LOTUS FLOWER FOLLOWS A THREAD OF GOSSIP INTO MARKET and out again to arrive at the door of another of the district’s revered shamans, Reputable Wu Master, an unparalleled aficionado, according to the whispers, of ancient folklore to predict and evoke luck. Lotus Flower tells him she is hoping for a child, and he agrees to visit the Kwa compound. She is only weeks shy of turning twenty-three, and Ying Kam is now twenty five.
The couple waits with silver at the ready for the shaman’s arrival. Ying Kam is pacing when Reputable Wu Master enters with a theatrical upward motion of his hand, his sleeves fanning out and rippling with all the exaggeration of Chinese theatre. His palm assumes a pose of refusal, indicating money is of no importance, but the pair insists on paying despite his humility – in fact, it’s required that they do. The shaman shakes his head in pity at the young lovers’ simple earthly ways and his robe swallows their silver.
A Buddhist holy monk is soon to arrive, and with Reputable Wu Master’s elaborate performance pushing things past schedule, Ying Kam is keen to move proceedings along. He thrusts out an empty palm for the shaman to read, and Lotus Flower follows suit. ‘Why have we borne no fruit?’ she asks and quickly adds, ‘Oh, one of wisdom.’
The shaman straightens his back. He enjoys the adulation and wishes it would continue, but as Ying Kam seems hurried, it is with disappointment, Reputable Wu Master skips his usual chant and dance and accelerates his routine by accepting the offered palms. He shakes his head and furrows his brow, repeating these actions until Ying Kam says impatiently, ‘What is it?’
The shaman looks grave, shaking and furrowing one last time for effect. ‘No child will be born to this house.’
There is a stunned silence. Ying Kam and Lotus Flower drain of colour, grief-stricken.
Holy Monk is waiting outside, tapping his foot. When Reputable Wu Master leaves, he slips a coin into Holy Monk’s open palm as they exchange a passing greeting.
‘No child will be born to this house,’ Holy Monk also predicts. Ying Kam and Lotus Flower can hardly bear it, for they are certain the core of existence is to bring about children. ‘But for a price.’ Holy Monk looks grave and shifts his eyes from side to side to demonstrate the degree of confidence he is about to impart. ‘Yes, for a price I will get you your child.’
Ying Kam instantly regrets his impatient, ignorant demands that he be married off young. ‘Father was right about almanacs and superstition.’ The young man hears Great-Grandfather’s voice: The holy men foretell truth. Listen and heed their warnings. The image of his father evaporates, leaving a heightened sense of determination in Ying Kam. He resolves, then and there, to take control of Kwa destiny and dynasty.
So, on the advice of Holy Monk, Ying Kam buys a baby boy. The twenty-third generation Kwa firstborn son is adopted. The house is blessed and there is much celebration, with Holy Monk and Reputable Wu Master invited to enjoy a feast in honour of the new arrival. As they gorge on pork and dumplings, they forget to tell Ying Kam what will happen next: he will be blessed with thirty-one more children.
As the first of these babies arrives, the two wise men, replete from many banquets around town, have an explanation for the deviation from their prediction. ‘The good stewardship you have displayed with your adopted son has caused the gods to bless you for your faith.’ A thirty-one child blessing.
Ying Kam and Lotus Flower didn’t see the impoverished home their adopted son came from – not the bed of straw in the lean-to dwelling, or the birth mother scrounging for scraps to feed her toddler. They know nothing of her heart shredded with grief from watching her husband die, aged twenty, from a lung complaint she will never know the name of. The most basic treatment was beyond her financial reach.
By comparison, Ying Kam and Lotus Flower are millionaires. They name their baby Tak Wai. No one knows what his birth mother called him before he was taken from her in exchange for a few coins.
The year Tak Wai turns three, Year of the Water Snake, 1894, Ying Kam hits his professional stride, business swells to proportions worthy of red lanterns all year round, and his seed finally takes root.
To the couple’s surprise Lotus Flower bears Ying Kam a son. Two years later – twin girls, although one doesn’t survive the winter, dying of an ailment of no name and probably the will of demon gods. At the turn of the century, Lotus Flower is expecting another child and although there are concubines at his beck and call, Ying Kam decides to take another bride to further the Kwa lineage. She is fourteen, and his nickname for her is Happy Shadow. She bows low as she enters the compound, her parents following cautiously while also bowing low out of respect for the grand master Ying Kam must be. After all, he has his own compound with a courtyard and koi pond, and even his own drivers.
