Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [83]
“Doing time for what?” asked Ah-Fat in surprise. “He was as honest as the day!” “Over the years, he saved up a bit of money, enough to pay the head tax and boat fares, and then he went back home and got married. The next year, the wife joined him in Victoria. She was practically the only Chinese woman there who wasn’t working as a whore in Fan Tan Alley or the tea-shacks, and she was good-looking too. Ah-Sing was worried and kept her locked up all day in the back of the shop. But he couldn’t keep the letches away from her. When he wasn’t home, they’d be up at the window peering in at her. And she was lonely; she couldn’t stand being cooped up all day every day. In the end she fell for one of them and one night she was off. Ah-Sing went after them on horseback and caught up with them. Then he went crazy. He slashed at them with a knife. He got the woman on the face, but she wasn’t badly injured. But he killed the man on the spot. He’s been in jail for over a year now.”
There was a moment’s silence, then Ah-Fat said: “He was a good man, Ah-Sing was.” “Last year when I saw him,” said Ah-Lam, “he talked about when the railroad work finished and you came back to Victoria. You’d been through really bad times, and had nowhere to live and nothing to eat. So he used to leave the stove outside the door for you every day.”
Ah-Fat was speechless.
That stove, with the flicker of warmth it provided, outside the back door of the Tsun Sing General Store had warmed his hands, and the food he had scavenged too. Ah-Sing had left it there to save his life.
Ah-Sing had known that he was spending every night outside the back door of his house. He had known all along. But he never let on.
“What jail is he in?” Ah-Fat asked.
Thousands upon thousands of Chinese gathered today at the Canadian Pacific Railroad steamship docks to welcome the famous Li Hongzhang from the Empire of the Great Qing to Canada. This gentleman holds a number of official positions, including Imperial Viceroy and Superintendent of Trade for the Northern Ports, although he has been stripped of some of them following China’s defeat two years ago in the Sino-Japanese War. China lost its entire fleet in that war, and has had to pay two hundred million ounces of silver in war reparations—a sum equivalent to the gross national product of Japan for seven years. Viceroy Li has now been on his sea voyage for seven months. After visiting Russia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France and England, he arrived in America at the end of last month. He is making this journey on the Imperial edict in order to foster relations between all these nations and China. Vancouver is Viceroy Li’s last port of call; from here he will return to China via Japan. His visit to Vancouver was unexpected. We understand that he was due to visit Seattle but that rumours of angry crowds of Chinese emigrants awaiting his arrival there forced a change of plan (although Li himself has denied this adamantly). The reason for their anger is the Chinese Exclusion Act that has just been passed in America. The last-minute nature of his visit here has in no way dampened the excitement of Vancouver’s Chinese.
Today the entire length of Howe Street is bedecked with lanterns and coloured pennants. A gigantic ceremonial arch which, we understand, took large numbers of Chinese emigrants several nights to erect, has appeared at the dock. It is formed of one main arch and two side arches. Above them, three pointed roofs are formed of swags of drapery. At the apex of the drapery over the main arch hangs a ball in which has been mounted a Union Jack. The Chinese and Canadian flags hang from each of the side arches. Four welcome banners hang from the tops of the arches and several exquisite “palace lanterns” are hung underneath. The one beneath the main arch is especially eye-catching, as it is two feet in diameter, and its frame is swathed in silk fabric painted with