Journey across the Four Seas: A Chinese Woman's Search for Home Read online

  Praise for Journey Across the FourSeas

  "I love this book. It is the true story of one unusual woman who faces all of life’s adversities and overcomes them through sheer determination, grit and a bit of luck. While it is the story of one woman, it is also a story that millions of people will identify with. It has the makings of a bestseller."

  —Frank Ching, senior columnist, The South China Morning Post

  "Lovingly interpreted by a devoted daughter, Flora Li’s story is a unique piece of oral history, a family saga of fluctuating fortunes told against the backdrop of British-held Hong Kong and wartime China. It also takes us to Bangkok and Taipei, destinations of recent Chinese diasporas. Fast-paced and absorbing, Flora’s journey through turbulent times is at one level an intensely personal tale of loss, disappointment, and a fraught marriage that ends with a new beginning in 1960s California. At another, her story mirrors the experience of an entire generation of migrating Chinese like Flora—resourceful, resilient, and engaged in a determined ‘search for home,’ a sure place where the family might survive and thrive."

  —Paula Harrell, Visiting Professor, University of Maryland; author of Sowing the Seeds of Change: Chinese Students, Japanese Teachers, 1895-1905

  "A gutsy Chinese woman remembers with unsparing wit and candor growing up poor in British-ruled Hong Kong, surviving the perils and privations of Japanese-occupied China and the joys and pains of raising a family with a Kuomintang official’s privileged son she married. This is history as biography that can bring nostalgia attacks to old Asia hands. It’s also an odyssey through life in the Chinese diaspora peopled with funny and outrageous real-life personalities Amy Tan couldn’t have imagined."

  —Eduardo Lachica, independent analyst of Southeast Asian security and military affairs; former reporter of The Wall Street Journal and Washington bureau chief of The Asian Wall Street Journal

  "This book is an amazing read. When I finished it, I felt as if I understood Hong Kong, China, the heroine Flora, and myself better. It’s the Asian Grapes of Wrath."

  —Adair Lara, award-winning columnist, The San Francisco Chronicle; author of five books including Hold Me Close, Let Me Go, and Hanging Out the Wash

  "Aside from being well done and written this book should also be very helpful in dispelling notions that some Americans might have about the role of women in China and Hong Kong in the early and mid-twentieth century. This is an incredible story about a remarkable Chinese woman; once started it is virtually impossible to put down for long. To me the principal message was the importance of initiative and hard work regardless of the adversity. Networking was important (extensive Swatow relations, Hong KongUniversity alumni, connection with the Nationalist Finance Minister, and so on) but only up to a point. Then initiative and hard work was required to carry her through."

  —Morris Morkre, Economist, the Federal Trade Commission; former Senior Lecturer in Economics, Hong KongUniversity

  "This book contributes to broadening the record of women’s experiences, much of which is being lost because individually we keep inadequate notes, and as a group we often do not collect and share our records. Many younger women are uninformed about how their improved status came about…. For many who grew up in the West there is a lot to learn from this book. It is a story about hardships, survival strategies, networks, and above all, family."

  —Gloria Scott, advisor on Women in Development, World Bank, 1977-86.

  "This story of one extraordinary woman, caught up in the wars and conflicts of East Asia, is part family, part adventure story. As daughter of the Chinese diaspora, as refugee, as heiress to rising and falling family fortunes, Flora cultivates in herself the strength and wisdom to constantly reconstruct life for her family. Her life exemplifies the pioneering spirit of millions of refugees and émigrés strewn across the four seas in the past and present century. You won’t be able to put the Journey by Li down, and its lessons will stay with you."

  —Vilma Seeberg, China scholar; Associate Professor, KentStateUniversity

  "This compelling story is vivid testimony to the recent turbulent Chinese history and the prevalence of traditional values seen through the eyes of a remarkable Chinese woman, Flora, and written by her daughter, Veronica Li. It provides a rare window into the inner world of a woman of that era."

  —Marie Luise Wagner, Visiting Assistant Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, GeorgetownUniversity

  "This story brings out a centerpiece of Chinese culture—education of the young. To attain that end, a Chinese woman would sacrifice anything and overcome any adversity. Like the mother of Mencius, she is willing to uproot herself in search of the best education for her children."

  —Mi Chu Wiens, Had of Scholarly Services, Asian Division, Library of Congress

  "Veronica Li has captured vividly the image of a woman who has lived through the turmoil of war and political upheavals in Hong Kong and China from the 1920s to the 1960s. In a particularly authentic way, she has given us many snapshots of life in those decades, in the language of a chronicler rich in colorful expressions coined from the Chinese social fabric—"chasing the dragon," "bitter squash," and "tear bag." Her mother’s epic is at once unique yet universal…. It is amazing how many Chinese women of that era share her experiences. These stories, embodying her life-long memories across the four seas, will, as Veronica says in her Epilogue, take on a life of their own."