‘He must be a rich man indeed,’ they told their daughter when she begged them not to send her away. ‘Be grateful the matchmaker has found you a good husband.’ Her mother lifted a silk cloth from the dowry chest Ying Kam had sent and was so mesmerised by its shine, she seemed not to notice her daughter was there. At that moment, a sliver of the child bride’s heart turned to stone.
Now the family has arrived from a village, far beyond the Swatow border, with what the parents insist to Ying Kam is a modest gift – their daughter – in return for his most gracious generosity. After a ceremony of tea and some festivities, Ying Kam’s new in-laws, whom the Kwa family will likely never see again, bid a tearful Happy Shadow goodbye.
With now two wives, Ying Kam works his silk trade and sets his sights on Hong Kong, 175 miles away and two years in under British rule. He has the idea of opening a shop there to increase visibility for international customers, so he travels to the territory frequently to investigate, leaving his family behind for weeks on end.
Lotus Flower is Number One Wife, but rather than feeling empowered by her upper-status role, she is irritated at having competition. She becomes a snapdragon – with the slightest squeeze, her pretty jaws close. She campaigns vigilantly to protect her sovereignty and reminds all in the compound and village of her superiority, in every way, to Happy Shadow. ‘I am first and I am senior. Am I not more beautiful, more charming and pleasing than Second Wife?’ No one can deny Lotus Flower’s attractive qualities; however, that she has been surpassed in all of them by the younger girl, no one dares say to her face.
In her first marriage Lotus Flower was an excellent student, watching and learning from the older wives as she trained to serve Great-Grandfather. She was beaten and laughed at, consoled and beaten again. Now she is high in rank she brings lessons from the old family compound to the new. But the shiny serpent door-knocker and freshly carved lions know she will do well to hide her jealousy, as such vanity will surely attract a beating from Ying Kam when he returns this time. Her abuse must be considered and cunning. Ruo rou qiang shi. The weak are prey to the strong, she thinks. Lotus Flower, who did not come down in the last rainfall, realises that Happy Shadow – having also been exiled from her family to endure a life of broken feet and broken dreams – may be prone to her own ideas.
And she is right. With no doubt of her worthiness of first place in the heart of her husband and in his household, Happy Shadow takes to the town with her own campaign. ‘Why does her husband need a second wife if the first is so good?’ she whispers to a fishmonger as she collects her order. ‘Would you not rather look upon me than her?’ Happy Shadow asks in a teashop, as she reaches to select Ying Kam’s leaves of choice, seductively revealing a slim ankle as she gently sweeps her cape aside.
The village does love gossip.
‘It’s true, Second Wife is younger and prettier than First Wife.’
‘Perhaps she is also a stronger type than First Wife.’
Stories spread like silken sheets on a freshly made bed and loyalties shift like bitter beans in a bowl of fragrant rice. According to who is speaking and with whom, villagers make sweet and sour alliances; like golden pheasants they watch and wait for more gossip on the Kwas. In between Hong Kong expeditions, honourable husband Ying Kam visits Happy Shadow in her bed. The low lantern and smell of musk and wild honey is more inviting than the worn-out mattress and dull clove odour of First Wife, and Ying Kam has grown weary of her constant insecure posturing. Besides, her body has borne so many progeny for him, it is beginning to sag and lacks the lustre of his nubile new wife’s form.
‘All Lotus Flower does is nag and complain.’ Happy Shadow self-assuredly assesses her appearance in a long mirror framed with phoenix tail wood. ‘I will be all my husband needs from now on.’
She blesses House of Kwa with one child, and then another, determined her birthrate will surpass that of Lotus Flower, and that she will hang on to her figure.
‘That will teach First Wife,’ the villagers whisper.’ She should not have fixed her glance behind but rather looked in front.’ They are right: Lotus Flower’s jealousy evokes the slow unravelling of her silken belts like snakes uncoiling and slithering towards her throat.
On his next trip away Ying Kam opens a shop at number 16 Pedder Street, a thoroughfare on the North Shore of Hong Kong Island, and calls it Swatow Lace. His half-brother Eng Lee, first son of Great-Grandfather’s replacement Number Four Wife is already living in Hong Kong and, during Ying Kam’s frequent visits to the territory, the two have reunited over yuenyeung yinyeung, a mixture of three parts coffee and seven parts milk tea, overlooking the harbour. Eng Lee brings to the business his advanced accounting and bookkeeping know-how. He’s a Kwa on the ground, eyes and ears for Ying Kam.
With the population burgeoning under the one Kwa roof, in Swatow, it becomes apparent that adopted first son, Tak Wai, has served his purpose.
