business in hand. They mortgaged the family’s three-room house and used the money to get the rites performed, to set aside the burial plot, buy coffins and bury the bodies.

After Mrs. Kwan died, the villagers sent word to her family that they should come and fetch Six Fingers. But there was no word from her parents and they never came to claim her. It was Mrs. Kwan’s parting words to her sister which threw the girl a lifeline.

Old Mr. Ding, who used to write letters and do couplets on scrolls for the villagers, was too old by now to hold a brush. The villagers knew that Six Fingers could write and they felt sorry for her, so they asked her to do the work instead. They discovered that she was better at it than the old man— her calligraphy was steady and full of vigour. She also had a skill Mr. Ding did not have—she could paint. They would call her in for all sorts of jobs, from ordinary letters and New Year couplets, to calligraphy and paintings to celebrate births, deaths, weddings and old folks’ birthdays. The motifs she painted of course varied according to the occasion: for a wedding, it would be a dragon and phoenix in harmony, and a guava tree setting seed. For a funeral, it would be cranes flying west towards the setting sun. To celebrate the birthday of an elderly person, it would be celestial ladies or a lucky bird offering a longevity peach in its beak. For the one-month celebration of the birth of a son, she would illustrate a fairy story like Noh Tsa playing in the sea, or paint a unicorn bringing good luck. She adapted her calligraphy and painting to the circumstances and tastes of her customers.

Six Fingers enjoyed the work and would go wherever she was wanted. But she did not get paid for it in cash. Instead, they would give her a few eggs, a pound or two of rice, a piece of fabric, some fuel for her stove, or whatever the master of the house decided. She did not get rich from her work, but it was enough to feed one person three meals a day.

However, she only had a shed to live in, by the pigpen. It had been used by Red Hair’s family for storage and then fell into disrepair. It was leaky and draughty and smelt mouldy. The second summer after her sister died and she was left alone, a typhoon destroyed it completely, leaving her without any shelter from the elements.

One of the village women took pity on her and took her in. Auntie Cheung Tai’s husband had gone to Gold Mountain and she had not heard from him for many years. She had no sons or daughters so when she died the family line would run out. Six Fingers moved in with her and paid for her bed and board by splitting her earnings two ways. At least it gave her a roof over her head.

As Ah-Fat listened to Six Fingers’ story, he felt pangs of grief, as if a cord was being drawn tight around his heart. He thought back to when he and Red Hair set off for Gold Mountain. Red Hair had left behind a flourishing family of young and old, but nothing remained now but a pile of rubble. Six Fingers, however, was as tenacious as a weed that had crept out from under the rubble in search of light and managed to put forth a leaf. She was a survivor, that girl.

He told his mother that he had made several trips over the years to the camp where Red Hair was buried, but the virgin forest was now a city and he had searched in vain for the pile of stones. “But you must have a few of Red Hair’s belongings, haven’t you?” said his mother. “I brought back an old fiddle which he used to carry around with him in Gold Mountain.” “Then wrap it up and take it to Red Hair’s family grave in a day or two, and bury it next to Mrs. Kwan. The grave is still open, you should get someone to come and seal it. Then the family won’t need to wait for his bones any longer.” “I’ll take Six Fingers with me,” said Ah-Fat. “After all, it was her sister and brother-in-law.”

“After dinner, I’ll get the maid Ah-Choi to heat the water nice and hot, and you can wash and shave. Tomorrow, the brothers are coming. They heard you’re back and they want to meet you.”

“Whose brothers?”

“Don’t be such a dope! The brothers of your betrothed!”

After breakfast the next morning, Ah-Fat went out. He walked west through the village. He heard some knocking noises before he got near the old wooden shack and, through the open door, saw Auntie Cheung Tai at her loom.

She was a scrawny little woman, only just able to work the loom by perching atop pieces of wood to raise the level of her stool. Her two hands gripped the shuttle like a bow pulled taut but still could not push it to the end of the frame. She was weaving a rough country cloth, greyish-yellow in colour so when the end of the yarn fell on the floor and got mixed up with the dirt, it took her some time to find it. This kind of cloth was for clothes the men wore when they were ploughing or harvesting. It was unattractive but would withstand a couple of seasons out in the wind and rain. Unfortunately Auntie Cheung Tai had let the tension go slack because her arms were too puny and short to hold the yarn. Her workmanship fell far short of Mrs. Mak’s.

Busy at her weaving, she suddenly saw a big black smudge on the cloth. She rubbed away at it unsuccessfully—until she realized it was someone’s shadow. Looking up, she saw a man had come into the room. He was well-built and wore a skullcap and a lined grey satin gown, which must have been brand new since it still had sharp creases from being folded in the trunk. The man gave her a smile, and a worm seemed to crawl slowly up one side of his face. Auntie Cheung Tai’s small bound feet slipped off the stool and she pitched forward so her nose nearly banged against the loom.

The man helped her back up and greeted her politely with hands pressed together. “Your husband was my father’s cousin, Auntie,” he said. “He was like an uncle to me.” From the front opening of his gown, he extracted two small paper packets and gave them to her. “Something foreign for you, Auntie, from Gold Mountain.”

Auntie Cheung Tai wiped the corners of her gummy eyes with her sleeve, making it wet. “Ah-Fat, are you really back? Oh, look at your face.… Well, at least you’re alive. Do you have any news of your uncle Cheung Tai?” Ah-Fat shook his head. “No. I went to the Chinese Benevolent Association, but they didn’t have anyone of that name on their lists. He went to Gold Mountain so long ago, maybe they didn’t have lists back then.” “The year before last, two men from Sai Village came home,” she said. “They said they’d seen someone the spitting image of uncle Cheung Tai in Fan Tan Alley, with a Redskin woman.” “They must have been mistaken,” said Ah-Fat. “If he was still alive in Gold Mountain, surely he would have been in touch with you, Auntie.” She clamped her mouth shut and was silent. Finally, she said icily: “It makes no difference who he was with. The marriage documents were exchanged with me.”

Her lower jaw trembled so hard that her teeth chattered. Ah-Fat could think of nothing to say to comfort her. Uncle Cheung Tai must have gone a long time ago. If he was still alive, he would at least have come back to pay his respects to his ancestors. But Ah-Fat could not think which was worse—the old man dying or marrying another woman. So he bit back the platitudes that had been about to trip off his tongue.

Auntie Cheung Tai held the two packets to her nose and sniffed, then sneezed. “Whatever’s that strange smell?” she asked. “How do I get my teeth into that?” Ah-Fat burst out laughing. “It’s not to eat. It’s soap to wash your face with. Once you’ve washed, you’ll smell nice all day.” She laughed too: “Who’s going to smell this old woman’s fragrance? This is for a young woman.” Ah-Fat hesitated then said: “Auntie, if you really think it has an odd smell, why not give it to Six Fingers? If you can smell it on her, that’s as good as if you were using it yourself.” Auntie Cheung Tai shouted for Six Fingers to bring some tea for the guest. Ah-Fat heard an indistinct murmur of response but there was no movement. He glanced towards the back door and saw Six Fingers standing under the overhanging eaves, feeding the pigs. There were three of them, two white and one spotted. They were still young, and pressed around Six Fingers’ trouser legs eagerly, squealing for food. Six Fingers splashed some pig swill into the trough with a ladle, but it was too thin for the piglets’ liking. They nuzzled the liquid and then left it. Six Fingers got a bunch of dried grass and mixed it into the feed with a piece of wood, then whacked the piglets on their rumps by way of encouragement. The squeals quietened and turned into chomping sounds. Six Fingers had on a cotton tunic today, loose-fitting with wide sleeves, buttoned slantwise across the front, and decorated with piping round the edges. It had faded almost white probably through repeated washing. It also concealed all her curves, until she bent over—then the hem at the back rode up, revealing sturdy round buttocks under her trousers.