  —Diana Yue, Honorary Associate Professor, Hong KongUniversity; translator of literature

  Journey across the FourSeas

  A Chinese Woman’s Search for Home

  Veronica Li

  HOMA & SEKEY BOOKS

  Paramus, New Jersey

  FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

  Copyright © 2007 by Veronica Li

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Li, Veronica, 1951-

  Journey across the four seas : a Chinese woman’s search for home / Veronica Li. — 1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-931907-43-9 (pbk.)

  ISBN-10: 1-931907-43-9 (pbk.)

  1. Li, Flora. 2. Chinese Americans—Biography. 3. Immigrants—United States—Biography. 4. China—Biography. I. Title. E184.C5L57 2006

  304.8’73051092—dc22

  [B]

  2006020414

  Homa & Sekey Books

  3rd Floor, NorthTower

  Mack-CaliCenter III

  140 E. Ridgewood Ave.

  Paramus, NJ07652

  Tel: 800-870-HOMA, 201-261-8810

  Fax: 201-261-8890, 201-384-6055

  Email: [email protected]

  Website: www.homabooks.com

  Edited by Larry Matthews

  Printed in U.S.A.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  For my mother, who has dedicated her life to the family,

  For my father, who has lived his life to the best of his ability, and

  For Sverrir, who has made it possible for me to write and take care of my parents.

  Contents

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  1. Eating Bitter Squash

  2. Dreaming in the Red Chamber

  3. Shooting an Arrow at the Sun

  4. Burning in the Theater

  5. Making a Bad Peace

  6. Going Home

>   7. Still Searching for Home

  8. Living in a Prison

  9. Laying Foundation for the Future

  10. Journeying across the FourSeas

  Epilogue

  Glossary of Chinese Names and Places

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgements

  My mother told me her stories in Cantonese, her native dialect. In the book, I have therefore used Cantonese, not Mandarin, as the basis for romanizing Chinese language characters. For the names of major Chinese cities, however, I have used the Wade-Giles romanization system, which was prevalent in my mother’s time. To her, the capital of China is Peking, not the current pinyin spelling of Beijing. Pinyin is the Chinese government’s official phonetic alphabet. The glossary in the back of the book shows the pinyin equivalent of the places mentioned in my mother’s tales.

  All the individuals in the book are real. I have disguised one name to avoid hurting the person’s feelings.

  I would like to thank Shawn Ye, editor of Homa and Sekey Books, for his insightful guidance. My gratitude also goes to my faithful friends and readers, Anne, Paula, and Young for their valuable feedback and encouragement. Without them, this journey would have been much more difficult to complete.

  Prologue

  My mother loves to tell stories, and they’re all stories from the same book. This book has no title, nor can it be found in any library or bookstore. The pages are invisible, existing only in her head. Yet they’re as indelible as ink, for every time she reads from her book, the rendition is delivered verbatim. This book is her life, the great epic she’s been writing for eighty years.

  One of my fondest memories of growing up in Hong Kong is listening to Mom’s stories on a winter night. I would be sitting in my parents’ bed, my feet tucked under a silk-stuffed quilt. Mom sat on a sofa chair close by, clad in a cheongsam, with the high mandarin collar turned down for comfort. It was after dinner. My tummy was warm and the air cold. The temperature in Hong Kong never went down to freezing; but when the apartment had no heating, the chill could be unrelenting.

  "Tell about how you met Baba," I implored.

  "But you heard that last night already," Mom said.

  "Please, please, one more time."

  Mom smiled without parting her lips—only an angel could smile like that. The flow of her words, which had become my words, lulled me into a trance. I sank lower and lower into the bed. The comforter wrapped me as snugly as a cocoon. My eyes grew heavy. Then I heard Mom say, "You know what happens next?" Of course I knew, but I also knew that she didn’t expect me to answer. She was only testing to see if I was still listening. My eyelids fluttered, and she continued. I must have been about seven, still small enough to be carried to my own bed without waking.

  Since coming of age, I’d lived far from my parents. While they stayed put in California, where we’d arrived as immigrants forty years ago, I moved east, eventually settling in the Washington, D.C., area. During my occasional visits, Mom would assail me with her stories. Because of the shortness of our time together, she could only tell one or two episodes each time. I enjoyed them as much as a favorite old movie. The technology might be archaic, the content sappy, but the sweetness of lost innocence more than compensated for the shortcomings.

  This situation changed drastically when my parents’ health declined to a point where they could no longer live independently. At the time, they were living by themselves in an apartment in the San FranciscoBay area. Their dream, the dream of all Chinese parents, was to live with one of their children. Retirement home was only for barbarians, not a place for a respectable Chinese couple with five financially established children. In the twenty years after retirement they’d lived with or close to one child or another. There was always some compelling reason to move on, usually after a spell of tension or outright conflict. Nonetheless, the fact remained that every one of my siblings had done a rotation.

