All beings and things are in a dynamic state of change and transformation; nothing in the universe is absolutely static or completed; all is in unceasing motion because polarization, the source of being, is without beginning and without end.
THIRTEEN
Successes and Setbacks
AH DANG: MONTREAL, 1970
When most men might have been retired at sixty-eight, Ah Dang was still building on his success as a restaurateur. However, he had one more accomplishment to add to his businessman’s persona—he needed a car. As soon as he completed his driving lessons and got his licence, he bought a brand-new sedan. The car, a rich royal blue, was like a land yacht—long and wide. With two bench seats, it could accommodate six adults comfortably. The trunk, when opened, was like the maw of a hungry dragon at New Year’s.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, he could see just above the dash; anyone looking into the car from behind saw the crown of a grey fedora and not much else of the driver’s head. He could not quite see the back end of the car, neither in his rear-view mirror nor by turning his head, but he was not worried—hadn’t he learned to use his side mirrors at the driver-training school?
• • •
AH THLOO: MONTREAL, 1967–1978
Ah Thloo, Ah Wei, and Ah May returned to Montreal in February 1967. After the eight-month trip to China, Ah Thloo was pragmatic enough to realize she would not be able to live there. Things had changed too much and the Cultural Revolution was making life for returned foreigners very dangerous; it could be worse if the Red Guards continued to have their way.
Ah Thloo decided her destiny lay in Canada—her son and younger daughter needed her more than Ah Lai. She had also confirmed with her own eyes that her elder daughter’s tange fong, living conditions, in China were relatively safe, and thereafter, she ceased to cry with fear and guilt. However, Ah Thloo was still feeling uneasy about the difficult question of Ah Lai’s identity papers.
“Paper sons” and “paper daughters” were children who emigrated bearing someone else’s identity. Returning sojourners and their children who were born overseas might sell their identification papers when they returned to China, if the original holders had decided to stay in China or had died.
In 1959, one of Ah Dang’s friends had come to him for help. The man wanted to bring his daughter to Canada, but because he was not yet naturalized, he could not sponsor her. He knew Ah Dang had listed his daughter on his citizenship application. The Canadian age limit had been raised to twenty-five and Ah Lai, then twenty-four, was still eligible to immigrate. Ah Dang, knowing how much Ah Thloo still missed their daughter, actually discussed this issue with his wife. They agreed that because Ah Lai had refused to come just a few years earlier, it was unlikely she would change her mind about leaving her grandmother and fiancé so soon. Also, she was still in medical college.
The papers were going to expire without being used, so Ah Dang reasoned it was a shame to deny his friend a family reunion. His own dream of seeing his whole family together in Canada was now out of reach, but he had tasted the loneliness of forced separation and had the means to prevent the same thing from happening to his friend. True, it was illegal, and if he were caught, he and his family could be in jeopardy. Reluctantly, Ah Dang gave the man the right to use Ah Lai’s identification for his daughter.
Ah Thloo would have told their daughter, if she had asked, but she did not feel it necessary otherwise, as it might make her feel unwanted or unloved. Fortunately, while Ah Thloo was in China, the issue of Ah Lai’s family going to Canada was never brought up. It was considered unpatriotic in the extreme to even think about leaving the country; applying for an exit visa would have targeted the family for unwanted suspicion and scrutiny. Ah Thloo felt she had dodged a bullet.
Back in Montreal, the Chinese Presbyterian Church continued to provide social, cultural, and spiritual sustenance for Ah Thloo and her family. With the exception of Ah Dang, who worked, the family still spent every weekend there. Ah Thloo threw herself into the work of the Women’s Missionary Society (WMS). In addition to her responsibilities as the kitchen organizer for the church’s annual tea, she sang in the women’s choir, performed in Christmas concerts, and was an advocate on church policies. She spent hours on the telephone with the members of the WMS, discussing the merits of proposed new plans and developing strategies to get their positions accepted by the church’s governing body. She built a reputation for getting things done; her opinions were sought after and respected.