When Six Fingers finished feeding the piglets, she went into the kitchen. They could hear her applying the bellows to the stove. The tea was ready almost before the smell of burning grass and twigs reached their nostrils, and Six Fingers brought in a tray with a bowl for Auntie Cheung Tai and one for Ah-Fat. Ah-Fat took the bowl in both hands and saw that it was not tea but an infusion of popped rice grains. The layer of grains looked like maggots swimming in water and a few osmanthus flowers floated on the surface. Auntie Cheung Tai took a sip and smacked her lips: “How much sugar did you put in, you little wretch?”

A grain of rice stuck between her teeth and she extracted it with her thumbnail, exclaiming as she did so: “Six Fingers! Why’s your face all spotty?” The girl rubbed her face and her finger came away covered in black ink. She looked down and smiled: “I was doing some couplets for Ah-Yuen’s family.” “What sort of couplets?” asked Ah-Fat. “For the birthday of his old dad. He’s sixty.” “Let me see what you did,” said Ah-Fat.

Six Fingers led him into the room at the back which served as a kitchen. There was a stove with two holes for the pots—one large, one small, a table for eating at and a large earthenware crock. The rest of the floor space was taken up with piles of grass and twigs for the stove, dried grass for the pigs and skeins for the loom. Six Fingers used the table for her calligraphy, and the paper was spread out on it waiting for the ink to dry. The room only had one small window and was darker than the front room. Six Fingers had trimmed the lamp to its lowest, to save on oil, and the flame was no bigger than a pea. Ah-Fat had to screw up his eyes to make out the characters.

The right-hand couplet read: “Long-lived as the southern mountains, your every move spreads love.” The left-hand one read: “Good fortune as great as the eastern seas, you bring good luck to all.” The strip that went across the top read: “Fortunate old age without end.”

She had used gold-flecked red paper and although it was not many characters, the verticals and horizontals were neatly aligned and the brushwork was firm. Ah-Fat looked the work over from every angle and then turned to Six Fingers. Under his steady gaze, her head shrunk turkey-like into her neck, which was flushed as red as her face. She works like a man, thought Ah-Fat to himself, and her calligraphy is masculine too. But to look at, she’s just a lovely girl. “Where did you get the couplets from?” he asked her. “The Compendium of New Year Couplets Old and New” ? She shook her head. “Couplets and Characters for Farmers” ? he asked again. Again she shook her head. “Mr. Ding only ever used those two,” he persisted. “Surely you haven’t got other books as well?” Six Fingers shook her head once more and twisted her hands in the folds of her jacket. Finally, she said: “I don’t have any books at all.”

Ah-Fat was astonished. “You mean you made them up yourself?” The blood surged again into Six Fingers’ cheeks. “They don’t make a neat pair, do they?” she whispered. “I think they make a fine pair,” said Ah-Fat. “Perhaps if you changed ‘your every move spreads love’ to ‘you spread love all around,’ it would contrast better with ‘you bring good luck to all’.” “That’s true! That sounds much better!” She was about to tear it up and rewrite the couplet when Ah-Fat, suddenly interested, offered: “I’ll do it.” Six Fingers ground and prepared more ink, laid out the paper, wetted and smoothed the brush and gave it to Ah-Fat.

Ah-Fat loaded the brush with ink and, after a long moment of contemplation, began to write. He wrote the whole thing without pausing, except to load more ink onto the brush halfway through. Then he threw the brush into the water and paid no further attention to it. Six Fingers tidied away the brush and ink. “Master Ah-Fat, your calligraphy has become more vigorous as the years go by. Did you get a chance to practise in Gold Mountain?”

“How do you know my calligraphy?” Ah-Fat was startled. Six Fingers gave a little laugh. “Every time you wrote home, your mum called me over to read it to her.” “So every letter I’ve had back from her was written by you?” Six Fingers nodded. Ah-Fat had to laugh. “No wonder!” “No wonder what?” “I couldn’t understand how that old turtle Ding had got so good at writing!” said Ah-Fat.

Six Fingers wrung out a towel in hot water and gave it to Ah-Fat to wipe his hands. Ah-Fat protested it was a shame to dirty such a clean white towel and instead grabbed a dirty rag from the table and gave his inky fingers a quick rub. Six Fingers saw him to the door. In the glaring sunlight, the tree branches seemed to have grown fatter—if you looked closely you could see that many of the leaf buds had burst open. Ah-Fat’s blue cotton shoes left faint marks on the bare earth but did not raise any dust. Instead, the earth had begun to give out a gentle dampness.

As Ah-Fat walked into his house, he smelled grass burning fragrantly in the stove. A servant was busy preparing the midday meal. Mrs. Mak sat in the front room, podding peas. She may have been blind but she had “eyes” in her fingers which unerringly saw the two ridges running down the length of the pod. With her thumb she pressed at one end, and the pod split down its length, dropping plump peas in a steady stream into her bamboo basket.

Mrs. Mak had extra eyes not only in her fingers but in her ears too. These “eyes” gave a light blink and saw the hem of Ah-Fat’s new gown brush the door sill, a moist hen dropping sticking to it, and float across to where she sat.

“Mum, take a break and sit in the sun for a bit. Ah-Choi can do that.”

Mrs. Mak continued to bend her head to her work. However, a crease at each corner of her mouth trembled slightly.

Ah-Fat knew that meant she was struggling with two conflicting feelings—indignation working its way up from her heart and resignation, which crept down from her head. The two conflicting feelings came to blows at the corners of her mouth; Ah-Fat had been familiar with this expression of his mother’s ever since he was a child. He saw it every time his father got into a fight or smoked opium or he or Ah-Sin failed to collect enough grass for the pigs.

“All morning they waited for you,” she said.

Ah-Fat suddenly remembered that today was the day he was supposed to meet the family of his betrothed.

“What a dope I am. When I got up this morning, it went clean out of my head!” He clapped his forehead in exasperation.

“It’s nearly twenty li so they had to set off while it was still dark. Then they just turned around and went straight home, and refused even a bite to eat.”

Ah-Fat fetched a stool and sat down beside his mother to help her with the peas. They were small and he had big hands. Without the advantage of Mrs. Mak’s deft fingertips, he groped blindly at the pod and felt the peas squeeze through the cracks between his fingers and shoot off in all directions.

The creases at the corners of his mother’s mouth gradually began to soften.

Ah-Fat’s hands suddenly slowed and she heard a sigh—or rather, to put it more accurately, she saw the sigh. The “eyes” in her ears strained to see where, in her son’s heart, this sigh had emanated from. Then it gradually rose to his eyebrows where a tiny knot formed at the spot where the eyebrows met. Finally, it fell heavily into the basket, scattering the peas.

“Such a pity,” sighed Ah-Fat.

Mrs. Mak suppressed a smile—her son might have been away in Gold Mountain living with those devils of White people for all those years, but he was still as good-hearted as ever.

“It’s not the end of the world. Get Ha Kau to take you over tomorrow. You can go and see them and say sorry, and that’ll be the end of it. They’re reasonable people.”

She had misunderstood but Ah-Fat did nothing to enlighten her. He carried on podding the peas in a desultory fashion. After a moment, he said: “That sister-in-law of Uncle Red Hair, she’s such a talented girl. Too bad she’s had such a hard life.”

