The Things My Mother Told Me
母 言 錄
Peter N.N. Wong
2003
THE THINGS MY MOTHER TOLD ME
母言錄
When I was a child we lived in a village in Southern China. Many cold winter evenings, I loved to lie in bed with my brother and sister to keep warm and listened to my mother’s wonderful stories and tales, which she had heard from her mother or friends.
During World War II, life was not easy for my family. My father was in Hong Kong alone looking after my grandfather’s properties and interests. My mother and the kids stayed in our village located in the Pearl River Delta near Canton. We lived mainly on the small rents received from Dad’s rice fields. Therefore, we had to live carefully and without wasting anything. In order to save money from lighting the kerosene lamp, we usually went to bed early after dinner. Mum would entertain us by telling stories.
Following is a collection of my mother’s tales, which in turn I told my children when we camped under canvas at Wilson’s Promontory National Park during summer vacations.
I would like to dedicate this book to all our grandchildren, and their children.
Peter N.N. Wong
Easter 2003
Contents
1 THE FAIRY TREE 1
2 THE BIG BROWN BEAR 3
3 DRAGON BOAT 6
4 BAMBOO GROVE 8
5 THE KNOCKING NOISE 10
6 THE LITTLE HOUSEMAID 12
7 MY AUNT’S LITTLE SECRET 14
8 FLY A KITE 16
1 THE FAIRY TREE
Once upon a time, in the country of China, there was a village in the isolated and hilly countryside. The villagers were hard working but simple people, most of them farmers. They got up early to work in the field and didn’t go home until sunset. But they were happy and enjoyed what they were doing.
To all appearances the village looked normal. However, there was a strange thing about this particular village, it had no cemetery. All the dead or dying in the village were sent to their Fairy Tree, which was located not far from the village on the other side of a small lake. The Fairy Tree was an unusually large old tree situated between a hill and the lake. The villagers were scared by the unusual atmosphere surrounding the tree.
In daylight only, the dead or the dying were placed at the foot of this tree. The villagers would return the following morning to collect the bedding which the dead or dying had lain on. The body would always disappear overnight. The villagers believed that the deceased would go straight to heaven from the Fairy Tree!
One day a stranger came to the village. He was a marshal arts master who had come to collect herbal plants from the hills for medicine. For the first time he heard the story about the Fairy Tree from the villagers, but he didn’t believe that the tree could take the dead to heaven. Therefore, the Master decided to stay a few days in the village and find out the truth.
The Master went secretly to inspect the Fairy Tree on the other side of the lake. He noticed that the tree was very large and old, about 12 metres high. He also noted that there were no other trees existing 100 metres around the Fairy Tree, and neither birds nor animals would fly or go close to the tree. The Master couldn’t find any more clues from his inspection, except to have an eerie feeling. He decided that the way to find out the secret of this Fairy Tree was by watching it from a distance across the lake at night.
The first night, the Master hid behind a tree on the other side of the lake and watched the Fairy Tree from dusk to dawn without closing his eyes. But he did not see or hear anything unusual that night. The second night, he was very tired and fell asleep during his watch after mid-night. Therefore, he didn’t find out anything again that night!
The third night, the Master determined not to fall asleep again during his watch. He had a good rest before mid-night and was ready to keep an eye on the place for the remainder of the night, with much enthusiasm. With the help of a new moon, he could see clearly across the lake. However the first few hours were quiet and nothing happened. The Master felt himself getting tired in the darkest hour before dawn. Suddenly, he heard a noise coming from the other side of the lake and at the same time he saw two dim lights like small lanterns, moving among the leaves of the Fairy Tree. The lights appeared for about twenty minutes then disappeared just before dawn. He was excited about the discovery and planned to investigate it in daylight.
As soon as he woke up in the morning, the Master went over to examine the Fairy Tree. He hoped to find some helpful evidence for solving the mystery. All he found were some freshly broken branches scattered under the tree and a strange unpleasant smell still hanging in the air. He was disappointed but more determined than ever to solve the mystery.
The fourth night, after having a good rest again, the Master took his bow and arrows, and went quietly to watch the Fairy Tree from the same spot as he had the previous nights. He was not scared of the dark, but had a plan to solve this mystery tonight! The Master thought that nothing would happen until just before dawn, and he should save his energy for the important moment. He relaxed by sitting on the ground against a tree trunk, leaving his bow and arrows beside him, and eventually fell asleep. The Master was suddenly woken up by a strange noise across the lake. He looked across the water in the direction of the Fairy Tree. He saw the two mysterious moving lights in the tree again. This time the Master took his bow and arrow and aimed at one of the lights. He shot the arrow across the lake and hit it. The light went out immediately and there was a great disturbance in the tree. He could hear a loud angry noise, together with many breaking branches. Now only one light remained that still moved around in the tree. Eventually, the light and noise disappeared and quietness returned to the place just about dawn.
