Little Red Book by May Ngo

May 21, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments

May Ngo is a researcher in the social sciences, focusing on development in Cambodia. Her other interests include theology, migration, diaspora and literature. She is also developing her father’s memoirs of his time with the Vietnamese communist army as a novel. She has a blog at The Violent Bear it Away (https://theviolentbearitaway1.wordpress.com/) and tweets at @mayngo2

 
 
 
Little Red Book

In the Chinese school Chen attended, in a medium-sized port town in South- Eastern Cambodia, their reading books had bright red covers, yellow stars and a picture of Mao’s shiny, round amiable face smiling up at them. In order to reach his school Chen had to take a ferry everyday across the murky brown Mekong, and in class he learnt lines from Mao’s wisdom, crystallised into songs he and his classmates would sing, their voices harmonising and occasionally breaking out of harmony. The songs they sang hailed being on the side of the poor, called to make the world equal:

The east is red, the sun is rising.
From China comes Mao Zedong.
He strives for the people’s happiness,
Hurrah, he is the people’s great saviour!

Chairman Mao loves the people,
He is our guide
to building a new China
Hurrah, lead us forward!

Chen would sing in a loud, pure voice, memorising whole passages from songs printed in their little red books.  In class, they would listen to the crackly radio broadcasting all the way from Beijing’s central radio station, calling for the uprising of proletariats all over the world, calling for workers to unite to create a happy paradise where there was no difference between the rich and the poor.

His teacher, Mr Xi, wore a badge with Mao’s face in silver profile, and as a daily classroom ritual read a passage from one of Mao’s works. He would stride with his long legs up and down the length of the room and in a raised voice read a selected excerpt for that day, only pausing at particular moments when he wished to highlight a passage to his students, peering at them intensely through his glasses. Chen idolised Mr Xi. And on the wall at the front of the classroom, prominently hung the obligatory portrait of the King of Cambodia, Sihanouk; his broad, round face, serious eyes and the hint of a smile looking down at them.

Once, they had a visit from someone Mr Xi introduced as Mr Bao Li. Chen did not understand who this man was or what he did exactly, except that Mr Xi said that he was important. The man looked like he was in his twenties, dressed in neat, ironed clothes and a straight cut fringe that ended just above his eyes. He gave a presentation to the class, a rather long and winding talk that included communist revolutionary theory and patriotism and ideals. Although some students started to fidget and move their legs, pushing their pens and paper around on their desk, Chen listened attentively. In that small classroom, dusty and filled with the standard wooden desks and chairs, his world widened to include all the poor of the world, the down-trodden and spat upon. He could imagine, more than imagine, feel what it must be like to be one of them. And also what it would be like when liberation finally came.

“Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul”. Chen took to heart this line in Mao’s little red book, and in his final year of school when Chen was chosen as leader of his class he organised a political study group that focused on the book Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. He selected the chapter on ‘Political Work’ to start with as he found it particularly inspiring with its call for everyone, intellectuals, students and soldiers alike, to be involved in political work. His best friend, Kiet, was also in the study group. Kiet was a gangly young man, who, although tall for his age—as he had always been, since childhood—had a desperately youthful looking face with stringy black hair that always fell into his eyes no matter how many times he swiped it away. Kiet’s father owned a successful catering business for weddings and special events, and their families had known each other since both were little. One of their favourite past times together was playing table tennis. Both were agile and quick on their feet and the ball zipped between them like lightening.

Chen and Kiet debated with their classmates on a number of political events and current affairs, they particularly argued against those in the study group who were ambivalent about Western imperialism and its effects. Chen could not understand how one could be a communist and not be against it unequivocally, particularly against what he saw as the biggest beast of all, the United States. He and Kiet wrote articles in this vein and hoped to get them published in the local newspaper, to this end they asked Mr Xi to help them order books that the school did not have, hungry for more writings by the Chairman. Chen ignored subjects in his class that did not relate to politics, ignored those subjects that did not talk about a future that was yet to be created, that he would help to create. The small concrete building by the edge of the river, his school, became like the blinking beacon of a lighthouse in the night, shining upon hazardous rocks and marking dangerous coastlines to avoid; illuminating the way forward. In the classroom, in the study group, writing political tracts with Kiet, he soaked in the luminescent promise-filled atmosphere at school, but at home it was a different matter.

