• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1222 0

who specializes in eye diseases. Kam Shan must be made to work, even when he is little, so that he develops a healthy mind in a healthy body. Do not let him become spoilt. When he is old enough, you should approach Mr. Auyung and ask if he would be good enough to accept Kam Shan as a pupil. He is a teacher of inestimable worth, whom I have always greatly admired. This year Vancouver is flourishing, and most of the Chinese have moved here from Victoria to find work. I have done the same. Not long ago, I ran into a man I worked with when we built the railroad, Ah-Lam. It was a great pleasure to see him again and we discussed working together. As soon as I have got the laundry going, I will send dollar letters home to support the family. My last trip home exhausted all my Gold Mountain savings, and I have had to start all over again. The government is very hard on us Chinese and heaps exorbitant taxes on us. As soon as I have saved enough money to pay the head tax and your passage, I will bring you and Kam Shan over to join me.

Your husband, Tak Fat, the third day of the ninth month, 1896, Vancouver

A city is born in the same manner that a seed comes to life buried deep in the ground. The germination period is long, dark and quiet, and fraught with unforeseen difficulties. Conditions have to be just right: soil, sun, humidity, fertility, winds. Yet these very same factors can also prevent a seed germinating. A seed can lie dormant for a very long time—for a whole season or even longer—waiting for a fortuitous combination of the elements. Only then can its first green shoots spring from the soil.

Victoria burst forth like a green leaf, in just this way. Before the age of the railroad, water stimulated Victoria’s growth. The ocean breezes brought ships from every country and all corners of the earth to make landfall on the island. Waves of people surged ashore, blown by these favourable winds and currents, and along with them came opportunities for wealth. In this way, these long-desolate shores gave birth almost overnight to a flourishing green tree of a city.

But the train changed all of that.

First the train snaked westwards from the East Coast until it met the impenetrable barrier of the Rocky Mountains. Then, desperate hordes of men came to gouge a great hole in the belly of those mountains with their bare fists. Finally the train penetrated the tunnel made by these men and huffed and puffed its way to a spot on the West Coast across the water from Victoria. This spot faced the ocean with the mountains at its back. The mountains brought the railroad, the ocean brought the sails. The mountains formed the feet of the ocean, which, in turn, gave wings to the mountains. And so, the door of opportunity opened wide. Here, where sea and land came together, enormous wealth accumulated, multiplied and dispersed; accumulated, multiplied and dispersed again. Blessed by its natural advantages, this spot where mountain and sea converged quietly developed the power to transform itself. Victoria, surrounded by water, did not benefit from the expansion of the railway. Gradually, people began to see the city’s limitations. Suddenly one day, a thought struck them like a thunderclap: Why not cross the water and live on the other side, in the new coastal city?

Almost overnight, the new city on the other side of the water was on everyone’s mind.

At first, the Chinese in Gold Mountain could not get their tongues around the surname of the English captain. To them it sounded like snack, or perhaps a disease. It did not sound anything like a place name. So they chose their own name instead, “Salt Water Port.” Many years passed before their children learned how to utter the syllables of its proper name.

“Van-cou-ver.”

After Ah-Fat arrived back in Gold Mountain from Hoi Ping that summer, he moved from Victoria to Vancouver. Borrowing a bit of money from fellow Cantonese, he set up a laundry. It was called Whispering Bamboos, like the first one, but this one was in the yeung fan part of town. In the year that Ah-Fat had been away, rents had