Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [49]
It was furnished and decorated differently too. Outside, there hung from the wall two hexagonal lanterns, each face of which was covered in delicate flower and bird designs. Unlit, the lanterns were an unassuming, restrained shade of red. But lit up, that red illuminated the whole street with an intense glow of colour. If you pushed open the door and went inside, scrolls hung to the left and right. On the west wall, there was watercolour of the beautiful Xi-Shi washing gauze. On the east wall, there was a calligraphy scroll with a poem written in a flowing cursive hand:
Bamboos whisper of washer-girls returning home,
Lotus-leaves yield before the fishing boat.
If it were not for the mountainous pile of clothes on the counter and the coal-fired iron on the wooden ironing board, the customers might have thought they were entering a tutor school or a shop selling paintings.
The laundry was registered under the name of Frank Fong.
A month before the laundry opened, Mrs. Mak, of Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County in Guangdong Province, China, received a long-awaited dollar letter from one of the “town horse” couriers. In the envelope, there was a cheque for three hundred dollars. The letter was short and was full of smudges. Mrs. Mak was illiterate so she took it to Mr. Ding, who ran the village tutor school, and he read it out loud to her:
My most esteemed mother,
Your son had a very hard year in Gold Mountain last year and had no money to send home. My hard-working mother must have been anxiously waiting. But this year, I came into a bit of money and am sending you three hundred American dollars. Please write to me as soon as you receive them so that I do not worry. One hundred and fifty dollars belong to Uncle Red Hair’s wife and I hope you will immediately give it to her so that she can use it to send his boy Loon to school. The rest is for you to spend. Your son in Gold Mountain is fine, please do not worry yourself.
This was the largest amount of money Ah-Fat had ever sent Mrs. Mak. She used it to redeem the parts of their courtyard residence which had been pawned for Ah-Fat’s passage to Gold Mountain. Then she got Ah-Fat’s uncle to buy a few mu of land and hire labourers to cultivate it.
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