Mrs. Mak shook her head. “Six Fingers certainly is talented,” she agreed. “But respectable families don’t care two hoots whether their daughters are talented or not, since they’re going to marry out, come what may. The only girls who get taught properly how to read and write are the pipa players in Guk Fau.” (She was referring to the child prostitutes in a high-class brothel.)

“But Mum, in Gold Mountain, boys and girls all go to school,” Ah-Fat protested. “If girls are literate, they can’t be tricked so easily, and when they get married, they can teach their own children.”

“Huh!” said his mother. “I can’t read a word but I’ve never been tricked. Didn’t you and your brother go to tutor school? What did you need your mother to teach you for?”

Ah-Fat laughed. “If you could read and write, then you wouldn’t have to get someone to write your letters to me, and you’d save all those eggs, and all that tea, and cash. You don’t even know what your letter-writer actually wrote. When I sent you a cheque, you didn’t know how much it was for, so you could have been cheated, and you’d never know.”

Mrs. Mak laughed too, showing all her chipped teeth. “Yes, you’re right. So long as she doesn’t cost too much in school fees or slack off around the house. Then when you have a daughter, it’s up to you whether you educate her.”

They fell silent. Mrs. Mak looked up. She could see a fuzzy brightness, so she knew the sun had risen to its zenith and the shadows cast by the trees in the paved courtyard would be at their shortest. There was a vibration in the “eyes” within her ears, and she “saw” hosts of worms rustling through the soil under the roots of the banyan tree in the courtyard. It was nearly the end of the first month of the new year. As soon as the earth changed, would be time for ploughing and sowing. Ah-Fat’s wedding had to take place before that started. Tomorrow, a day would have to be fixed.

“Ah-Fat, you little fool!” Mrs. Mak exclaimed, feeling in the basket. “Why are you throwing in all the pods?”

Ah-Fat roused himself hurriedly, to find he had thrown all the peas away and put the pods in the basket. He scrabbled around picking up the peas, and rinsed the dirt off them in a bowl of water.

“Is Six Fingers betrothed to anyone, Mum?” he asked.

“At the end of last year some people from Sai Village came here visiting relatives and saw the scrolls hung in their house. When they found out Six Finger had done them, they got the matchmaker to propose the son of the family to her. But Six Fingers refused. Her mum and dad are still alive but they didn’t want to take her back. That makes her really an orphan with no one to decide things for her. So she’s her own mistress now. But it’s not proper, putting a girl’s calligraphy and paintings on show to strangers.”

“Why did she say no?”

“She said the boy was illiterate.”

Ah-Fat pushed the basket aside and fell on his knees, on top of all the pea pods.

“Mum,” he begged. “Let me be my own master! I want to marry Six Fingers.…”

To Mrs. Mak, it was as if the sun had exploded at her feet, scattering a myriad sparks which peppered her eardrums, making them hum like a hive full of honeybees. When finally the bees flew away, she could hear the sound of her own voice, but now it was a thin, thread-like sound. Her words shredded and were scattered on the wind:

“Wretched boy! Have you forgotten? You’re already betrothed!”

“Of course I haven’t forgotten, Mum. But I don’t know her, and I do know Six Fingers. You know what a good girl she is and I really like her. When I was in Gold Mountain and about to starve to death, Mum,” he went on, “it was only the gold nugget Red Hair left behind that saved me. He was my benefactor. Now all his family are dead and there’s only Six Fingers left. If I marry Six Fingers, that’ll be my way of repaying Red Hair.”

“Have you got maggots in your brain? Red Hair was your uncle, so he was senior to you. He married Six Fingers’ elder sister so that puts Six Fingers in the generation above you too.”

“Yes, but I’ve thought about that too, Mum. Six Fingers is not related to us by blood even if you go back five generations. She and Auntie Cheung Tai are like mother and daughter now, and if Auntie has made Six Fingers her daughter, then that makes Six Fingers the same generation as me.”

“And what about your betrothed and her family, and the three muleloads of betrothal gifts we’re giving them? It’s all arranged. What’s the poor girl done to deserve having her engagement broken off?”

“Mum, if we let them down, it’s our fault. Of course, we can’t claim the gifts back, and we’ll give them two hundred dollars as well, to show we’re sincerely sorry. With that kind of money, they’ll even be able to find son-in-law to come and live with them.”

“And what about my reputation? I arranged this betrothal for you, and it was witnessed by your ancestors. If you turn it down for no good reason, how will I ever hold up my head in the village?”

“Mum, I left for Gold Mountain when I was sixteen years old and went through hell there. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have become a beggar and begged my way back home. I’m back now, who knows for how long, maybe a year, maybe a few months, but sooner or later I have to go back to Gold Mountain. I’m not afraid of hard work. I just want to marry a girl I get on with, who can make me happy and who’ll look after you properly when I’m gone. We don’t know what that girl’s like. But the whole village knows Six Fingers is a good and virtuous girl. Her needlework may not be up to yours but it’s quite decent and she’ll be a great help to you. Please, Mum, let me have what I desire!”

“The reason why her parents gave her to Red Hair and his family was they thought her sixth finger would bring bad luck and they wouldn’t be able to marry her off. Doesn’t that scare you off her?”

“Her parents are just ignorant. Magistrate Huang has a sixth finger too, and he’s in charge of a whole county of five-fingered people. Maybe Six Fingers is destined to become rich and powerful! Besides, she does all the villagers’ scrolls for their family events, doesn’t she? I’ve never heard that she’s brought them bad luck.”

His mum gripped the pods in hands which trembled slightly. The juice ran out between the fingers and trickled across the wrinkled skin of the back of her hand.

“You can’t back out of that betrothal, I’d lose too much face. You can marry Six Fingers, but as a second wife. Go and see your future father-in-law tomorrow with Ha Kau, and see if he’ll agree to you marrying his daughter first, and then marrying Six Fingers.”

Ah-Fat was about to say something more but his mother was already on her feet and hobbling off towards the kitchen without the aid of her stick.

“We’ll have to get her horoscope done first. That’s just as important for a second wife as for the first. Our family has only been at peace for a few years. We can’t have a woman bring calamity on us.”

When Auntie Cheung Tai had seen off her guest and went into the back room of the house, she found Six Fingers sewing. She was altering a lined jacket which had been left to her by her elder sister. It was made of a silk weave, not the most expensive kind but almost new, and had been kept in a trunk for a few years. By the time Six Fingers remembered it, there were a couple of moth holes, but fortunately they were in the sleeve under the armpit and with a small mend would not show. The material was a sapphire blue colour embroidered with dark blue flowers—something an older woman might wear but still fashionable: it had wide decorative edging, a stand-up collar and big sleeves, rather like the Manchu-style jackets worn in North China. It would suit Six Fingers’ tall figure.

Six Fingers had finished her mending and was pulling the sleeves through. When she was sewing, she used her thumb and forefinger but the extra stump of a finger which grew next to her thumb wobbled as if it was putting in a big effort too. In fact, its efforts were just a distraction and it got in the way. Unlike the care she gave to the rest of her fingers and toes, Six Fingers paid no attention at all to this extraneous finger—it might as well have belonged to someone else and just have been planted on her. This contrary stub had nothing to do with her.

She might have had a completely different life, she thought to herself, if this finger had not butted in so unreasonably, changing it into what it was today. Was it a good life? She could not answer that question. She had nothing to compare it with. However, she did secretly wonder if, without this extra stub of a finger, fate might have offered her another kind of life.

Auntie Cheung Tai put down a packet in her hand and sat beside the girl. The packet was wrapped in thick yellow paper with a strip of festive red paper stuck on top. Even though it was sealed, it was obvious from the grease which had seeped through that it contained cakes bought in a shop in town.