Chen and his seven brothers and sisters lived in a large two-storey brick house with maids and helpers who occupied themselves with the household chores and cooking. He felt a loathing for the fact that they had a TV, servants and, by far, the biggest house in the neighbourhood, while groups of beggars on the street congregated around their household bins salvaging for food scraps. Even worse than these obvious signs of wealth, Chen was ashamed that his father was a “boss”. Chen’s father owned a fish sauce factory employing ten workers, half of whom were an assortment of uncles, cousins and in-laws, was also the owner of a fruit farm filled with luscious mango, pineapple, longan and jackfruit trees, as well as a whole apartment building in Phnom Penh that he rented out to tenants.

“In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class”. This line from Mao’s little red book burned him. He did not want to be stamped by the class of his family and at the same time he could not shake off the feeling that he was a hypocrite, so Chen retaliated in the only way he knew how. He gave up watching TV. He did not ask for new shoes even when they were starting to wear thin. He refused to eat anything more than what he assumed a farm labourer in his town would eat, ignoring his mother’s pleadings to eat more, pushing yet another plate of food toward him. He wanted to take off his bourgeois milieu like old clothes that scratched at him, that were too tight in places because they no longer fit him.

During Chinese New Year all of his brothers and sisters wore new clothes, the girls with ribbons in their hair and the boys with faces scrubbed clean. Chen refused to wear the bright, shining new clothes his mother had bought for him; the new shirt and pair of pants lay forlornly on his bed.  Instead, Chen wore an old shirt that had frayed, hanging threads and some blue pants that he often wore to the factory; one of his brothers told him he looked even worse than the rubbish sweeper who had at least made an effort with a new shirt bought from the central market. When relatives came to the house to visit for the celebrations, he greeted them all in his old clothes, hair uncombed. His grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins politely ignored his appearance, even as he accepted their red envelopes looking like a vagrant. All except Uncle Kong, his father’s younger brother, who was known for not mincing words and who could be counted on to make awkward moments even more awkward. On entering the house and seeing Chen, he exclaimed “Hey, why are you looking so scruffy today?” He grabbed Chen by the elbow. “It’s Chinese New Year for goodness sake!”

Everyone looked at Chen and there was a silence before his mother, who was passing around sesame cookies on a plate, gave a nervous laugh, saying “Oh it’s nothing. Just something he’s going through. He doesn’t want to wear new clothes”.

His father’s face clouded, a dark grey mist passing over his visage, but he did not say a word. His father was a tall, well-built man who carried himself in a way that denoted power and strength, a firmness to his hands. Most of the time he spent at the factory, but when at home he spoke few words. For this reason, most of his children were more than a little afraid of him.  

Chen also did not reply and instead moved his arm away from his uncle. He did not expect him to understand; his fat, corpulent uncle working as a manager at his father’s fish sauce factory, ordering the workers about while he sat looking on. In private, after everyone had gone, Chen heard his mother crying in the kitchen, telling their cook Piseth that she did not understand where this came from or why. Chen hurriedly retreated back to his room.  

“It is the duty of the cadres and the Party to serve the people. Without the people’s interests constantly at heart, their work is useless.” One day, on his way home from school, Chen bought some fried bananas and roasted peanuts from a street vendor. Once he got home he provocatively notified his mother, who was in the kitchen with Piseth, that he was going to give them away to the poor children who lived in their neighbourhood. Upon hearing this, his mother exploded as if a spring had been released inside her, her hands upsetting the plate of mangoes that was to be an offering to their ancestors in the household shrine.

“What! You care so much about the children out there but what about your own family? Why are you ignoring your own family?” She banged her hand on the kitchen counter twice. “You don’t even care about your own brothers and sisters!” Thin black strands of hair fell in front of her face, thin blue veins showed on her hand that laid on the counter.

“Why should I care about them?” Chen retorted. “They’re selfish. You’re all selfish!”

Chen’s mother’s face seemed to stretch outwards, distorting her features. “You ungrateful little bastard, how dare you speak to me like that!” she screamed at him.