Next morning the Master went over to the Fairy Tree. He found many broken branches scattered around the tree and some bloodstains on the tree trunk, but there was no dead body of any kind. He traced the bloodstains to the top of the tree and found a deep hole there. The Master suddenly realized that the large old tree was in fact a hollow tree, which could be occupied by an unknown creature.
He went back to the village immediately and told the villagers what he had found. The Master asked them to help him cut down the tree. The villagers were frightened but agreed to help mainly due to curiosity. He borrowed a few large cooking pots from the villagers and boiled plenty of hot water to pour into the hole on the treetop. To play it safe, the Master wanted to ensure the unknown creature was dead, before they attacked the tree.
After cutting down the hollow tree, they found a heap of bones together with a large dead snake at the bottom of the Fairy Tree. The dead snake was over five metres long, and the body was as big as a small tree trunk! The villagers were horrified by what they had found, but thanked the Master for his hard work to solve the mystery. They also realized that the dead and the dying of their village didn’t go to heaven at all, but rather, were eaten by this large snake. The villagers became very angry. They cut the large snake into pieces and burned it in a big fire, which was fuelled with the Fairy Tree.
While the villagers were busy taking revenge on the snake, the Master quietly slipped away from the crowd, and hoped that they would learn a hard lesson from this tragic event.
2 THE BIG BROWN BEAR
Many years ago in northern China, there was a little girl called “Meilan” (meaning Beautiful Orchid) who lived in a village with her mother. Her father had died many years earlier when she was a baby. Meilan was the only child in the family. They were poor and lived in an isolated small hut in the hills at the edge of their village. Her family had a small vegetable garden at the back of the hut, and kept two goats for milk and a few chickens for eggs. Sometimes Meilan’s mother had to work for other people to earn enough money to buy clothes and other essential things.
Meilan was now nearly ten years old, and didn’t go to school because her mother couldn’t afford it. However, she worked hard to help her mother around the place. She tended the vegetable garden and milked the goats everyday. Meilan also had to keep an eye on the goats and the hens, because some brown bears would occasionally wander into the village from the hills looking for food.
One morning after breakfast, her mother told Meilan she had to go down to the village and work for a family until late in the afternoon. “Meilan, can you clean the house while I am away, and do all your daily chores before dark?” Mum asked her. Meilan looked up to her mother and replied, “Yes Mum, I shall do my best to look after the place.” Before leaving for work, her Mum gave Meilan a cuddle, and reminded her to be careful of the wandering brown bears.
Meilan fed the goats and chickens, and collected six freshly laid eggs in the morning. Then she cleaned the house thoroughly and drew water from a well in their yard to water the vegetable garden in the afternoon. She was not afraid of the brown bears while her mother was home. But now that she was alone in the house and had been asked especially to keep an eye on the place, all these things made her scared and uneasy. While she was working in the vegetable garden late in the afternoon, Meilan heard some wild animal noises from the hills behind their home. She realized that she had to make a plan to protect herself, as well as the family property, from the wild beasts.
The sun was almost set, but her mother had not arrived home yet! Meilan rounded up the goats and the chickens and kept them in a crumbling hay-shed. She closed the front gate and secured all fences around their hut and vegetable garden. Meilan remembered her mother once told her, “All bears like to stand up and walk around like human beings, until they are tired. They are very strong and clever, but love anything red and especially they like to eat wild honey.”
Meilan stood inside their hut looking through the little window to the yard, and touched her beautiful red scarf around her neck while she was thinking. “The bear is too big and strong for me. I can’t stop it from breaking the fence and attacking the goats and chickens,” she said to herself. “If the bear brakes into the yard, I would be safe in the hut, but neither the goats nor the chickens would be safe.” She was scared but tried to work out a way to overcome the possible danger.
The level-headed Meilan took off her large red scarf and carefully placed it over the opening of their water well (it looked just like a comfortable red stool). She also brought a jar of honey from her mother’s pantry, opened the lid and put it next to the well. She hoped the bear would be attracted by the delicious smell of honey and would love to sit on the ‘red stool’ while it ate the honey.