“Walnut cookies. Third Granny gave them to me. Have a bit.” Third Granny was the matchmaker in their village.

Six Fingers shook her head. “No thank you, I’m not hungry.” This was only partly true. She was not hungry because she had just had a large bowl of sweet potato porridge and felt completely full up. But she would have liked a bit of cookie. Since her elder sister died, she had rarely tasted fatty food, in fact she had not even seen much of it. Just seeing the grease mark on the packaging made her think of the shape, flavour, colour and texture of the delicacy inside it, and made her mouth water.

Auntie Cheung Tai stroked the jacket lying on the table and tut-tutted. “Silk from Three Gold Circles.… No one else in the village has anything like it. Your sister certainly knew how to shop. Why are these sleeves so short? They’ll only reach your elbows.” But Six Fingers picked the jacket up and held it up against the older woman. “They’re not short, they’re just right.” “That can’t be for me!” Auntie Cheung Tai exclaimed, flapping her hands in agitation. “It’s not the right style for an old woman like me!”

Even as she shook her head in protest, the corners of her lips curled in a moist little smile which told Six Fingers that she really liked the style. A few days before, she had been boiling up the piglets’ food and sparks from the fire had burned several large holes in her old lined jacket. She could not mend it—the jacket was too heavily patched for that.

“Did you hear what Third Granny said?” she asked as she snipped the ends of the threads for Six Fingers.

Six Fingers neither nodded nor shook her head but stayed silent.

“He’s a decent man—you’ve met him, he’s spoken to you. He’s a good man and fine-looking. It’s just a pity he has that scar on his face. Well, you’ve seen that too. Not like when I got married. My head was covered with the wedding veil so I could hardly see anything of my new home and husband. It was only when the veil came off that I saw his face was covered in pockmarks.”

Still Six Fingers said nothing. There was no sound in the room apart from the hiss of the needle and thread being pulled through the material.

“You’ve lived with me for years,” Auntie Cheung Tai went on. “And even though I’m not your birth mother, I’m almost a mother to you. I can take care of this for you. Being junior wife to a Gold Mountain man isn’t the same as with other families. There you’d have to put up with the mother-in-law and the first wife’s bad temper. But ten to one, this Gold Mountain man would take you back with him and you could be happy together in Gold Mountain, and leave the first wife to look after the family back here. That’s what all Gold Mountain men do.

“He’ll marry his first wife at the end of the first month, then two months later, he’ll marry you. After he’s spent a year or so in the village, if you both get pregnant, then he might be holding two ‘Gold Mountain babies’.”

Six Fingers’ sewing came to a halt and her fingers froze in mid-air. Only her extra finger continued to tremble like a startled dragonfly.

“They’ve prepared the betrothal gifts and they’ve been very considerate. They didn’t want to offend you so you’ll get almost the same amount as the first wife. I can see he’s really taken a fancy to you. If he hadn’t already been betrothed, you might have been his first wife. First wife, junior wife, it really doesn’t mean anything. He likes you so he’ll naturally treat you better. It’s just like with the emperors of old: whomever they really loved became the favourite concubines, and never mind the empress.”

Six Fingers put the jacket down, got up and went towards the stove. When the fire was out, it was a dark corner and the gloom swallowed her up as if she had been enveloped in a dark cloth. She had disappeared but Auntie Cheung Tai heard a rustle as she reached for something.

“Mother Cheung Tai, I don’t want to go to that family.” Her soft voice came through the mantle of darkness.

“Why? You usually get on with Auntie Mak, and Ah-Fat is certainly good to you. Is it the scar that bothers you?”

Six Fingers said nothing. There was a heavy silence, thick as a blob of lumpy ink. After a long pause, it dissolved a little and a trembling voice floated out:

“They’re all good people.”

Auntie Cheung Tai heaved a sigh. “Then how can you not agree, you silly girl?”

“Mother Cheung Tai, I … I won’t be a junior wife.”

The older woman sighed. “Six Fingers, you were eighteen this New Year. At that age, a girl’s more than ripe for marriage. You’ll end up an old maid if you don’t. Last year you could have married that man, and been his first wife too. But you refused, and I was with you there. He really wasn’t right for you. But Ah-Fat’s exactly the kind of man you need. It’s just your fate to be a junior wife. If you won’t accept that, you’ll end up getting old with me, won’t you?”

Six Fingers suddenly burst out of the darkness, bent over as if she had a heavy bundle of faggots on her back. She was panting as she said:

“I’m not going to be a junior wife, Mother Cheung Tai.”

The older woman’s patience was wearing thin and seemed as if it might break at any moment.

“If you miss out on this one, Six Fingers,” she said, “where do you think you’ll find another man that doesn’t care about your six fingers? Of course everyone wants to be a senior wife. It’s just not going to happen to you. You should give thanks to the Buddha that this family has sent this many betrothal gifts to someone who’s going to be a junior wife.”

Six Fingers had something heavy at her waist which she took out. She gripped it in her hand so hard that she seemed to be trying to squeeze water from it. It gave her courage and her words were brusque:

“I’m not going to be a junior wife, Mother Cheung Tai.”

Auntie Cheung Tai had her back to Six Fingers and was tidying up the sewing things. Her reply was just as brusque.

“This time it’s not up to you. I’ve already given our reply to Third Granny. The twenty-fifth day of this month is propitious. The gifts are all arranged.”

Six Fingers did not answer. Auntie Cheung Tai heard a dull thud, and looked around to see Six Fingers on the floor. Something dark red oozed over the back of her hand and blossomed wetly on her jacket front. The girl must have spilt the red ink she used in her paintings, Auntie Cheung Tai thought. Then she saw that a stub of a finger had fallen on the floor and lay shrivelled and slug-like in a sea of blood.

Six Fingers had used the pigs’ fodder knife to chop off her sixth finger.

Six Fingers hovered between life and death for three days. The village herbalist came, looked at the wound and took her pulse. His verdict was that the knife blade was contaminated and she had blood poisoning. He did not hold out much hope for her recovery.

When the news reached the Fongs, Ah-Fat was busy practising his calligraphy, copying out a famous poem by a Southern Song dynasty poet. He had chosen the best and most absorbent paper and wrote rapidly, in a free, cursive style. When he heard the matchmaker talking to his mother, his writing hand froze in mid-air and a blob of black ink fell from the wolf-hair brush, spoiling the paper.

When Ah-Fat emerged, the matchmaker had gone. A hen in the yard had just laid an egg and was flapping and clucking around Mrs. Mak hoping for some grains of rice as a reward. Ah-Fat threw a stone at it. There was pandemonium as squawking hens took refuge on the fence, filling the yard with a flurry of wings. Mrs. Mak brushed off a chicken feather which had stuck to her face. “The pot of sticky rice is still hot,” she said. “Shall I get Ah-Choi to bring you some?”

Ah-Fat did not answer. Although his mother could not see him, she could tell his face had grown as dark as a thundercloud. His heavy silences were more and more oppressive to her. She felt as if her whole body was being crushed flat under their weight. Her son’s heart had turned to stone and she felt incapable of making any impression on it. She racked her brains for something to say. Her voice came out weedy and etiolated.

“I’ll send a message with Ah-Choi to Auntie Cheung Tai. We’ll pay for three days of Daoist ceremonies, to expiate the soul of the dead girl.”

Her words seemed to fall like a pebble into ancient still waters. It was some time before the ripples gradually appeared on the surface.

“Six Fingers isn’t dead yet, Mum.”

“The herbalist said to prepare for the funeral.”

