Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [55]
There were couplets pasted to the pillars on either side of the door. The one on the right said, “Pairs of swallows on the wing greet the newcomer,” and the one on the left: “With a rat-a-tat-tat, firecrackers chase out the old year.” The horizontal one across the top read: “Good fortune comes with spring.” It was only the first month of the new year, and although the corners had curled up a little with the wind, they were still bright and new. The four dots at the bottom of the character for “swallow” had been done as thick blobs and looked as if the ink might drip at any minute. Ah-Fat touched them with his finger, but they were quite dry. He looked at the calligraphy of the couplets, which was elegant and spare, rather like the Slender Gold style of the Song dynasty. Old Mr. Ding, who used to write couplets for the villagers in the old days, must surely be long dead. Who was the author of this fine calligraphy? he wondered to himself.
Ah-Fat banged the door knocker but no one answered. The door was not locked and opened with a gentle push. He went in. The courtyard was completely empty. The sun had risen to the forks in the tree branches and their shadows bobbed about on the ground. Although it was a windy day, the courtyard was warm. In the corner, beside the bamboo drying poles, stood a crudely made pottery vase. Someone had picked a great bunch of all-spice blossoms and stuck them into the vase, and their gorgeous colour seemed to set the whole wall on fire. Ah-Fat took the flowers in his hand and sniffed—they gave out a lingering perfume. He sat down heavily in the bamboo chair by the drying poles and it gave a loud creak. He settled into it cautiously, and then pulled a newspaper out from the folds of his jacket and opened it.
It was the China-West Daily; he had bought it when he disembarked in Canton but this was the first opportunity he had had to read it. When he had left home for Canada, he did not even know what a newspaper was. He had only discovered them when the overseas Chinese from Malaya brought newspapers from back home to Victoria’s Chinatown. He opened it wide. The first page had a large half-page advertisement for a Dutch toilet spray made by Tai Luk Wo Pharmaceuticals: “Long lasting, aromatic and invigorating!”
The next page had a Watsons Drugstore advertisement for Scott’s Emulsion Cod Liver Oil: “Tastes like milk, very palatable, more than three times as effective as pure cod liver oil. The best cure for consumptive diseases. Works every time.” On other pages there were advertisements for sugar, wine, kerosene, handkerchiefs and sweatshirts. On and on—there were more than a dozen of them. Ah-Fat was astonished. Nothing was the same as before he left. How was it possible for Western goods to be causing such a stir all the way up the Pearl River? He wondered about the towns and villages of Hoi Ping. Were they still as cut off as before, a different world from Canton?
Among the advertisements, there was a column about the world of sing-song girls. The first item was a news report about a fire on the Guk Fau sing-song girls brothel boat, in which twelve prostitutes and six of their clients were burned alive. The second was about a pipa player called Bin Yuk, who excelled at Cantonese opera. The article read: “When Bin Yuk, ‘the oriole,’ begins to sing, she is exquisitely melodious, equal to our finest actresses. Few of her listeners are left unmoved.” The article then described at some length how she collected her fee from members of the audience: “She adopts a very severe mien when it comes to money. If someone gives her coins, she throws them to the ground—the sound they make tells her what their metal content is. If they give her copper coins or unusable tender, she gives it right back to them and demands silver. She will not take no for an answer. No matter how many times in an evening they ask her to sing, it is the same every time.” The article made Ah-Fat smile in spite