Chen felt the rage rising in him, becoming a heavy fog in his mind. His lower lip quivered. He said slowly and carefully, trying to keep his voice even “I dare because you know nothing and only care about yourself.”

Chen’s mother slapped him. She reached and pulled out a butcher’s knife from the sideboard, its edge gleaming, and waved the knife towards him. “How dare you! How dare you!” she yelled in a high, unrecognisable voice, her hands shaking. Her hair had partially come out of its bun, her arm angled to hold the knife up high. Chen felt in that moment as if she were a demonic spirit, capable of anything.

Chen turned around and ran out of the kitchen, a blur going past Piseth the cook, Serey the maid and his siblings who had come to see what all the shouting was about. He ran out of the house and all the way to the fish sauce factory, breathlessly going straight to the section where the big vats of salted, aging fish were stored, waiting to be strained for its liquid. Huynh, the manager of the section was there, stirring some of the vats with a wooden paddle. “Hello, Chen” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead. Chen smiled at him, grateful for a refuge from what had just occurred, and helped Huynh put out a stack of baskets for straining the fish sauce.

To annoy his parents, Chen often went to the factory just to talk to the workers and eat his lunch with them, oblivious to their awkward and embarrassed looks. Sometimes he would offer to share his lunch with them, but they always declined, politely. They would in turn offer a taste of their lunch to him, but he dreaded it because of the inevitable prahok that would be littered through it. The salty, fermented fish paste was abhorrent to him, it smelt of old encrusted socks, but the workers like most Khmers seemed to put it in all of their food. Nevertheless, when they offered it to him he would always eat it, swallowing with a mouthful of white rice to dilute the taste. He refused his fathers’ insistence to, like his uncle, communicate with clients, or look after the accounting, or negotiate with the fish suppliers, preferring instead to handle the fish stock with the labourers, knowing that it infuriated his father.

Chen’s parents had expectations of him as the eldest son to eventually take over the business. But he had no intention of doing so and took his father’s red-faced silence as a badge of pride, as a sign that he was doing the right thing. Chen’s father’s face became perpetually lined in a grimace, as if the milk he drank everyday had soured. And after the argument they had, Chen’s mother was mute and withdrawn, no longer pushing plates of food towards him at the dinner table.

***

The Mekong river ran through Chen’s town, making it a busy port city with ships flitting in and out like migrating birds, transporting passengers and goods onwards to the capital Phnom Penh. It was a hub for many Chinese businesses, many of whom Chen’s father knew, and many, like Chen’s family on his father’s side, had been there for several generations. They opened up shops that lined the main street, selling everything from groceries to clothing to electrical goods. They also opened up factories like Chen’s father; abattoirs, piggeries, packaging of imported goods. The town was lively with activity during the day but also, especially, at night. The covered central market would turn its lights on, and delectable smells would waft from it as stall owners grilled skewers of meat and deftly fried noodles. They also arranged their sweets for display, sweets like agar jelly and sticky rice and fried banana that would attract both customers and flies. Fat babies would be carted out alongside family members, their faces syrupy with coconut cream. Young men would come out smartly dressed in jeans and pressed coloured shirts, while the young women clutched at handbags and carefully done hair. Chen’s father however did not let his children out during the evening. The people crowding the markets at night, laughing, eating, bargaining over prices, did not hide for Chen’s father the town’s inherent dangers. He often said to his children, “If I catch you going out at night…” leaving the rest of the sentence a silent menace. He would often look at Chen while saying this.

The town had been used to seeing for a few good years now the erratic presence of bodies floating in the river like bits of log wood. Bodies of men that bobbed face up in the downstream would appear like ghostly apparitions, their hair and clothes plastered to their bodies like life-sized painted dolls. This always happened after every bombing near Chen’s town. The grey sleek body of the planes, like a mutation of a giant bird with its sliver belly visible from the ground, terrified everyone when they came flying in, which if low enough, could be seen the words ‘U.S. ARMY’ painted on their tails. They stooped low to release their eggs of a hundred iron bombs, flattening out the land and the people who lived on it for hundreds of metres. The sound of these occasional bombings could be heard from the town even though the targets were the thick jungles bordering Vietnam and Cambodia.