Ah-Fat made no sound. She strained to stare with the “eyes” in her ears, but they suddenly seemed to have grown opaque. Now she knew she was completely blind. Never again would she see into her son’s heart.

“I’m going to find out when the next boat for Gold Mountain leaves, Mum.”

Her son had changed his clothes and put on his shoes and was off to inquire about the boat—when it suddenly dawned on Mrs. Mak that she was being very foolish. Every brick and tile of their house, every field and every beast they owned, every grain of rice in the bowls of everyone from mistress to minions, had come to them thanks to Ah-Fat’s bank drafts. She had been under the impression that she commanded her son, but now she realized that actually it was her son who commanded the whole family. He was master of all their fates; the whole family’s continued existence depended on his loyalty to her. If she lost his heart, then they were all lost. She was filled with terror and muddy yellow tears gathered at the corner of her eyes.

It also occurred to her that Six Fingers had quite a few merits. She was capable, upright and had a mind of her own. When it came to important family affairs, there was no way that blind old Mrs. Mak or her weak and helpless sister-in-law could cope. What they needed, when her son was not there, was someone like Six Fingers to be the mainstay of the family. She had not permitted Ah-Fat to marry Six Fingers as his senior wife because she was afraid of losing face in the village. Yet face was only a veneer on the surface of their lives. Face without life was no face at all.

Besides, Six Fingers did not have six fingers any more. With the stroke of a knife, Six Fingers had altered her fate.

“Ah-Fat, tell Ah-Choi to get Third Granny here. I want Third Granny to say to Auntie Cheung Tai that providing Six Fingers pulls through, we’ll scrap the other betrothal, and you’ll make Six Fingers your first wife,” she said. “All this trouble can only be sorted out by the person who caused it. And she was born tough, that girl. Who knows, when she hears the news, it may bring her back to life.”

Mrs. Mak heard her son’s footsteps slow down.

“Right,” he said. “But I’m not calling Ah-Choi. I’ll take you to see Third Granny.”

Mother and son hastily left the house, Mrs. Mak hobbling so fast that Ah-Fat could scarcely keep up with her.

Third Granny went into Auntie Cheung Tai’s house and Ah-Fat and his mother waited outside. Mrs. Mak was gripping a handkerchief, which had been brand new and crisply starched but was now wringing wet. She could hear Ah-Fat’s big feet pacing up and down on the tamped mud pavement in front of the house and the sound not only grated on her ears but seemed to grate slivers of flesh from her heart too. She was as anxious as her son.

A long time later Third Granny came out. She seemed downcast and instead of her usual glib manner, she spoke awkwardly.

“She didn’t say a word, didn’t even give a flicker of her eyelids.”

“Did you ask Auntie Cheung Tai to tell her, or did you tell her yourself?” asked Mrs. Mak.

“Of course I told her myself. I spoke right into her ear. Too bad it doesn’t look like I’ll be enjoying your matchmaking gifts. The herbalist says it’ll be tonight.”

On the way home, Mrs. Mak could not keep up with her son. She felt as if the heavens above had caved in on her. She could hardly drag her little “lotus” bound feet along and the walking stick in her hand seemed to groan mournfully under her weight.

“Ah-Fat, if you really want to leave, I can’t stop you, but at least wait until Six Fingers is buried,” she shouted hoarsely after him.

In the middle of the night, Auntie Cheung Tai went to relieve herself in the backyard and heard a strange sound. It was something like a draught whistling through cracks in the wall or the earth drinking in a fine drizzle. She looked up at the frangipani tree but it was not moving; she felt its trunk but it was not wet. It was a dry, still night. Holding up her trousers, she groped her way to where the sound was coming from—and arrived at Six Fingers’ bed.

“Porridge … porridge.…” the girl mumbled.

2004

Hoi Ping County, Guangdong Province

In the morning, Amy was woken by the phone. Confused about where she was, she sat up and opened her eyes. White spots like flowers or butterflies seemed to be dancing on the walls. She finally realized it was the sun’s rays filtering in through the curtains.

She had a splitting headache, and the relentless ringing of the telephone seemed to hammer away at the cracks in her skull, pounding tiny sparks from it.

“How’s the hangover?” asked a man’s voice.

Amy had no idea who it was.

“This is Auyung from the Office for Overseas Chinese Affairs. We met yesterday,” he said.

Amy began dimly to recall the previous evening.

“Did I have a lot to drink?” she asked.

“You could say that! Not to put too fine a point on it, you got blind drunk.”

Amy jumped out of bed. “Impossible!” she exclaimed. “I never drink with strangers.”

“Then maybe you don’t regard me as a stranger,” said Auyung with chuckle.

“Maybe not. But how are you going to make me believe that I got really drunk?”

“You sang a song. In English. Over and over again.”

“No!” yelled Amy. “Impossible! I never sing. Certainly not in public.”

“It’s a wonderful thing, alcohol,” said Auyung. “In vino veritas, as they say. The song was ‘Moonlight on the River Colorado.’ In English. Shall I sing a bit?”

Amy said nothing. She used to sing that song a lot when she was student at Berkeley. She had not done a lot of studying in those days. In fact, she had spent most of her time on sit-ins in City Hall Square with her friends. All kinds of sit-ins, pro or anti one thing or another: anti-war, antidiscrimination, anti-exploitation. Pro-women’s rights, pro-draft dodgers, pro-gays. Sometimes, after a day sitting in the town square, she had forgotten why she was there. When she and her fellow students got bored, someone would strum a few chords on the guitar and they would all sing. The most popular song was “Moonlight on the River Colorado.”

That was all such a long time ago. How strange that a bottle of liquor should unlock those long-repressed memories.

“I must have made a horrible noise. When I was a kid, I only had to open my mouth and my mother would yell at me for singing out of tune.”

“It depends what you’re comparing it with. Compared to me, it was music to the ears.”

“What other embarrassing things did I do? Better have it all out in one go. It’s less scary than finding out in bits and pieces.”

“Actually I think you should have it in instalments. Otherwise, seeing me might send you right over the edge.”

Amy burst out laughing. Under that droopy exterior, Auyung was quite a character, she thought.

“So, Mr. Auyung, did you get drunk too?”

“I certainly felt like drinking, if I hadn’t had today’s duties ahead of me.…”

“What duties? Surely not another evening’s drinking with your bosses?”

“That’s only one duty. There are lots of others, for instance clearing all the remaining antiques out of the Fongs’ diulau with you, and persuading you to put your signature on the trusteeship document. Of course, the most urgent problem facing me right now is getting you up and dressed so we can go and have breakfast. The hotel stops serving breakfast in half an hour.”

“Ten minutes … give me ten minutes.”

Amy hurriedly showered—then discovered there was no hair dryer. No iron either. She rifled through her suitcase looking for the painkillers, but in vain. In the end she dug out a T-shirt that was not too crumpled, and a pair of jeans. She pulled a rubber band off her wrist and tied her wet hair roughly in a ponytail and flew down the stairs.

From a distance she saw Auyung sitting on a sofa in the hotel lobby, his eyes narrowed and with a foolish grin on his face. She waved at him but there was no reaction. It was only when she was up close that she realized he was asleep. Amy had never seen someone look so silly in sleep. She could not resist pulling out her camera and taking a close-up shot. At the flash, he woke up with a start. Wiping a drop of saliva from the corner of his mouth he put his head on one side and looked at Amy. “Yesterday you were a prof. Today you look like a student,” he said. “I prefer the student.”

Amy cocked her head and looked back at him. “Now you’re awake, you look like an old man. When you were asleep, you looked like a kid. I like you better asleep.”