‘Tak Wai is not Kwa blood,’ says Reputable Wu Master, after claiming to have received a sign from the gods. ‘Tak Wai must leave the family. His job is done.’
Immediately Tak Wai is demoted from Number One ranking and, not daring to challenge the will of the gods, he follows his beloved father Ying Kam’s order, ‘You must go.’
His adopted family bids a tearful farewell, and Tak Wai, his silk pockets lined with silver, and his heart painted in shame, returns to his peasant mother.
‘He would have married soon,’ Ying Kam reflects, turning his back on Tak Wai’s departing rickshaw. The sandals of the driver and wooden carriage wheels sluice dust from cobblestones to form puffs of grey cloud behind them. ‘But his children would not have been true Kwa.’
The vehicle turns a corner and disappears and Tak Wai is erased from the Kwa family portrait.
Happy Shadow has aged past thirty when, in the lucky year of the Fire Dragon 1916, another child bride appears with bound feet. Ying Kam is tired of nicknames and calls her by her birth name, plain and simple, Ng Yuk. She speaks only Cantonese. She is steely, no-nonsense, and positively terrified by the knowledge her job as Third Wife will be ‘utterly impossible’, ‘probably undoable’ and ‘the lowest honour of all’, almost everyone has told her. And yet it’s an honour her family can hardly refuse, given their poor circumstances.
She wanders on painfully folded feet to the marketplace down the hill from her new home. The fish barrels whisper, ‘Always better to be first,’ while the fruit carts moan, ‘She’s more like concubine than wife.’
Ying Kam is handsome and quite capable of kindness. But you qi fu, bi you qi zi, like father like son, he is prone to dragon outbursts and his temper has him reaching for his stick. He isn’t himself when he gets like this, the dreamer boy travelling on dragon hide to become the dragon itself. Sometimes he doesn’t know who he is. Servants cower, and wives use their wiles, but no matter their status or number all meet with blows from time to time.
The villagers regard Ying Kam with reverence for his many wives, children and accomplishments. The three women are famous in Swatow for their rivalry, and Ying Kam for his temper; stories of the Kwas are passed down as cautionary tales.
A musician plucks and strokes erhu strings on a street corner and the folk song ‘Paoma Liuliude Shanshang’ drenches the stiff air within the Kwa compound walls as the town vocalist paces the cobblestones outside, a dizi flautist trailing behind. The song is about being unable to resist loving all the beautiful girls in the world, and the fierce male competition for their hands because even the moon and stars woo maiden beauty.
Ng Yuk births her first son in the year of the Earth Goat. Babies continue to come forth from the wombs of first and second wives too, sometimes two at a time or dead on arrival – stillborn and cursed or making it through the night to die the next day, cursed too. This is the Chinese condition. But, despite sinister celestial forces bent on preventing their healthy passage, many Kwa infants cling successfully to life. The compound brims with children’s laughter – the peels of Ng Yuk’s firstborn among them.
Twenty-third generation Kwa is firmly rooted in Swatow, Japan has seized pockets once belonging to Germany, along China’s coast, and the Emperor has sent 140,000 labourers to help the British and French WWII effort. There has been a series of battles with Japan during the past few decades, and Ying Kam is only too aware of their effects on trade, but until now silk routes have been good to him. He counts his gold, imagining it is molten lava circling a giant dragon nest, hardening into a brilliant glow, and protecting the eggs inside. Kwa children line up to collect their weekly allowance, jostling and laughing.
The next morning, an unforgivingly cold January wind sets in and Ying Kam rushes past a dormant flame tree, on his way to an appointment with a long-time customer. When he arrives he warms his hands against a smouldering plate of hot stones in a paved entrance hall to wait for his contact. Moments later, the flame tree watches him hike determinedly past again. Bad news weighs on his handsome features.
England’s agreement to stop sending opium to China is affecting Kwa trade. The India–China trafficking heyday is over. ‘And now’ – Ying Kam twists and pulls a silk belt agressively in his hands as he faces Storm Boy – ‘now there are no British profits from selling opium to buy my silk.’
The gods close the tap and the Kwa rush of gold slows to a trickle. A molten bar of the precious metal slips from Ying Kam’s grasp, smashes to dust and disappears in a breath of wind whispering, ‘Hong Kong!’ Week by week, year by year, the pocket money dwindles, until there is none. The Japanese military seem always to be posturing towards China’s north east. ‘The Japanese are coming, run,’ the wind whispers again. ‘Hong Kong.’ Children jostling gives way to solemn foot shuffling, laughter to lip biting.