Parts of the jungle became burnt out shells, on both sides. Chen’s father knew that Vietnamese guerilla communists would often run across the border over into the Cambodian side and into Chen’s town after their encampments were attacked, hiding amongst the bustle of the markets and the everyday life that was lived there. Chen’s father also knew that goods arrived at the port not only to be transported onwards to Phnom Penh, but also the other way around. Back towards the jungle and destined for the base camps of the Viet Cong, food and military supplies got transported by the Chinese government. Chen’s father, his friends and business associates did not talk about it, even though Chen’s father knew that some of them were involved in helping the goods to pass through, bribing the local authorities, or lending the use of their trucks.

Chen’s father turned away from it, did not want to be involved but did not want to denounce it either. His mind was occupied with how to make his business grow and make more of a profit then it currently was. He had taken on two new workers with the expectation that more orders were coming from one of his main clients. But the order had not come through, with the usual excuses made by the client, “You know how these things work”. Chen’s father now did not return from the factory until late at night. He would come home to eat his dinner and then go to bed, before leaving again early at dawn the next morning.

One day, Chen’s father unexpectedly came home earlier than usual. He had heard about some unrest in the streets and had let the workers go home early.

The King had been deposed.

This was what Chen’s father found out when he turned on the news on their TV, one of only a handful of TVs in town. The government-sanctioned news kept repeating the same thing on a loop; that a vote had taken place in the National Assembly which had removed King Sihanouk from power. In his place, the General Lon Nol had assumed the role of Head of State on an emergency basis. The news reports did not elaborate on why this had happened, nor how long it was going to continue.

Chen’s mother went next door to ask their neighbour what was going on. “Haven’t you heard?” said Bong, an old woman with hair that had gone completely silvery-white and deep bronzed skin that looked like polished mahogany. She sat cross-legged on her wooden bed. Everyone called her aunty, even though she lived alone and didn’t seem to be anyone’s aunty. “Lon Nol has gone and declared himself President while the King was in Russia”. She clucked a noise of disapproval, her lined eyes squinting, “Ooh, he’s dismantled the Kingdom like a broken-down clock!”.

She continued to chew on some betel nut leaf, fanning herself with a piece of cardboard. “It’s effectively a coup, that’s what everyone is saying.” Bong leaned in closer, showing her stained red teeth, “People are saying the CIA are behind this”, she whispered, “You know who they are, right?”

Although the TV did not give much further news, the radio proved to be more accommodating. Chen’s father found a radio station that was transmitting from Beijing, where King Sihanouk had found exile. He denounced the coup, blasting his message angrily in a broadcast intended for the Cambodians who were able to tune in and hear him. This is only a temporary situation, he said, voice muffled by the inevitably bad connection on the radio. I am setting up a government-in-exile here in China to fight against Lon Nol.” He continued, “I know I have denounced the Cambodian communists before, but this time they will help us.” The radio crackled. “We must all get behind Pol Pot and his party! We must support the Viet Cong and fight the American imperialists!”

Chen’s father temporarily shut down the factory. His mother fervently prayed in front of their small golden statue of the Buddha and offered incense sticks to their ancestors for protection. Chen’s father sat at his desk at home turning the pages of the factory’s accounts book back and forth, the numbers a blur in front of him, lines creasing his forehead.

For Chen, however, it was the call to action he needed. Like a bird who knew instinctively when to migrate, he knew that this was his moment. As Mao wrote, “While no one likes war, we must remain ready to wage just wars against imperialist agitations.” It was not a moment of his own making, any more than finding oneself in the eye of a hurricane is a moment of one’s own making, but nevertheless, he recognised it as a precipitate time where he could decide to act.

Like young birds who wanted to fly too early from their nest, their soft, fledgling wings flapping awkwardly but resolutely, Chen and his friends from the political study group resolved to leave for the jungle to join one of the Viet Cong’s base camps. At this time, many Chinese young people in his town had started to go missing, in twos and threes. When it started occurring, not a word was said about it within the Chinese community but everyone knew- these young people had left home to go into the jungle to join the neighbouring Vietnamese Communists. Chen and his friends wanted to follow in their footsteps, and together they made a plan.