Ah Thloo had come back to Canada when its economy was reaching a post-war peak; the mood was optimistic and confident. Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson introduced universal health care, the Canada Pension Plan, the Maple Leaf flag, and the world’s first race-free immigration system. Between 1961 and 1971, Canada’s Chinese population more than doubled.
To celebrate Canada’s Centennial, Montreal was the site for the Universal and International Exhibition, known as Expo ’67; its theme was “Man and His World.” During one hundred and eighty-three days, from April to October, more than fifty million visitors, including queens, kings, presidents, and prime ministers, came to Montreal.
Ah Dang bought a season’s passport for each family member, and during that summer the family spent every offu day, his day off work, together at Expo. Ah Thloo considered herself an experienced world traveller and was now excited to have the world come to her. On her return to Canada from China, she had at first been alarmed by the long-haired hippie counter-culture. Girls screaming on The Ed Sullivan Show, wearing scandalously short skirts and bright makeup, were especially shocking after she had lived among the strictly enforced uniformed austerity of China. However, she was so relieved at having escaped the Red Guards that she let Ah May attend the fair accompanied only by her friends. She could not help but reflect on the stark contrast between the way change was happening in China, with indiscriminate destruction, and the peaceful celebration of new technology at Expo.
Ah Thloo wanted to see everything and, not wishing to be hampered by her husband’s interests, she visited Expo regularly with her church friend, Mrs. Leung. At eighty, Mrs. Leung was a capable, fun-loving widow. Having survived decades running a restaurant with her husband as the only Chinese couple in a small rural Quebec town, she spoke English and French. Both women were small and looked unassuming. Armed with her wide-brimmed, straw Chinese farmer’s hat, a folding camp stool with a pouch that held her lunch, a thermos of tea, an umbrella, toilet paper, and her Expo passport, Ah Thloo worked her formidable strategy for quickly advancing in even the longest lineups. While Mrs. Leung did not have to pretend she was old, they both somehow convinced people in the middle of the line that they were too feeble to start waiting at the end. If anyone protested, and amazingly only a few did, they would sit on their stools and pretend they could not hear or understand. Shamelessly, they got into all the pavilions in record time.
• • •
AH DANG: MONTREAL, 1967–1978
Ah Dang was relieved that Ah Thloo and the children had returned to Canada safely, though the situation between husband and wife had not changed significantly. He told her he had missed them; their separation had reminded him too much of his lonely, enforced bachelor’s life, and for a brief period, they did not argue. But he kept on working the night shift; it was easier on everyone.
Ah Dang’s one constant, affectionate relationship was with Ah May. He always looked forward to seeing her, for she never hesitated to greet him with a loving hug at the beginning and end of his workdays. He also came to depend on her to translate official documents, and she even completed his annual income tax returns.
With Ah Thloo, he settled into a new pattern of communication, using their daughter as an intermediary. “Tell you mada . . .” was less stressful than initiating a direct conversation with his wife. If he said “white,” she would say “black,” but the messages from his wife seemed less demanding when the words were filtered through their daughter. In this they had common ground, as Ah Thloo felt exactly the same way.
It was easy for Ah May to become complicit, for it helped to calm the domestic atmosphere. She loved them both and wanted peace in the house, but it didn’t always work. She watched as her mother muttered and stewed over a misunderstanding or disagreement, while her father, quick to anger, was just as quick to forget an episode, all within moments. Afterwards, he would smile conspiratorially, shake his head, and say, “You mada . . ,” lean back in his recliner, and resume reading his newspaper. When Ah Thloo noticed his reaction, her anger would be stoked anew, and she would accuse him of dismissing her opinions. If Ah May tried to calm Ah Thloo, her mother fumed, “You always take your father’s side!”
The relationship between Ah Dang and his son remained as delicate as a cobweb in winter. Ah Dang’s dream was that none of his children would ever have to work in the restaurant business—the hours were too long and the work too hard. He wanted them to be educated so they could have professional jobs. He was proud of his elder daughter, who had chosen medicine as her career, but the career path for Ah Wei was neither clear-cut nor smooth.