After the sun settled behind the hills and before the moon rose from the east, it suddenly became dark and hard for her to see what was going on outside the hut. Meilan didn’t have time to cook anything even though she was hungry. But she sat tensely in the dark by the window, watched for any unusual movements and listened to any noises outside their hut. She could clearly hear now the noise of a wild animal, but she couldn’t tell it was from a bear or other beast.
Eventually, Meilan heard the noise of a wild animal close to the fence. Under the dim moonlight, she could see the outline of a beast. It was a big brown bear with two shiny little eyes! She could also see its powerful front paws waving in the air. The hungry brown bear tried hard to enter the yard for their goats or chickens, but was stopped by the bamboo fences and the wooden gate. It made the bear very angry and it roared in the darkness, which frightened Meilan.
The bear circled the property a few times and finally broke a hole in the fence at the side of the hut. It entered through the hole into the yard and started looking for food. The bear could find neither the goats nor the chickens, because they had been hidden in the hay shed. The bear was hungry and tired due to walking around in the hills and hunting for food all day. Suddenly, it caught the lovely smell of honey in the air. The bear was excited by this discovery and started to search for it.
After a frantic search, the big brown bear found a jar of wild honey standing by a red stool in the yard. The bear dipped one of its front paws into the jar then licked the golden honey from the paw. The bear enjoyed it very much and made a happy humming sound while it ate the honey. Then it also noticed the beautiful red stool standing next to the jar, which would be comfortable for sitting on to rest its tired body. The bear grabbed the honey jar with its two front paws and sat on the red stool for a rest. Suddenly, the red stool gave way, and at the same time the big brown bear fell into the shallow water well, with the honey jar still in its paws!
Meilan saw all these happenings through the window under the moonlight. She quickly opened the front door, rushed out into the yard and put a heavy board over the water well. The bear was stunned first, then became angry and made terrible roars inside the well. Fortunately, the well was now sealed from the top and the bear couldn’t escape from it.
By this time, Meilan’s mother was on her way back from the village. She heard the roaring noise from a distance to the hut and wondered what had gone wrong at home. She ran the last 200 metres and went through the front gate just in time to see Meilan sealing the water well with the piece of heavy board. She rushed to meet Meilan and asked, “Are you alright? What is going on?” Meilan told her what had happened in the past few hours and that she was scared. Mum gave her a big cuddle and said, “Meilan, you are a brave and wise girl. You did all that you could and what you thought was right. I am proud of you.”
Next morning, Meilan’s mother invited a few strong men from their village to get the big brown bear out of the water well. They put it in a cage and sold it to a bear trainer of a travelling troupe in the market. The money received from the sale was used to replace the honey and the jar, and to repair the damaged fence. The remainder of the money was just enough to buy a new dress for Meilan.
Both Meilan and her mother lived happily ever after!
3 DRAGON BOAT
The Dragon Boat Festival (“Tuen Ng” in Cantonese) has been traditionally celebrated in China on the fifth day of the fifth moon (early June). Its exact origin is unknown, but legend says that this festival commemorates the tragic death of the honest and learned minister of state, Qu Yuan, who died long, long ago (in 288 B.C.) in the ancient Kingdom of Chu during the time of the Warring States (403-221 B.C.).
At that time, Qu Yuan was the true and dedicated power behind the throne; he was a wise man who advised the ruler correctly for the good of his people. Other envious advisers, however, didn’t appreciate Qu’s influence, so they brought him into disfavour with the king. Consequently, the king’s god failed him because he took the bad advice, which resulted in a disastrous loss in war with his neighbour. To make matters worse, the old king was captured during the fighting.
To express his concern for the old ruler, Qu Yuan wrote a poem called “Li Sao”, the classical Chinese version of a political speech in poetic form. (Because of the poem, the festival is sometimes called Poet’s Day or Patriotic Poet’s Day.) This angered the new king who ordered Qu Yuan’s exile. But instead of leaving, Qu jumped into the Mi Lo River, a river in the present Hunan Province. Today’s dragon boat races symbolize the vain attempts of friends who raced to this spot to save the unfortunate Qu.
Another tale has Qu Yuan despairing that his good counsel was being ignored. While wandering alone one day he composed “Li Sao” to express his feelings, then became so disgusted at the human world of intrigue and deceit that he committed suicide by hurling himself into the Mi Lo River.
Not unmindful of his sacrifice, the people who lived on the banks of the river later threw packets of rice pudding (“jung” in Cantonese), which are wrapped in bamboo leaves and bound with different coloured threads, into the water to keep the hungry fish away from his body. Such rice packets are still eaten in memory of the event and dragon boat races, which are held in China.