Auyung put his finger to his lips. “Shhh. Best not to say things like that in a public place. People might get the wrong idea.”

They both roared with laughter.

“How come you’re sleepy at this time in the morning?” asked Amy. “One person’s morning is another’s midday,” he said. “I’ve already done two hours’ work.” He looked at his watch. “Right. We’re too late for the hotel breakfast. Let’s go straight to the diulau and then I’ll get the driver to go and buy some soy milk and a sticky rice cake for you.”

They got into the car. “What was my great-grandmother’s name?” asked Amy. “Her full name was Kwan Suk Yin,” he replied. “But when she was young, everyone called her Six Fingers, and when she was old, it was Granny Kwan. Hardly anyone knew her proper name.”

Amy thought for a moment. Suddenly, light dawned. “My great-grandfather was Fong Tak Fat and my great-grandmother was Kwan Suk Yin. The name of the diulau is Tak Yin House—they must have put the two names together.”

“Nowadays it’s no big deal to call a house after a woman,” said Auyung. “But in the countryside of Guangdong in 1913, it was considered very avant-garde. In those days, no one outside the family knew the names of unmarried girls. When a girl reached marrying age, the full name would be written out properly on a piece of paper, sealed inside a red envelope, laid on a gold-painted tray together with her horoscope and given to the matchmaker to take to the boy’s family. That’s why asking for a girl’s hand in marriage was also called ‘asking the girl’s name’.”

“Was she pretty, my great-grandmother?” asked Amy, remembering the eyes she had seen in the wardrobe mirror the day before.

“There should be a photo of her in Tak Yin House. You can see for yourself.”

Years twenty to twenty-one of the reign of Guangxu (1894–1895) Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County, Guangdong, China

The wedding took place at the end of the first month of year twenty of the reign of Guangxu. For many years after, the elders of Spur-On Village still remembered that day, even though they had only been children then.

The banquet began when the sun had just risen to the tops of the trees and continued till midnight with guests dropping in and partaking as they pleased … a “running water” banquet, it was called. The chef and his assistants had been commandeered from the famous Tin Yat Tin Restaurant in Canton city. There were six of them and they were on their feet the whole time, alternately preparing and chopping the vegetables and cooking the food. As time went on, some of the children began to make a racket. Their mothers beat them over the head with their chopsticks, berating them: “This is Uncle Ah-Fat’s big day. Don’t you go spoiling it! Get a bowl of food and take it home to eat.” The children were quick to catch on: obediently they filled their bowls to overflowing with something from every dish. They did not eat at home, of course. Instead, they ran off to play on the muddy banks of the village river, before going back to the banquet again. When their foreheads felt the blow of their mothers’ chopsticks once more, the whole performance was repeated. For many days after the wedding, no smoke rose from the chimneys of Spur-On Village as every family continued to enjoy the bounty of Ah-Fat’s wedding banquet.

The longer the banquet went on outside, the more the bride suffered torments in her bridal chamber.

In the small hours of the morning, Auntie Cheung Tai woke Six Fingers with the news that the helpers had arrived. They washed her, trimmed the fine hairs on her face and neck, dressed her and applied her makeup. A dazed Six Fingers found herself gripped and kneaded from head to toe by a dozen hands. She had still not fully recovered from her illness but the face powder covered her sickly pallor. Half a dozen women worked for several hours to get her ready. Then someone gave her a square mirror. In its reflection, she saw a stranger, one with a pearly-white complexion, pink-blushed cheeks and lustrous bright eyes. She smiled. The stranger smiled back and the jewelled headdress jiggled gently.

At midday, the palanquin came to take her to the Fongs’ house, though the distance was no more than fifty yards or so. The heavy mantle over her head left her in complete darkness, but this only made her other senses more acute. She could tell who the bearers were, which route their black cotton shoes were taking, whose dog was barking furiously as the sedan passed, how hot the sun’s rays were on the palanquin roof. She could smell the scorching heat of the gaze of the bystanders as their eyes burned through the curtains of her palanquin, and she could even distinguish fiddle in the welcoming band whose timid notes were slightly out of tune. She had not imagined that the road from girlhood to her new life as married woman would feel so simple, so trouble free and so familiar.

It was the first month of the new year and, although it was still cool, the icy chill that had held them in its grip in winter was gone. Her forehead and the palms of her hands perspired slightly. She knew she had a scarlet handkerchief tucked into her waistband and could perfectly well have used it to wipe her face and hands. She tugged at it gently—then put it back. It was a gift which the matchmaker had brought her from Ah-Fat when she delivered his written marriage proposal, and she could not bear to use it. Ah-Fat had also given her two bracelets, one gold and one silver, an eightpanelled, embroidered skirt in silk gauze, four pieces of satin and two pairs of embroidered shoes. All these gifts had come from Canton city. “Everything he bought in Gold Mountain for the first girl has gone to her and her family,” the matchmaker informed them. The woman had passed on Ah-Fat’s message but not what it meant, since she did not know, but Six Fingers had understood immediately. Ah-Fat wanted to start their lives with a clean slate, putting new wine into a new bottle and leaving the old bottle for the past. So when Auntie Cheung Tai grumbled that the Fongs had been hasty and mean with their wedding gifts, Six Fingers merely looked down and smiled slightly.

In return, Six Fingers had given to her new husband the traditional gifts a bride gives the bridegroom: a figure of a boy on a lotus leaf, modelled in flour paste (symbolizing a succession of precious sons), ten guava fruits also made from flour paste (symbols of plenty), a pair of shoes and ten bags of salt. Everything was put together by Auntie Cheung Tai except for the shoes—a personal gift which she had made entirely herself, from gluing the cloth and stitching the soles to cutting out the uppers and sewing them together. She had not let Auntie Cheung Tai help her in any way, not even by finding out what his shoe size was. The day that he and she had written the scroll together in the back room, she had found out his shoe size. She had measured it at a glance.

Six Fingers used two kinds of stitches for the soles: chain stitch on one side, cross-stitch on the other. Of all the women in Spur-On Village, only her future mother-in-law had worked the stitches this way, when she was a young woman. On the uppers, she embroidered two clouds, each in a different colour of blue-grey, one light, one dark, one half-concealed behind the other with just a slender “tail” showing. It took Six Fingers three nights to complete these shoes. At cock crow on the third day, the matchmaker was waiting at the door for them. The shoes were still moist from her fingers as Auntie Cheung Tai wrapped them in red paper and gave the package together with the marriage proposal to the matchmaker. Six Fingers suddenly felt as if her heart had emptied, as if those shoes had taken her body and soul away with them.

Bridal firecrackers welcomed her as she stepped out of Auntie Cheung Tai’s house, and they continued to pop and sparkle until the palanquin arrived. When she felt it tilt slightly, she knew the bearers were about to take her up the steps of the Fongs’ house. One, two, three, four, five. As they reached the fifth step, she suddenly remembered the couplets which hung on either side of the door, the ones Mrs. Mak had asked her to do. Neither of them had had any inkling that she was writing the scrolls to celebrate her own wedding.

Life was a strange thing, she thought, unable to suppress a small sigh.

The palanquin halted and she heard the light tap-tap of a bamboo fan against the door—a signal for her to alight. She knew who had tapped, and she heard its urgency. Under the thick veil, she felt her face flame as hot as a well-stoked fire. The beads of sweat seemed almost to sizzle. The curtain was drawn back and someone pushed something into her hand. She ran her finger over it—it was a key.

I mustn’t let it drop, she thought.