Not long before the family went to China, Ah Wei had noted some developmental abnormalities and was diagnosed with Klinefelter’s syndrome, a congenital defect that affected his physical and emotional development as well as his cognitive abilities. He found it hard to concentrate; academic learning was difficult and he failed to graduate from high school. Sensitive, artistic, and creative, he enjoyed working with his hands. Photography was a growing interest, and in this he had taken after his father. Ah Wei had recorded the trip to China on his palm-sized camera and had developed hundreds of miniature black-and-white photos. But neither art nor photography school were viable alternatives, in Ah Dang’s opinion. Hadn’t the boy’s uncle studied art? It hadn’t got him far—he never made a living as an artist.
Neither parent understood their son’s difficulties and neither knew how to seek help. It was nobody’s fault, but it was hard not to assign blame. Ah Thloo blamed her husband for not having been at home to provide guidance when their son was younger. Ah Dang blamed his wife for being over-protective. Ah Thloo resorted to prayer. Ah Dang gave his son a job at the restaurant, hoping that hard work would force him out of his “mood.”
The red brick building constitutes the 1240-1246 block of Stanley Street, 2004.
MAY Q. WONG, MONTREAL
In November 1970, the directors of the China Garden Café Ltd. bought the 1240-1246 block on Stanley Street. It cost two hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, with ninety-five thousand dollars down. The remainder was mortgaged at 7.75 per cent till 1987. The partners now owned their building as well as the successful restaurant. To help offset the mortgage, they collected rent from the apartments upstairs and from the other two businesses at street level.
Ah Dang now had money to spend on a toy, which he decided would be a car. As with all his major purchases, he selected the vehicle on his own. At home, he showed off the new vehicle to his family and their neighbours, strutting around it like a proud peacock displaying his feathers. He picked up Ah Thloo from the house and drove her downtown. It was his day off, but he couldn’t wait to show the car to his colleagues at work. Sitting in the front for the first time with her husband in the driver’s seat, Ah Thloo was petrified. She dared not say anything for fear of distracting him from his driving.
Everyone, even the cooks, came out to admire the car, inhaling deeply its new smell, caressing the shiny paint, and sitting behind the huge steering wheel. As they all swarmed around and through the automobile, Ah Thloo was served tea and almond cookies inside the restaurant. Gratified by their universal approval, Ah Dang collected his wife and prepared for a grand departure. His partners stood outside to watch and say goodbye. Waving, he stepped on the gas to pull out.
“Eeee . . . no, no, no!” was as much as Ah Thloo could get out before they heard a sharp Caa . . . rack ! and both husband and wife were thrown back suddenly in their seats. A split-second later, they heard the tinkling of shattered glass showering down on the back of their pristine car.
For a sixty-eight-year-old, his reflexes were pretty good—he stepped on the brake as soon as he heard his wife call out. But he was not quite quick enough to stop the car from backing into the plate-glass window of his restaurant. Stunned and humiliated, his blood pressure soaring, Ah Dang was determined not to be cowed. After dealing with insurance adjusters for both the restaurant and the car, he drove home. Ah Thloo was even more terrified and clutched the door handle all the way to the house, as if preparing to jump out. He never drove again.
Ah Dang retired in 1978, at the age of seventy-six. The limited company was dissolved on November 8, 1986, and the assets sold, whereupon the rest of his original partners also retired.
• • •
AH LAI: WUHAN, 1967–1976
While the situation in 1966 had felt relatively safe for Ah Lai and her family, they had not escaped danger. Not long after her mother and siblings left for Canada, her husband, Ah Haw One, teaching athletics at the university in Wuhan, came under suspicion by the Red Guards. Universities, as institutions of culture, were centres for revolt, and every professor was scrutinized.