A dragon boat is like a huge war canoe with a dragon’s head carved at the bow and a dragon’s tail at the stern. Depending on their size, they are manned by 20 to 80 paddlers with bright uniforms sitting two by two in rows, and accompanied by a drummer at the mid-canoe who sets the timing of oar strokes with a huge drum. For the large dragon boats, an additional man with a gong at the stern will be used to assist turning the boat. Also, many coloured flags and decorations are displayed on the boat.
Long ago we had two dragon boats in our village in southern China. They were made with a kind of expensive hardwood, which would not rot easily. In order to keep the timber moist and stop it cracking, the boats were buried most of the year at a secret location in a creek near our village. Every year a few days before the Dragon Boat Festival the villagers dug these two boats out from the creek, then washed and cleaned them before decorating them with flags and other pretty things.
I never saw these dragon boats nor did I know where they were buried in the village. Nonetheless, they were two of the many beautiful and fast-speed dragon boats in the district. The paddlers of these boats mainly came from our own village, but also accepted any able young men from the nearby villages. They took part in many races in the Dragon Boat Festival, and between them won many prizes for the village.
The boat race competitions were always exciting but sometimes would cause tragedy with their enthusiasm. One year in a heated dragon boat race, one of our two dragon boats rammed into another boat during the competition, and sunk it. The race was stopped immediately, and other boats rushed to the scene in order to save the paddlers who fell into the water. Unfortunately, many people were injured from the impact, and some of them fell into the fast flowing water and couldn’t be found again. A total of five people lost their lives from this accident!
It was a great sadness for everybody in the district. The leaders of our village felt very badly about this incident, and swore that our two dragon boats would not race in any competition again. So they buried the boats at their secret place in a creek near our village. We believe these boats are still buried there, but after many, many years nobody knows their exact location!
4 BAMBOO GROVE
Throughout southern China, as far north as the Yangtze River, groves of bamboo are found almost everywhere --on mountainsides, flatlands, riverbanks and around houses. It is sometimes hard to believe that this tough and woody plant is in fact a grass and not a tree. Bamboos are related to wheat, oats, and barley. But unlike these crop grasses, most bamboos are of giant size. Some may stand as much as 120 feet (37m) high and have stems a foot (300cm) in diameter.
Bamboo grows very rapidly. The new shoots, which are put out by a mature plant toward the end of winter, grow to their full height in less than a season. In the best conditions-- with a temperate climate and plentiful rainfall, bamboo can grow two feet (600cm) in under forty-eight hours! Like many grasses, the stems grow clustered together from roots creeping along under the ground. Such bamboo clusters are too dense for a man to push his way through and they spread so quickly that a path cut through them can disappear in a month.
All bamboos have smooth, hollow, jointed stems, with a strong partition at each joint. The jointed stem never gets thicker after a bamboo is full-grown. Therefore, bamboo stems do not add a ring of growth each year as tree trunks do. The lower parts of the stems are wrapped with curved pale-brown leaves at each joint during growth, but these soon fall off. Higher up, the stems branch into many smaller ones, which bear the main green leaves and the flowers. Bamboo leaves grow alternatively in two rows on opposite sides of the stem. They are long and narrow, but have short stalks, unlike the leaves of other grasses. When the leaves mature, the blades usually fall off, leaving the sheath-like base. These arching branches with their graceful foliage have given many Chinese and Japanese artists ideas for their pictures.
At the rear of our village on the Pearl River Delta, there was a large grove of bamboo. As the land of the grove belonged to the village, the people in the village could come and take one or two bamboos from the grove for their own use. The villagers used the grove as a landmark and also used it as a “feng-shui” element for protecting the virtue of the village!
We children liked to play at the bamboo grove during summer, because it provided nice shade from the hot sun and was cooler than any other part of the field. I loved to lay down on the soft grass under the shade of bamboo, watching the white clouds passing by in the sky and listening to the noise made by the bamboo leaves rubbing each other in the gentle breeze. However, we never came close to the grove after dark, because we were told there were ghosts in the bamboo grove.
Bamboo is a plant of a thousand uses. There are probably few plants that have been put to as many uses as bamboo. Fences, huts, water pipes, foot bridges, rafts, sails, masts, tow rope, tool handles, walking sticks, furniture, fishing rods, bird cages, containers, drinking cups, woven mats, “coolie” hats and cooking utensils are all made of bamboo. The split bamboo stem is crafted into mats, baskets, hats, chairs, stools, fans, chopsticks and umbrella frames. The tender young shoots or sprouts of the bamboo can be eaten as vegetables, a delicacy in China and Japan. It has also been found that the closely matted roots help control soil erosion and the high cellulose content of bamboo stems makes excellent pulp for paper. When I was a child, I used bamboo stems to make fishing rods and toys, such as bow and arrows.