She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists until the key scored sharp teeth marks on her palm. She knew that what she was gripping was not just a key but her future—indeed, the future of the entire Fong family. From this day on, her life did not belong to her alone. It would be chopped into little pieces and mixed in with their lives. There would be no more “mine,” “yours” and “his.” The thought made her hands tremble a little, and feelings of both terror and warmth crept over her. Terror because she had lost herself—from today, she would be made up of fragments which did not form a whole. Warmth because although she was leaving her old self behind, she would gain what she had never had before—companionship, support and courage.

As she got out of the palanquin, someone handed her one end of the “wedding stick” and, holding it, she was led into the Fongs’ house. She could not see where she was going. She only saw scarlet flowers—on the hem of her skirt—dancing lightly along as they brushed the dark grey flagstones. She felt sure-footed. She knew who it was that held the other end of the stick. He would not let her stumble and fall.

With the customary bow to heaven and earth and the parents, she entered the bridal chamber. Outside, the wedding feast was about to begin. She heard the man tell Ah-Choi in a low voice: “Take her a bowl of lotus seed soup. She must be hungry.” The man’s shoes scuffed on the floor and she heard his footsteps retreating. She did not know if the man was wearing the shoes she had made for today. Ah-Choi came in with the soup. “For the young mistress!” she said. It took Six Fingers a moment to realize that that was her. The servant put the bowl down and went out, leaving Six Fingers sitting motionless in the chamber. The noise of the banquet outside came at her like the roar of waves in a typhoon. But her ears passed over the clamour and alighted on an almost inaudible sound—the sizzling of the lotus seeds and jujubes in the boiling-hot soup. Her belly rumbled in answer. It felt like hordes of rice weevils were gnawing at her. Not a drop of water or a crumb of food had passed her lips since getting up in the early hours of the morning. She knew the bowl was on the low table next to her. The sweet scent of osmanthus flowers rose from it and filled her nostrils. She only had to make a small movement with her hand to touch it. But she must not touch it. The bride could not go out to use the toilet until the guests had gone. She would have to bear her hunger.

The desire to relieve herself grew gradually. It started as an obscure, dull need which invaded her body. Then it became an insistent, acute jabbing in her gut, desperately seeking a way out. She felt as bloated as an inflated paper lantern, which the slightest movement might cause to split open. So she sat straight, absolutely motionless. She even slowed her breathing, smoothing the gap between her breaths in and out.

But her body rebelled. Her nostrils, beaded with sweat, began to tickle.

Hold it in. You’ve got to hold it in.

She was still thinking the thought to herself when her body shook and she was overwhelmed by an enormous sneeze. A warm gush of liquid coursed down her thighs, leaving a dark streak on her silk skirt.

She shot to her feet, hoisting up the skirt, and squatted by the bed. The warm urine spurted onto the floor, forming a dark puddle. She must not soil the bridal bed, whatever happened.

She pulled off her veil and bolted the bedroom door. On the bookshelf she found a pile of good-quality absorbent rice paper. She made a thick wad of the paper and, squatting down again, mopped up the urine, then threw the sodden paper under the bed. Fortunately there was only one wet patch on the skirt—her body heat would dry it. She picked up the bowl of soup and drank it all down. The liquid and the lotus seeds and jujubes made only a small dent in her hunger, but they at least served to boost her courage. She unbolted the door, veiled herself again and took up her position, seated upright on the bed. Even before the pounding of her heart had eased, she was suddenly overcome by an overpowering urge to sleep.

She was awakened by a fierce light; two glowing orbs seemed to shine right through her.

Ah-Fat’s eyes.

“Ah-Yin, I never gave you any of the nice things I brought back from Gold Mountain,” he said.

Suk Yin was the name she had been given at birth, but no one knew it outside her immediate family. For her whole life, she had been called Six Fingers, until the day the matchmaker had given the big red marriage proposal, with her name written in it, to Ah-Fat. Now it was their secret. And he had released the secret from its red packaging and given it back to her. A violent tremor shook her.

“Next time. Bring me something next time,” she stammered.

“There won’t be a next time. I’m taking you with me to Gold Mountain and you can choose whatever you like for yourself.”

Ah-Fat blew out the red candle and pulled down the silk curtain behind him. He said no more but his hands began to speak as he felt for the buttons which fastened the front of her jacket. The fabric was a soft satin but it was heavily embroidered with peony blossoms, leaves and branches and was as stiff as armour plating. The buttons were made from fine strips of satin coiled into elaborate knots in a cloud pattern, and it was with some difficulty that Ah-Fat finally managed to undo them.

He took off her jacket and was unprepared for the infinite softness of her body. His own hands felt like rough sandpaper that would snag the threads of its satiny surface no matter how careful he was. Thank God, he thought secretly, her body remained unspoiled—soft and smooth—despite her years of hard work. His hands hesitated, as if unsure how to go on. Then he heard a moan. It was so faint it seemed like a grain of dust brushing against his eardrums, but he also heard the pleasure contained in it. His hands took up their movements with new vigour.

Ah-Fat was in fact no stranger to women’s bodies. His knowledge had mostly been picked up in the brothels and tea houses of Gold Mountain, where he had learned how to go into those women’s bodies. He had gone into them countless times although his knowledge of how to explore the scenery within remained sketchy. He had always thought that these explorations stopped at the threshold itself—until Six Fingers made him aware that the threshold was only the beginning of the exploration.

Afterwards, the two of them lay soaked in sweat, catching their breath.

Six Fingers lay with her head pillowed on Ah-Fat’s shoulder. “Is Gold Mountain really good?”

Ah-Fat made coil after coil of the damp hair which clung to Six Fingers’ forehead with his finger but said nothing. When she asked again, he gave a slight smile. “Good … and not so good,” he said. “If it was all good, why would we all come home? If it was all bad, then there wouldn’t be so many Gold Mountain men, would there? Anyway, you’ll be coming. Then you can see for yourself whether it’s good or bad.”

Six Fingers sat up abruptly and propped herself against the head of the bed. It was bright moonlight outside, and the moon’s rays streamed through a crack in the curtains, pooling in her luminous eyes.

“Do you really want to take me to Gold Mountain, Ah-Fat? You won’t be like Auntie Cheung Tai’s husband … go over there and forget your family?”

Ah-Fat sat up too and crushed her in such a tight embrace that Six Fingers heard her bones crack.

“Six Fingers, I promise solemnly before Buddha that we will make a life together in Gold Mountain.”

Six Fingers freed one arm and put her hand against Ah-Fat’s cheek. Her hand had not yet completely healed and was still bandaged, which made her movements somewhat clumsy. With one purple swollen finger she gently traced the scar on Ah-Fat’s face, feeling a jolting in her heart as she followed its ridges and furrows.

“Ah-Fat, is it true what they say … that you got your scar in a fight in Gold Mountain?”

Ah-Fat retrieved her fingers and pressed them against his chest. After a pause, he shook his head.

“I fell. I was on a mountain track,” he said.

When Auntie Cheung Tai awoke the next morning, it was already light. She had feasted at the wedding banquet until midnight and had fallen asleep sprawled on her bed. When she sat up, she discovered she had not even undressed—she still wore the sapphire blue jacket embroidered with dark blue flowers. Her hair was a mess. She sprinkled water on it, used her ox-bone comb to smooth it down and coiled it into a bun. Then she sat in the front room to await her visitors.

She waited and waited but no one came. The paper which covered the window slowly changed from grey to white. She heard a chorus of barking dogs and crowing cocks. One after another, the neighbours banged open their shutters and she heard the splash of potties full of urine being emptied into the street. The children crying, their parents berating them, the footsteps of people going to market—every sound jabbed her until her heart seemed to hum with anxiety. Finally she could stay still no longer.