The head of his department, a well-known leader in academic circles and Ah One’s mentor, had been persecuted for his former ties to the Kuomintang Party and sent into exile for re-education through hard labour. Ah One, as a colleague, was placed under house arrest in his dormitory at the university. For three months, he was investigated and his every action noted.
During his interrogations, he answered simply and honestly. He had never been interested in politics, nor in other matters having to do with the world in general, preferring to focus on the spiritual and inner forces of life. His questioners, cynical from the work they had been doing, tried to catch him in a lie, but it was impossible. Ah Lai had always described her husband as jake, straight—he was incapable of deception. Each day, the Red Guards watched him as he went about his teaching duties. During his private time, he exercised and practised qi gong, a meditation that focuses on the body’s vital energy. He was working to perfect his own method of channelling his body’s energy for healing.
While Ah Lai was able to visit him (her position at the military hospital in Donghu protected her from persecution), she did not learn of the specifics of his arrest until after his release. Having relatives on both sides of his family who lived in foreign countries had attracted suspicion, but records of Ah Dang’s financial contributions to the Chinese Communist Party, and Ah Thloo’s invitation to dine at the Great Hall of the People, might have helped exonerate Ah One. However, in the end, it was his prowess as a swimmer, his superb athleticism, and his abilities as a coach of successful teams that were the deciding factors.
Throughout the Cultural Revolution, people had emulated Mao’s historic swim across the Yangtze River. Ah One was one of the most powerful swimmers in the country, and he had led the school’s swim team at the annual reenactment as a tribute to Mao. The university needed him; the Red Guards dropped all the charges.
He also got a promotion. At the age of thirty-three, Guan Haw One became the head of the department of physical education, one of the youngest in China. From international competitions, his athletic teams brought back winning pennants that were proudly displayed in the university’s gymnasium, and his school became famous for its athletic achievements. Most importantly, he completed thirteen crossings of the Yangtze River. Much later, he would be listed in the Who’s Who of China’s Qi Gong Masters.
Ah Lai of course wrote to her parents about Ah One’s accomplishments, but she kept the secret of his dormitory arrest from them for thirty years. At first she was reluctant and afraid to write about it, as mail to foreign countries was subject to potential confiscation and review, and then, as time went on, life crowded the incident out of her immediate consciousness. But if her parents had known of the danger, would they have made more of an attempt to bring her family to Canada? Would she and her family have been allowed to leave the country? There were too many “what ifs” to contemplate. What was, was.
Left to right: Ah Lai holding Ah Thlam Moy, Ah One holding Ah Doon, and Ah Fuy, 1969.
PHOTOGRAPHER STUDIO, CHINA
In 1970, Canada established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). A year later, as the PRC opened an embassy in Ottawa, and Canada sent its first delegation to China, the United Nations officially recognized the government. On October 11, 1973, Pierre Elliot Trudeau became the first Canadian prime minister to officially visit the PRC. Ah Dang and Ah Thloo preceded him.
In the spring of 1973, Ah Lai received a letter from her mother. Both of her parents were coming this time, with a plan to visit family in Hong Kong and Guangzhou before taking a tour of China. She and Ah One were invited to join them on the cross-country trip. She had not seen her father in a quarter-century; she was now thirty-six years old. She and Ah One had three children: Ah Bing Fuy was ten, Ah Bing Doon, a son, was six, and their younger daughter, Ah Thlam Moy, conceived after Ah One was released from arrest, was four. Though they still lived in Donghu, Ah Lai had been posted to work at the central hospital in Wuhan.
Ah Lai brought the whole family from Wuhan to Guangzhou to welcome her parents at the train station. It had been six years, but Ah Fuy’s happy anticipation of a reunion with this grandmother set the tone for her siblings. Ah Dang picked up each grandchild to bestow a kiss. When he carried Ah Thlam Moy on his back, Ah Lai noticed the little girl snuggling up to him, obviously enjoying the aroma of his aftershave. At that time, aftershave and other personal care products, for either men or women, were rare commodities. The children stayed with Ah Thloo and Ah Dang at the Overseas Chinese Hotel, while Ah Lai and Ah One were again offered accommodations at uncle Ah Choo’s apartment. Ah Dang ordered refreshments to be delivered to the room. The highlight for the children was drinking fizzy orange pop, available only to foreigners, through hollow reeds used as straws; it was a memorable treat.