After his key man Storm Boy defects, Ying Kam’s syndicate of traders is undercut by competitors. He has spent sixteen years cultivating business relationships in his father’s shadow, and now they crumble into an abyss. Formerly loyal staff go unpaid and resign in favour of greener pastures.
Rumours circulate in Swatow. With so many Kwa mouths to feed and so much face to save, Ying Kam walks his compound corridors in a dense shroud of unhappiness. For Lotus Flower, Happy Shadow and Ng Yuk, a bitterness wends its way over their tiny feet and up their legs, green tendons wrapping around their bodies until they feel they will suffocate.
For years, ever since they reunited in brotherhood and business, Eng Lee has been encouranging Ying Kam to contact their father. It’s the last thing Ying Kam imagined himself doing, but Kwa blood is thick so he forms beseeching character strokes on calf-skin parchment. But Ying Kam’s words fall on deaf ears and blind eyes. Undeterred by the silence, he sends information to assist his father’s merchant activities, and finally the two find cooperation. ‘Nuren he shagua yong bu yuanliang. Women and fools never forgive.’ Great-Grandfather is far from the fool, appreciating the benefit of another set of eyes and ears in the sea port of Hong Kong. ‘Buyao jiang ni de haizi xianzhi zai ziji de xuexi zhong. Tamen chusheng zai ling yige nian dai. Do not confine your children to your own learning. They were born in another time.’ Great-Grandfather writes back to his son, wishing him well and agreeing to work with him. Ying Kam is pleased yet cautious and, refraining from asking his father for money, he writes to his brother instead.
Circumstances plummet to the point Ying Kam takes up work as a rickshaw driver, cycling day and night to keep the household, while he waits on his brother’s help. He chauffeurs former peers and friends, who look upon his sweat-soaked back with a mixture of pity and fear, thinking, That could be me next.
The wives quarrel over fish in the market. The villagers are accustomed to the Kwa women fighting, but now it is over scraps. The prestigious knife fish of the Yangtze River is no longer within their means; instead the Kwas eat local cyprinidae, full of mud.
Still, villagers relish this fodder for idle gossip. ‘Jia jia you ben nan nian de jing. There is a skeleton in every house. Every family has a problem it cannot solve.’ They speculate over the fall of the House of Kwa. ‘Fu bu guo san dai. Wealth does not sustain beyond three generations.’
Three wives stick close together. Three wives exist far apart. With three heads held high, denying three hearts scorched with shame, three stride towards survival, though their tiny feet can barely hold them up.
‘Meiyou renhe sunshi de ren shi fuyou de. He who has nothing to lose is rich.’ The enviable life of Kwa has vanished. There is no way Ying Kam and his wives can disguise this financial distress by dressing it in silk and calling it success – no, they must bear witness to its exposed skeleton. If a penny goes unaccounted for, servants, wives and children are beaten. Squandered food? Same penalty applies. Ying Kam runs a tight ship, Houseboat of Kwa, buffeted by a threatening tide of destitution; tossed by a storm of merchants, peddlers and thieves. He scans the horizon, searching for a life raft to save his family.
One floats into view. Ying Kam’s brother replies to his letter with the promise of money to relocate.
Ying Kam calls in his wives. To Happy Shadow and Ng Yuk, he says, ‘Pack all belongings and unwedded children.’ He turns the parchment over in his hands and is grateful to his brother. ‘Number One Wife, you will stay. Today we move to Hong Kong.’
‘How can honourable husband Ying Kam leave me?’ Lotus Flower asks. ‘I am Number One. I’m the only one responsible enough to look after the family – the only one to be trusted.’ Although bitterness has marred the sheen of her silks for years, she is struggling to make sense of her abandonment.
‘It is simply too far and too expensive for you to join the family in Hong Kong,’ Ying Kam reasons. ‘You will be safe and looked after here.’ But not by him: Lotus Flower’s children are obliged to support her into old age. They are already adults, married with children themselves.
She looks at Ying Kam, whom she has served by bearing him offspring he believed he would never have, and by absconding from her lowly fourth wife post with his father and pledging her life to him. Ying Kam exiled Tak Wai after he had served his purpose, and now as Lotus Flower looks at her useless feet, she realises she has served her purpose too.
Ying Kam is by no means without a heavy heart but chooses to follow his head. ‘Kongzhi ni de qingxu, fouze tamen hui kong zhi ni. Control your emotions or they will control you.’ Happy Shadow, Ng Yuk and a dozen children make the pilgrimage with him to Hong Kong. Most of these children are too young to fend for themselves, while others are old enough to work but too young to leave the nest. ‘They will help support the family,’ says Ying Kam.