One of my older cousins once worked for a bamboo wholesale company in Hong Kong. They imported raw bamboos from southern China and resold them for scaffolding in construction sites and to the bamboo furniture makers. My cousin used bits and pieces of bamboo obtained from the shop to make musical instruments, knives, popguns and other toys for us.
There are about 500 species or kinds of bamboo in the world, and most of them grow in or near the tropics. A few are climbers and some are armed with thorns. Many have flowers every year (generally in yellowish white), producing, like other grasses, starchy white grains which look like rice kernels and can be eaten. Others flower only after a period of years and then die exhausted, leaving the seeds to carry on the species. The bamboo in our village grove flowered regularly at interval of 60 years. Only the branches near the top of the main stem bear blossoms. When the time comes for flowering to take place, all the bamboos of a particular kind usually flower together over a very large area. As this has frequently happened in a year of drought, when the rice crop has failed, the bamboo grain has often saved the people from starvation. The flowering times of certain bamboos have thus become so important that they have been recorded in old Chinese and Japanese writings as long ago as A.D. 292.
Once my mother told me, “While the flowering takes place, there will be either a natural disaster or a change in leadership of the country!” I saw the flowering bamboos during 1946, just about the time Mao Tse-Tung’s Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist Government and took over China. I don’t believe there was a link between the flowering of bamboo and any big changes in an area, including disasters. One thing I do know however, the kind of bamboo, which we had at the rear of the village, will flower regularly about every 60 years!
5 THE KNOCKING NOISE
Long, long ago my maternal grandfather wanted to build a new house for his beautiful wife, on a piece of land he purchased a few years earlier in the village. He was a trader of local produce and herbs, and travelled frequently between Guangdong and Guangxi provinces for his business. Grandfather worked very hard for many years and saved enough money for the new house. He wanted to provide a comfortable home for his family.
He engaged a local builder to build his new house, but some of the workers were not the locals. It took them about eight months to finish the construction of his house. The workmanship of the new house was reasonably good, except for a few minor unpleasant hiccups with some of the workers during its construction. However, the misunderstandings between the workers and my grandfather had long been forgotten before the house was completed.
The house was a single storey building—a typical southern China middle-class villa style dwelling. It was constructed with good quality grey bricks and beautiful red roof tiles. The main building consisted of three large rooms: the lounge room at the middle of the house and two smaller rooms for bedroom or storeroom situated one at each side of the lounge room. A small fenced stone courtyard was also constructed in front of the lounge room. However, a small kitchen was provided in a separate room outside the main building, at one end of the courtyard just opposite the front gate. By local standards, it was not a large country house but comfortable and peaceful.
A few days after they had moved into the new house, my grandfather invited his relatives and friends to his “house-warming” party, to celebrate with him the completion of his new house. The old builder was also invited to the party. Everyone enjoyed the food and drinks, and thanked my grandfather for inviting them to his celebration party. When the builder said goodbye to my grandfather at the front gate, he appeared uneasy and worried. He quietly told him, “I don’t know why but I feel uneasy inside your new house. Something is a mystery over there!” My grandfather told the builder not to be worried, and assured him it was one of the most beautiful houses in the district.
After a short stay with his wife in the new house, my grandfather left home again for his long business trip. Grandmother was happy enough to stay in the house by herself with a maid, until one stormy wet night. The rain poured down from the sky and at the same time the wind blew violently, then many flashing lights lit the whole sky, but had no thunder-claps. Suddenly, she heard a strange knocking noise on the walls of the house. It started from the lounge room door, ran around the whole house, and eventually finished at the same place. She was frightened but later comforted by believing it was only the noises generated from the storm!
Grandmother did not let this incident bother her nor did she tell anyone about the noise. She carried on her life as usual in the village until the next stormy wet night. This time it was not only heard by Grandmother, but also by her housemaid. They were really frightened by this mysterious noise and decided to seek advice from the elders of the village. Unfortunately, no one in the village could find the cause of the noise, and they concluded that it might be a result of some evil spirit!