  My turn had arrived. The timing was perfect too. My husband and I were both retired. Our children hadn’t only left home but were no longer calling home only when they were in need; it was a sign that their metamorphoses to adulthood were close to completion. There couldn’t be a better time to take care of aging parents, a duty that had been drilled into me. Since my first day in kindergarten, my parents had prodded me about my plans for their old age. My childish reply, which seemed to tickle them to death, was, "I will build a hospital for you to live in." And now the time had come to build the hospital.

  After my parents moved in with me, I invited friends to meet the sources of my good genes. Pop, who I thought looked rather plain in his youth, had aged into an attractive, sexy senior. Aided by his rakish mustache and shiny pate, he could pass for a Hollywood kung fu master. Despite his heart disease and other ailments, his back was still straight, and his gait had the hint of a body builder’s swagger. The muscles of his weight-lifting days had carried him far and promised to keep him going a while longer.

  The person I really wanted to show off was Mom. Judging from my appearance, which was all Pop’s, my friends had always been skeptical of my claim that I had the prettiest mother in the world. The moment they set eyes on her, they conceded that I wasn’t lying. My mother would win hands down in any beauty contest for octogenarians. Her ivory skin alone would wow the judges, but set against the crown of silver gray hair, the contrast of youth and age painted a stunning picture. Her features had also held their stand in spite of the sagging ground under their feet. Her eyes hadn’t lost their flirtatious sparkle, the bridge of her nose stood with dignity, and the small but full lips that are often likened to "cherries" in Chinese novels were still sweet. My mother was a knockout in her youth and still was at eighty.

  My friends were impressed, not just at Mom’s appearance but also the stories she told. They suggested that I tape her stories. I was surprised, for it had never occurred to me that anyone outside the family would be interested in my mother’s stories. I mentioned the idea to Mom, and she embraced it with enthusiasm. She told me something I’d never known but should have guessed: her lifelong ambition was to write. If the five of us hadn’t been born, she might have become a famous author. She no longer had the energy to start, but she could tell her story and let me write it.

  And so we began, sitting side by side in my study. I placed the pocket-size recorder on Mom’s lap and depressed the red button. She opened her mouth and the past poured out of her like an overflowing dam, inundating everyone and everything in sight. My worry that the recorder might intimidate her was instantly washed away. In fact, the opposite was true. Mom drove the machine to exhaustion, pausing only to let me put in new batteries. Her words, in her native Cantonese, quickly filled ten tapes. In addition, there were the spontaneous remarks she made when I was out of reach of a tape recorder. These were usually the most revealing, and since she’d never told me to keep them off the record, I’d taken liberties with weaving them into her memoir.

  I thought I’d heard all of Mom’s stories thousands of times. Yet taping her session after session, I got a strange feeling that I was listening to them for the first time. It was only after she’d finished that the reason for the novelty hit me. This was my first time hearing them in chronological succession. Her anecdotes were no longer parallel streams that never met, dwindling and drying up in a desert. They were rivers that converged: swelling, gushing, and roaring into the sea of my mother’s longings. This current became so strong that it carried her clear across the "four seas," the Chinese metaphor for the world, to America.

  TAPE ONE

  EATING BITTER SQUASH

  1

  I was three when my father died. Although it happened far away from home, and at a time when I was too young to understand the meaning of death, vivid images of my dying father filled my childhood memory. I could have been right by his side when he expired. He was lying on grimy sheets on a hotel cot, coughing up yellow sputum. His hollow eyes were fixed on the door, waiting for Mother to appear.

  The yea
r was 1921. I was living with my mother and three brothers in Hong Kong. It was a sleepy outpost of the British Empire at the time, with a population of a few hundred thousand. We Chinese lived in the flatland close to the sea, while our green-eyed rulers lived on the peak. We were the people, and they were the ghosts, and our worlds seldom mixed.

  My mother was the daughter of a well-established family in Hong Kong. My father was a traveling merchant from Swatow, a coastal town in China. He shuttled between his hometown of Swatow and his business in Bangkok, in addition to stopping over in the places that dotted his trade route. Hong Kong was one of these stopovers, which was how he met Mother and had four children with her.

  At the time of his death, my father was on a trip to Wenchou, a town close to Shanghai. Being a businessman, he was often out at night entertaining clients. After having had a little too much to drink, he stumbled back to his hotel and rolled into bed without pulling covers over himself. It was winter, and the inn didn’t have indoor heating. He caught a cold. When Mother got a letter from his business partner saying that he had fallen sick, she considered going to him. However, her youngest son was only seven months old and still nursing. Leaving him behind was impossible, while taking him north at the height of winter could endanger his health. She decided to wait till the weather warmed up. Two weeks later, a second letter arrived. My father had died of pneumonia at the age of thirty-three.

  There wasn’t much of a funeral for Father. Because of the distance from any of his homes, he had to be buried on the spot. It wasn’t until my eldest brother turned eighteen that he was sent to take Father back to his ancestral grounds in Swatow. To make up for the lack of ceremony, Mother took the entire family to Swatow to commemorate the first anniversary of Father’s death.