The children were lavished with gifts, including a new girl’s red bicycle (until then, they had all shared Ah Wei’s old bicycle, still a sought-after commodity), a camera, a new radio with AM, FM, and short wave, and a tape recorder. Ah Dang had brought tapes so the family could learn English. When they returned to Wuhan, they did use the machine, but before they turned it on, they locked the doors. It was still dangerous to be seen, or heard, to be interested in things foreign.
Ah Ngange, who still lived with the family in Wuhan, was apparently pleased to see her adoptive son and daughter-in-law; throughout their stay, not a harsh word passed between them. Since 1967, Ah Ngange had been surrounded by her beloved granddaughter and great-grandchildren, and she had mellowed. In photographs with the children, she was actually smiling. She lived out the rest of her life in relative comfort, and in line with her reformed character, she was to die peacefully at home, in 1977.
• • •
Ah Thloo and Ah Dang had booked a fifteen-day trip to see the highlights of China. The tour started in Wuhan and included Zhengzhou, Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. They were to fly to most destinations, be picked up in a van each morning, and dropped off each night at the door of their hotel.
At first, Ah Lai and Ah One were denied tickets—the tour was considered too bourgeois for comrades of the state. Luckily for them, the Chinese tradition of “connections” had not been eliminated by the red flag of communism. The tour organizer had grown up in the same village as Ah One, and he remembered the now-famous athletic director. The couple was charged two hundred and twenty dollars per person, an exorbitant price, but it was happily paid by Ah Dang, and they became the first Chinese citizens to join the excursion. The operator was offered Ah Wei’s old bicycle for the equivalent of around twenty-five dollars, for helping them.
Ah One with his father and Ah Lai with both of her parents at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, 1973.
UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER, CHINA
Since the tour was designated for Overseas Chinese as a way to show off the country to nationals living in foreign countries, the amenities were first class. The clients had three meals a day and were treated to local specialties. At each stop, they toured the most famous landmarks. The highlights included the major sights in both Beijing and Shanghai, Mount Song and the Shaolin Temple in Zhengzhou, the thousand-year-old Dule Temple and the statue of Kuan Yin in Tianjin, and the Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Nanjing.
In Wuxi on China’s National Day, October 1, they were invited to dine with the mayor. For some reason, Ah Dang was considered an honoured guest and sat at the mayor’s table, while Ah Lai and Ah Thloo sat together elsewhere. They were served the famous Wuxi Three Whites, a dish of white shrimp, whitebait, and whitefish.
Coincidentally, Ah One’s father was visiting from the Kingdom of Brunei, in Southeast Asia, where he had lived and worked as a building contractor for decades. He had helped build the new palace for the king. He joined the tour at Beijing, but, already failing in health, he suffered a mild heart attack and had to be hospitalized. Ah One stayed behind to keep his father company—it had been many years since they had seen each other and they took advantage of the time to get reacquainted. The senior Guan recovered in time for them both to rejoin the tour in Shanghai. He had taken a chance in going to the People’s Republic of China to see his son again; diplomatic relations between China and Brunei made it impossible for him to return to the country that he had called home. After the tour, when they all returned to Wuhan, he was reunited with his wife and lived with his family until his Chinese visa expired. Unable to extend the visa, he left for Hong Kong, where he had another heart attack and died, alone.
It had been important for Ah Lai to join the tour. Her father was going to be in China for only a short while, and she needed to spend as much of that time with him as possible. Twenty-five years earlier, she had been too young and too much in awe of him to try to get to know him. If she had been younger, her curiosity might have overcome her shyness, but she had been a teenager, herself changing too much to know how to cope with an unknown parent and authority figure. Now was the time to reconcile with her father. Earlier in her life, she had sought his approval by being frugal and a good student; it hadn’t worked out as she had hoped. Now she was an adult, but she still needed affirmation as his daughter.
