Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [266]
Ah-Hsien had begun to dress differently too. She still wore the old-style tunic but added a leather belt which she had begged from Mrs. Wong of the work team as a fashion accessory. Every day when she got up, the first thing she did was to fasten it over her tunic. “What on earth do you think you’re wearing?” exclaimed her mother-in-law rudely. “If you want to dress up as a beggar woman, why don’t you just tie a straw rope around your waist?” Ah-Hsien said nothing but carried on wearing the belt anyway.
Six Fingers dated the change in her daughter-in-law to a meeting a month or so ago, when the work team sent by the provincial government arrived in Spur-On Village. There were three men and one woman. Once they had settled in, they called a meeting of all the villagers. Six Fingers was not as energetic as she once was and felt it was too much trouble to go so she sent Ah-Hsien and Mak Dau’s wife, Ah-Yuet, in her stead. The meeting lasted all evening and did not break up till midnight. When they arrived home, Six Fingers asked Ah-Hsien what the meeting was about. “We’re setting up a PPA and a WA.” Six Fingers had no idea what they were talking about, and Ah-Hsien explained: “The PPA is the association for poor peasants, and the WA is standing up for oppressed women.”
After that, Ah-Hsien was always off to meetings. Every time she came home, she would get into a huddle with Ah-Yuet and they would whisper together for hours. Six Fingers had no idea what they talked about—everything nowadays had a new name. Not only that, but Ah-Hsien switched from Cantonese and adopted standard Chinese, like Mrs. Wong from the work team. The difference was that Mrs. Wong was one of the cadres sent to the South to do revolutionary work, and spoke it very well, while Ah-Hsien laboured over the strange sounds and made such a hash of them she was soon the laughingstock of the village. Ah-Hsien did not think it was funny. She began to baulk at doing work around the house too. She no longer behaved like the docile daughter-in-law she had been and there was nothing Six Fingers could do about it.
Kam Sau and Wai Heung arrived at the entrance to Spur-On Village at noon. From a distance, they could see people milling around the clump of wild banana trees. They went closer, squeezing their way through the crowd, until they reached a huge pile of furniture: carved rosewood side tables and high-backed armchairs, a dressing table complete with mirror, a rosewood double bed, reclining chairs for sitting outside on a summer evening, dining tables and chairs. Everything was jumbled up together, and all of it had been brought out of the diulau. (The bed was the one Kam Sau and Ah-Yuen had spent their wedding night in.)
Villagers were still emerging from the diulau laden like ants with the Fongs’ belongings. The tailor’s nephew, Big Head Au, led the procession. Big Head was not his proper name, of course; his teacher had bestowed the name “Shun Fong,” meaning “plain sailing,” on him when the boy started school. But not even his own mother remembered that, and he was only ever known as Big Head in the village. Just now, Big Head was carrying out the old gramophone which Ah-Fat had brought back from Gold Mountain. The gramophone was top-heavy with the weight of the horn and Big Head swore. “What the fuck use is this, anyway? It’s no use as a cooking pot or a bowl and whoever gets it’ll have to find room for it!”
Kam Sau saw with astonishment that the person helping Big Head carry the gramophone was none other than her own sister-in-law, Ah-Hsien.
The majority clan in Spur-On Village was the Fongs. The Au clan were outsiders and in the minority. The Fongs had always owned and farmed the central land while the Aus had had to break their backs tilling outlying plots on the fringes. Even though there were tenant farmers in both