Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [1]
These questions started to form in my mind, dense and heavy. Of course I did not know that they would haunt me for many years to come.
A book. I could write a book about these people. I should, I told myself on the way home that day.
For the next seventeen years I flirted with the idea of such a book, but I was too busy. There were too many things needing my immediate attention: two academic degrees, a career as an audiologist, the right man to marry, a house I could call my own, a comfortable life in Canada. The idea of a Gold Mountain book got pushed down to the bottom of my to-do list. Every now and then, it would resurface, especially when I read in the news about the anniversary of the Vancouver riot, or the “Head Tax” compensation debate in the parliament, but I suppressed it as quickly as it appeared.
Then, in the fall of 2003, an unexpected opportunity presented itself to me. I was invited, together with a group of Chinese writers residing overseas, to tour one of the villages in Kaiping Canton, China, known for its unique residential dwellings called diulau, literally translated as “fortress homes.” These houses were built with the money the coolies sent home, to protect the women and children they left behind, since this area was susceptible to flooding and bandits roamed the countryside. Since the coolies were scattered all around the world, the style of the fortress homes bore clear marks of the country where the money came from. One could easily detect baroque, Roman and Victorian characteristics weirdly moulded into southern Chinese architectural expression, not exactly a piece of eye candy.
Through the help of a smart local resident, we were able to slip into a fortress home abandoned for decades, and not yet remodelled for public display. On the third floor of the house, we found an old wooden closet. To my great surprise, I found a woman’s dress. It was pink, embroidered with faded golden peonies and full of moth holes. I uncovered yet another surprise—a pair of pantyhose was hidden in the sleeve. They looked thread thin from repeated washing, with a huge run spreading from the heel all the way up to where the legs part. While my fingers were tracing the run, I was struck with a sudden surge of energy, like an electrical current. I could hear my heart pumping in my chest, loud as thunder, as I stood there, quivering with awe.
What kind of woman was she who owned this pair of pantyhose almost a century ago? Had she been the mistress of the household? On what occasion would she wear this elaborate dress? Was she lonely, with her husband away toiling in the Gold Mountain trying to make enough money so that she could afford such expensive things?
Once again I felt the urge to find out the answers to my questions.
Another two years would pass before I finally committed myself to writing this Gold Mountain book, an interval allowing me to complete my third novel, Mail-Order Bride, and several novellas.
It was an all-consuming journey, digging into the rock-hard crust of history. I travelled to Victoria, Vancouver, and villages in Kaiping, China, trying to find people with knowledge, direct or indirect, of the era of my book. I frequented archives at all levels, both in person and through the internet, as well as university and public libraries. I found myself shaking with anticipation whenever I spotted a special collection on this subject, or heard a friend mention someone who was the offspring of a Pacific Railway builder. I spent many a sleepless night thinking about a better way to find the answers to my questions haunting me for so long. However, I never really found the answers. Instead, I found stories. From endless pages of books and many a conversation with descendants of Chinese coolies, stories started to surface of people who braved the ocean to come to a wild land called British Columbia, leaving their aging parents, newlywed wives or young children behind,