Ah Lai at work.
UNKNOWN, CHINA
Ah Lai had imagined they would talk together—about his years in Canada and what he was doing now—and exchange views about modern China. She had expected he would ask her about her life and what she thought about things. Although she did not know how she would have responded, she used to dream that he would invite her to go to Canada. However, it was hard to know what was on his mind, what he knew, how he felt. He was not a talkative man. She would have loved to know, but could not just ask, “What do you think of the life I have made?” or more importantly, “What do you think of me?”
Back in Wuhan, Ah Lai took her parents on a tour of the large, modern hospital where she worked as a department head. She noted with pride that the staff, including other doctors, greeted her and her parents with warmth and deference. Of course, acting as the interpreter, she was reluctant to fully translate her colleagues’ enthusiastic compliments. Both parents just nodded and smiled; they asked few questions.
However, while Ah Lai’s and Ah One’s professional lives were satisfying, they had experienced very little economic gain. Everyone got the same wages, which were never enough to clothe and feed a household of four adults and three growing children. Much of the time, there were even more people, as poor relations from the village came to live with them, to help with the household chores and care for the children when Ah Lai was posted to different work places for months at a time.
What the tour guides neglected to show were the deprivations people faced during that time. In 1973, even without the Red Guards, the anarchy that was the Cultural Revolution was still going on. Its effects had spread to industry, agriculture, and even the country’s finances. The shortages of consumer goods and food had become worse since 1966; lineups for staples were longer and the portions smaller.
Food was rationed with coupons. Each person got one kilo of meat per month. Fish was inexpensive, but to get fresh fish, one had to be in line by 3:00 AM. People held their places in line with a rock and hoped someone would kick it forward, or would ask a friend to pick up the fish for a tip, about the same amount as the fish itself. Ah Lai’s family survived on legumes, tofu, and rice. She could remember every new piece of clothing she had had before 1985. The year her parents visited, Ah Lai was assigned a new apartment and additional food coupons in recognition of her foreign guests.
For the sake of her children, Ah Lai had to test the waters, hoping for a more permanent reunion with her parents. One evening, she screwed up her courage. “Father—could we go to Canada now? The children are getting older.”
True to form, he responded bluntly, “Your situation looks good here. You are a doctor. It’d be different in Canada. Without English, you wouldn’t be able to work as a doctor. Instead, you’d be doing thlange foo gonge, hard manual labour. You’d be better not to go.”
Perhaps it was all true, but while the words were not harsh, the implications stung like nettles. Not wanting to argue with her father and spoil the short time they had together, Ah Lai said nothing more and let the matter drop.
Discussing it years later with her sister, Ah Lai would say, “When everyone is in the same situation, you don’t feel bitter. We had it somewhat better than others; we’d have extra money from Father to buy a chicken or a fish. In comparison, we were much better off, wouldn’t you say?”
• • •
In China, the 1970s remained politically turbulent. General Lin Biao, formerly named Mao’s successor, attempted an armed coup d’état in 1971; it failed. In 1974, the Gang of Four, led by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, seized power and imposed a two-year reign of terror that rivalled the worst of the Cultural Revolution.
When Premier Zhou Enlai died in January 1976, millions of citizens travelled to Tiananmen Square to lay wreaths, poems, and eulogies at the Monument to the People’s Heroes. He had been the balanced face of the regime and the country mourned his loss deeply. Ah Thloo said a prayer out loud for Zhou Enlai’s soul.
Not long afterwards, an earthquake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale killed more than two hundred and forty-two thousand people in China. Some considered it a portent that the Mandate of Heaven was ending. Chairman Mao Zedong died in September 1976, his body embalmed and displayed in a crystal coffin in the Memorial Hall on Tiananmen Square. Ah Thloo, who was of the opinion that Chairman Mao had made it possible for China to become independent and proud, said a prayer out loud for his soul as well.