The time passed by quickly and nothing more happened again for three months in their house. Non-the-less my Grandmother, who had learnt witchcraft from her friends when she was young and innocent, was more determined to solve this noise mystery once and for all. So during another stormy night, she stayed awake alone all night in order to examine the mysterious noise on the walls. She noticed that the knocking noise started from the top of the lounge room door then ran around the outside walls of the house and stopped at the same spot above the door.
The next morning, Grandma took a ladder and a kerosene lamp and searched the whole house for clues, but she couldn’t find anything unusual. Eventually, she called her young housemaid to help her to clean the dust collected on top of the lounge room doorframe. Under the dim kerosene light she found a carved wooden doll (about two inches long with strange writing on it) hidden in a secret gap of the doorframe. My grandmother realized immediately that it was a spiritual thing used in witchcraft.
Grandma took the wooden doll out of her house and burned it in the courtyard. She collected the ash of the wooden doll and threw it into the nearby creek. She reckoned the wooden doll was hidden in the doorframe by one of the builder’s workers. But she couldn’t understand why anyone would do that to them. They were kind and generous to the workers, except once they had to punish one of the non-local workers for stealing some building material. After burning the wooden doll, there were no more knocking noises in my grandparents’ house!
6 THE LITTLE HOUSEMAID
This is a true story about Auntie Jok’s mother, which I heard from my own mother many years ago. She was my maternal grandparents’ housemaid whom I had met and known since I was a small boy during World War II.
The story started from long, long ago on a business trip of my maternal Grandfather to the province of Guangxi. My Grandfather was a trader of herbs and special local produce. He always travelled with his friends on a boat, along Xi River between Canton and Nanning, to buy or sell his merchandise. The business travel would take him one to two months for a round trip! Therefore, my Grandmother was lonely in the village and had to keep herself busy while he was away.
One afternoon on his return trip to Canton, Grandfather’s boat berthed for overnight at a pier of a small town by the Xi River. It was too early for their evening meal. Therefore, he went in the town with his friends having a quick look around. He bought a few small beautiful local crafts as a gift for his young wife.
On his way back to the boat, he saw a small crowd at the town square standing around a man and a young girl about five or six years old. The man was talking to the people, and the girl was crying beside him. She was tall and strong, didn’t look like a local, but obviously stressed. The man indicated that he was only an agent for somebody who wanted to sell this little girl. She was kidnapped for ransom from a rich family far, far away. As she was a girl, not a boy in her family, the father did not wish to pay the big ransom for her. This left the robbers no option, either to kill her to cover their tracks or to sell her quickly to someone far distant!
My grandfather was sad about this situation, and hoped that some kind local people would buy this poor little girl. Unfortunately, there were many people in the town square but no one would help her! The man was disappointed and ready to take the girl away from the town. Grandfather put his hand into his coat pocket and felt the money he had earned from this business trip. Then he put his hand up signalling the man to stop because he wanted to talk to him about the girl.
After he had emptied his pocket to pay the man for the girl, Grandpa took the little girl back to the boat. He hoped Grandma would like her, and that she would be a good companion and helper to Grandma (they did not have any children yet). They didn’t talk to each other on the way, until they almost reached the river. Grandpa didn’t realize what he had committed himself to! The little girl spoke a different dialect, which he could understand, but was quite different to the dialect they spoke in our district.
It took a few months for the little housemaid to settle down in her new home and in the same time to learn the new dialect. She was smart and quick to pick up new things. My Grandmother loved her and treated her as her own. The little housemaid turned out to be a good companion and helper for my Grandmother.
A few years later, my Grandma gave birth to a girl who was my mother. The little housemaid was a great help to her in bringing up the little baby. While My Grandmother had her second child, a son, the little housemaid had grown up into a strong and beautiful teenager. Unfortunately, Grandma’s young son died at an early age. (My grandmother believed it was a result of her own practise of witchcraft.)
After my Grandfather passed away and their daughter, my mother, had reached her teens, Grandma thought it was time to look for a husband for her faithful housemaid. She found a suitable young man for her in their village. He was a farmer, kind and hard working, but poor and couldn’t afford a wedding. Grandmother paid all the expenditure for their wedding and was happy that they lived only a few minutes walking distance from her house.
The housemaid had a number of children, and Auntie Jok was one of her daughters. “The Little Housemaid” died peacefully in her old age at the end of World War II.
7 MY AUNT’S LITTLE SECRET
Aunt Ya was my mother’s second cousin. She was beautiful, tall and elegant, and had smooth white skin that would not usually be seen among the people of southern China. Auntie Ya had a secret about her background which my mother once revealed to me many years ago. She was an adopted child!