She got up and opened the door to the street, and found to her astonishment that her visitors had been and gone while she was still in bed.

In front of the door sat a large iron pot tied with red string. She took off the lid, to find a whole roasted suckling pig inside, shining brown and succulent. She examined it carefully. It was all there: head, tail, tongue, limbs. The piglet lay belly-side down on a white cloth. She pulled out the cloth and looked at the red streaks on it, evidence of the bride’s virginity.

“Merciful Buddha!” she cried, giving her chest a thump with her fist.

Then she murmured: “Six Fingers, you’ve really landed on your feet. Buddha’s brought you this far. What happens from now on depends on whether you’re destined to be lucky.”

In the spring of year twenty-one of the reign of Guangxu, candidates came from all eighteen provinces to take the Imperial examinations. When the examinations were finished, they waited in the capital for the list of successful candidates to be announced. It was an eventful springtime, the Imperial examinations being only one of the causes of excitement. The candidates swarmed into restaurants and tea houses and the frantic buzz of their debates filtered out through the cracks in the doors, walls and windows, down the streets and into the smallest back alleys, to be chewed over, in turn, by ordinary folk sitting in their courtyards after dinner or over their wine.

The candidates’ topic of conversation had nothing to do with the outcome of the exams and everything to do with a war and a treaty. The war cost the Empire of the Great Qing its entire Beiyang fleet. The treaty cost two hundred million ounces of silver in war reparations and the peninsulas of Shandong and Liaoning, as well as the island of Taiwan and the Penghu Archipelago.

This was the First Sino-Japanese War, and the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

Gradually, the candidates calmed down and they drew up a petition ten thousand characters long. Several thousands of them congregated before the Office of the Superintendent and requested permission to present their petition to His Imperial Majesty. Their demands: the treaty should be rejected, the capital should be relocated, a new army should be trained and constitutional reform should be implemented.

The tumult in Peking reached Ah-Fat’s ears through Mr. Auyung Ming.

Since Ah-Fat’s return from Gold Mountain, he had become firm friends with his old teacher. Mr. Auyung had been left a small family inheritance which was enough to support all the members of his household and he did not need to bother much with his tutor school. He only had a very few students, but his house was filled from morning till night with visiting friends and acquaintances. They were a motley crew: private tutors like himself, petty officials, rickshaw-pullers and Cantonese opera singers, as well as hangers-on around local government offices. They did not come empty-handed to eat and drink at Mr. Auyung’s table—they brought the latest news and gossip which they had picked up in the streets and markets. Most of it was about events at the Imperial Court in Peking, and this was precisely the kind of news that their host was most interested in.

Inevitably they were introduced to Ah-Fat during these dinners, and when they heard he was from Gold Mountain and was literate, they plied him with questions: What kind of constitution did Gold Mountain have? Did the common people live decently and in peace? There was a queen, Ah-Fat told them, but she did not govern. The country was governed by Parliament, whose members did not depend on passing the Imperial examinations, or on the Queen’s favour. They were elected by the common people. A member of Parliament had to curry favour with the common people so that they would vote for him. “You’re one of the common people,” said the other guests. “Do they try and curry favour with you?” Ah-Fat sighed: “The likes of us are just coolies. The Gold Mountain government doesn’t give us the right to vote.”

Mr. Auyung thumped the table with his fist so hard that the rice grains jumped out of the bowls onto the floor. “Our emperor has studied Western sciences, and he knows what’s good about the West. If it wasn’t for that person who gets in his way, we’d have had a new government like a Western government long ago.”

Everyone knew who he was referring to, and they lowered their voices. The rickshaw-puller got up to shut the door firmly before saying quietly into Mr. Auyung’s ear: “Over in Sanwui, they’ve just set up a new party and they’re armed with weapons. They say they’re going to raise money and send hired assassins to Peking to kill that old woman and clear the way for the young emperor.”

Ah-Fat was horrified when he heard this. He pulled at Mr. Auyung’s sleeve: “Aren’t you afraid of being killed yourself, if you allow this kind of wild talk?” But his friend just roared with laughter: “Her days are numbered, can’t you see? Who knows who’ll die first?”

Just as Ah-Fat was seeing off Mr. Auyung, who had come to visit him that day, Six Fingers went into labour.

The midwife hung a large red curtain over the door. No one was allowed in except Ah-Choi, the servant. Behind the curtain, Six Fingers moaned and groaned. Her moans at first sound stifled as if she had stopped her mouth with cotton wool. Later they turned into hoarse, pitiful wails. Ah-Choi came out of the room carrying a wooden bowl and emptied into the gutter. The water in the bowl was red with blood. A vision of his father butchering pigs suddenly came into Ah-Fat’s mind and he made dash for the bedroom door. His way was blocked by his mother.

“It’s what every woman goes through in childbirth. She’s just got to put up with it. It’ll soon be over. And if you get sight of her blood, it’ll bring disaster on all of us. There’s no way you’re going in there.”

Mrs. Mak told the servants to light incense, knelt down in front of her late husband’s portrait and made a trembling kowtow. Ah-Fat could not stay in the house any longer. He rushed out of the courtyard and over the road, and sat down with his back propped against a tree and his hands clamped over his ears.

After he had been sitting there an hour or so, Ah-Choi came running out of the courtyard gasping for breath. Her jacket was spattered with blood, and her lips trembled as she tried to speak. Finally, she stammered out the momentous news: “It’s a boy. A boy.…”

Ah-Fat got to his feet. It felt as if all the suns in the heavens were bathing him with light from all directions, leaving not a shadow in sight. He hurried indoors, his legs so weak he was afraid they might give way under him.

In the bedroom, Six Fingers lay in the bed, her sweaty head askew on the pillow and her lips covered in purple teeth marks. Beside her lay a cloth bundle, tightly bound, with just a head showing at the top. The face looked just like an old yam left out in the fields to get wrinkly and frosted. It was not a pretty sight, but it made his heart melt all the same. Ah-Fat picked up the bundle in his arms, carefully, awkwardly, as if he was holding delicate china that might shatter.

The baby suddenly opened his eyes, squirmed vigorously and let out a wail so ear-splitting it set the roof beams trembling and the motes of dust dancing.

Six Fingers’ eyelids were so heavy they might have been weighed down under pools of sludge. Her lips formed the question “What shall we call him?” but no sound came out.

All siblings and cousins of the same generation in the family shared a first given name. For this generation, it was Kam. Ah-Fat had been thinking about names for a few months and had settled on one name for a boy, and another for a girl.

But when he saw the teardrops rolling down his baby’s face, he suddenly changed his mind. He remembered that examination candidate from Taiwan kneeling with the petition before the Office of the Superintendent in Peking, sobbing: “Give us back our rivers and mountains!” They would call him “shan” meaning “mountains.”

“Kam Shan, that’s his name,” Ah-Fat said to Six Fingers.

Perhaps by the time Kam Shan had grown up, the rivers and mountains of the Empire of the Great Qing would no longer be in the sorry state they were in now, he thought.

When Kam Shan was a month old, Ah-Fat left for Gold Mountain again. But before he went, he took Six Fingers and the baby to pay respects to the tomb of Red Hair and Mrs. Kwan. The space for Red Hair was no longer empty—in it had been buried the Chinese fiddle and a suit of old clothes. The tomb had been sealed. After all those years, it was during this eventful springtime that the spirits of Red Hair and his wife were finally reunited.

“From now on, so long as my first-born son is alive to burn incense to me, there will always be someone to light incense at your tomb too,” said Ah-Fat, making a deep kowtow to the tombstone.