Aunt Ya’s mother was a concubine of a local rich man. She was favoured by her husband but couldn’t give him any children. Therefore, with her husband‘s permission she secretly adopted a newborn baby from an orphanage in Canton (Guangzhou). She gave her a pretty name “Ya”. Most of the people didn’t know this secret and just thought the lovely new baby was their own. After her husband died a few years later, Ya’s mother moved the family to Macau, and auntie Ya grew up over there.
Macau means “the city of god” and is only 65 kilometres west of Hong Kong, at the mouth of the Pearl River. It was the oldest European colony in Asia, and also was the last of Portugal’s colonies. (Macau was handed back to China in 1999.) According to legend, many, many years ago a poor girl, A-Ma, looked for a passage to Canton, but was turned away by the wealthy junk owners. Eventually, a kind fisherman took her on board. A storm blew up and wrecked all the junks except the boat carrying the girl. When it landed in Macau the girl disappeared, only to reappear later as a goddess on the spot where the fisherman built her temple. The A-Ma temple still stands at Barra Point, Macau today.
Aunt Ya lived alone with her mother in a lane in the old part of Macau City. She attended a local high school during daytime but also went twice a week to an evening school to improve her English. Aunt Ya became very attractive, but she was polite and helpful to everybody. Therefore, she was not only popular among the young people but also well liked by the grown ups in her neighbourhood.
One of her neighbours had a son who was about one or two years older than Ya. He went to the same evening English school as Ya. This young man had just finished his high school study and started working in a small import and export company. Although he didn’t attend the same evening class with Aunt Ya, the young man always escorted her as a gentleman to and from the evening school. They were good neighbours; he was like an older brother looking after his little sister.
They usually discussed things while they were walking to or from their school, and shared their thoughts and ideals openly. At that time, Ya had never realized this young man from next door had become very fond of her! One night on their way home after school, they were caught in a sudden monsoon downpour. Auntie Ya didn’t bring her umbrella that night and would certainly have got wet before arriving home. However, this young man got sopping wet in the rain because he lent Ya his own umbrella. For this reason, he caught a cold afterward!
Aunt Ya was getting annoyed and worried because the neighbours were gossiping that they were in love! She started to avoid him in public. But the young man would faithfully wait for her at the front door, to escort her to or from the school. Every time they arrived home after school, he would make a cup of tea for himself and another cup for Ya. No matter she wanted it or not, he would put the cup of tea in front of auntie Ya then go to talk to her mother. He kept up this act for a few months, and eventually won her heart from her many admirers.
They didn’t get married until Ya had finished high school and started to work. After their marriage my Uncle and Aunt lived in Macau for a short while, until Uncle got a job in the office of Kowloon Wharf in Hong Kong. For convenience they moved to Hong Kong and lived in a rented room not far from my home.
Auntie Ya grew up in a Cantonese speaking community, but she could speak faultless ‘standard’ Mandarin. For this reason Aunt Ya easily got a part-time job teaching Mandarin in Hong Kong. She was recognized as one of their best Mandarin teachers in the Hong Kong Education Department. After she resigned from the teaching job, Ya took another part-time job in a large amusement park in Kowloon until she started her family. Aunt Ya always gave us beautiful coloured balloons, which she obtained from the amusement park.
It seems that Aunt Ya never knew she was adopted. Nonetheless, Ya had a very good relationship with her mother, and the whole family. I always wondered why this secret had never been revealed to auntie Ya by her adopted mother, before she passed away after a long illness.
8 FLY A KITE
When I hear the name “Mary Poppins”, it reminds me of the song “Fly a Kite” in the film with the same name. Flying kites of all shapes and sizes is a pastime enjoyed by adults and children alike in China. I learned to make paper kites from my mother while we were young and lived in our village on the Pearl River Delta.
Kites have their origins in China, though exactly when and how they came to be invented is unknown. Chinese folklore gives an account through an anecdote about a farmer, whose “coolie” hat blew off and soared into the sky, giving him the idea of attaching a cord to the hat to control its flight. Other opinions of how kites were first made abound, from the runaway sails of a ship to the wooden bird said to have been invented by the famous engineer Kungshu Phan in the fourth century B.C. and which is said to have flown for three whole days.
There are many versions regarding why the Chinese fly kites. A favourite story of its origin says that kites are flown in memory of Meng Chia who lived in China many, many years ago. It is told that when his hat was blown off at a picnic, Meng Chia remained quite unconscious of the fact. Whether the story is true or not, it was the custom that at the end of the day everyone would let go of his kite, allowing it to fly away. The kites, it was believed, carried away with them all evil, bad luck and ill-health for the rest of the year and so anyone finding the kites must burn them.
In 169 B.C., kites were first used for military purposes in China. General Han, while besieging an enemy palace, flew a kite between his forces and the palace walls, from which he was able to compute the distance to his objective so that a tunnel could be dug under the walls.
In the middle of the 6th century A.D., the rebel Hou Ching besieged the city of Nanking, isolating it from loyalist troops. The crown prince of Nanking decided to fly a great number of kites in the sky to signal to the loyalist troops who were waiting some distance from the city. On seeing the kites, Hou Ching’s officers believed there was magic afoot and ordered their archers to shoot at the kites. The kites seemed at first to fall to the ground but then suddenly changed into birds and flew away. Perhaps the prince had had the lines of his kites cut to allow the wind to carry kite messages to his army.
In 1232 A.D., kites were actually used for a leaflet raid. At the siege of Khaifeng, the Mongols took many prisoners. The Chinese generals of Khaifeng ordered that kites with messages written on them be flown over enemy lines. When the kites were flying over the prison compound, the lines were cut and the messages inciting the prisoners to escape fell among them.
Before the invention of paper, kites were probably made from cloth and wood. Early Chinese kites were often fitted with simple musical instruments, which were activated by the wind.
Our mother taught us to make a simple diamond shape kite from rice or crepe paper. She took two long incense sticks and stripped the outside material to obtain the thin bamboo strip for the frame of the kite. The bamboo sticks were fixed with paste, in the shape of a cross, on to a piece of diamond shaped paper. The kite was painted with a bright design before attached with string, the flying line. A long paper tail about seven times the length of the kite was added. Without a tail to add stability and counteract the movement of the kite, a kite will loop and spin uncontrollably. However, a “fighting kite” has no tail because its first function is to be fast and manoeuvre well. To fly this kite successfully, one would require much higher skill and experience.
Kite fighting is a very popular game among the teenage boys, as well as the young men. The kites for fighting are usually small and made with a simple design. A long section of the kite line nearer to the kite body is coated with glue and powdered glass. The object of the fight is to cut an opponent’s line on the sharp glass line. Contestants would stand fifty to eighty feet apart and fly their kites lower than usual in quick swoops. The technique of the fight is to catch an opponent’s line and then to try and keep up a sawing motion across his line. It is important, however, to saw faster than the other man for his line, too, is coated with powdered glass. The winner of the fight takes possession of his opponent’s fallen kite.
Flying kites is an exciting autumn pastime in China, and the players would put hours into the design and construction of their kites. The children of our village would fly their colourful kites at an open space in front of the joss house in the autumn evenings. We made our own kites with various sizes and interesting designs. All children would compete with each other to see who could fly higher and perform better manoeuvres in the sky, but we never had a kite fight.
In order to make flying kites more interesting, we cut many 5 cm diameter coloured thin paper disks, with a slot cut to the centre. After having kept the kite in the sky, we inserted the paper disks one by one to the kite line, and let the wind blow them up slowly along the line toward the kite body. Sometimes, we fixed a lit incense stick to the kite with thin wires, and tied one or two firecrackers (with its fuse) to the incense. The burning incense would act as a timer to ignite the firecrackers.
The village children would finish their evening kite flying just before dark. They were usually not in a hurry to go home, rather they waited in the fading light and watched any “Kong Ming” lamps rising from a distant village into the sky.
The “Kong Ming” lamp is an egg shaped flying lamp operating similarly to a hot air balloon. It was originally invented for military use by a Prime Minister (Kong Ming) during the time of Three Kingdoms (about 200 A.D.). The shape and size of the present “Kong Ming” lamps can be varied; it ranges from 0.6 to 1.5 metres high with different diameters. The frame of this lamp is made with thin bamboo strips, and covered with a few layers of rice paper. A lit candle is put on the lamp’s candleholder, through its narrow bottom opening. The lamp will rise into the cool night air after enough hot air has been generated inside the lamp by the candle. It rises slowly into the sky then travels in the direction of the wind. The lamp is very pretty to look at and appears to mysteriously float in the clear autumn night sky. Unfortunately, sometimes it may fall on to a farmer’s haystack and catch fire! Therefore, we were forbidden to fly a “Kong Ming” lamp in a windy night.
I never made or flew a “Kong Ming” lamp. But I wonder whether my resourceful mother knew how to make and fly one?