On the assigned day, Chen carefully tied a bundle of clothes into a bag and strapped it across his chest.  He considered taking a kitchen knife, and even folded one into his bundle of clothes, but then decided against it. The army would give him any necessary weapons, he thought. He waited for his father to leave for the factory at dawn, which he had started opening again, before quietly slipping out of the house to the sound of pigs squealing. The ones to be sold at the market that day had just been slaughtered.   

His family would not find out until it was time for breakfast, when Serey or his mother, calling him to the table, would find his bed empty. However, as he was waiting for Kiet at the market at their rendezvous point, an unfortunate incident occurred. His Uncle Kong saw him from across the street through the gaps between the rush of traffic of motorbikes and cycle rickshaws. He saw Chen with his bundle of clothes and knew immediately. Although Chen was now eighteen, he was no match for his uncle who was tall and big, filling out his frame like a younger version of Chen’s father. Kong crossed the street and grabbing him by the arm, dragged Chen all the way back to his house, red-faced but not saying a word. Chen was too frightened to disobey or to argue. On their arrival, Chen’s mother looked at them and did not even have to ask. She cried hysterically for Serey to run to the factory to inform his father, a fear striking at the frame of her body. When Chen’s father came home, Chen did not say anything but stared at him coldly. Chen’s father did not say anything either, instead he grabbed his walking stick from the umbrella stand and struck Chen with broad, powerful strokes all over his body, yelling at the top of his voice, his face darkening, “So you want to go eh?!” thud, thud, thud. “I’ll show you how to go” thud, thud, only pausing when his wife pulled at his hands, cried at him to stop. Then he commenced again.

Afterwards, Chen laid in his bed rubbing the red splotches on his legs and cursing his father; for hitting him but most of all for not letting him go. He smarted at how unfair it was, to be on the cusp of being part of something so important and extraordinary, where he could finally affect the world in some way, only to be stopped by a father who only knew how to do one thing: make money. His images of fighting and of glory were crushed as he lay prone in his bed and this hurt him more than the growing welts that were forming on his body. He ignored his mother when she entered his room with rice porridge, entreating him to eat something.

But even in his anger, Chen felt confident. He rubbed the large bruise on his arm that had darkened into a deep black- blue. He had just thought of another plan to reach the jungle.

“People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs! People of the world, be courageous, and dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed.”*

*Mao Tse-tung, “Statement Supporting the People of the Congo (L.) Against U.S. Aggression” (November 28, 1964), People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Lackeys, 2nd ed., p. 14

Silent Country by Lynda Ng

May 16, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments

Lynda Ng was born in Wollongong.  She is a graduate of the NIDA Playwrights Studio and the editor of Indigenous Transnationalism: Essays on Carpentaria (Giramondo Press, 2018).  Having lived in Hong Kong, Oxford and Berlin, she currently teaches literature at the University of Sydney.

Silent Country

When she was a little girl, Melanie’s secret power was being Chinese. She had been gifted with a straight black bob, dimpled smile and big, wide eyes that made her look like a doll. Other children couldn’t help themselves. They would cross the playground just to pick her up and cuddle her. People would stop on the street to exclaim to her mother, “She’s so cute!” and reach down to pat her on the head. The weekly shop was a social activity. Shopkeepers would hand her things – a frankfurter from the butcher, a lolly from the corner shop, a pencil from the newsagent – and laden with gifts, she would return home infused with a sense of contentment and wellness. When she was a little girl, the world was a place that promised benevolence, admiration and love.

As a teenager, Melanie started to look less like a doll and more like a woman, but she learned how to compensate for these changes. She grew her hair long and augmented her brown eyes with dramatic winged tips. Some of her Asian friends complained when people asked, “Where are you from?”, but Melanie always seized the opportunity to embellish. She spun tales for them about her past: she was descended from a ferocious line of Qing dynasty bannermen, or a warlord’s beautiful princess, or a tragic concubine who spent her years in lonely opulence. She gave herself more exotic blood: Mongolian, Hakka, Tibetan, Hui. In this manner, her Chineseness could still be effective. People would exclaim, “How interesting!”, “What an incredible story”, “You’re very beautiful.” This took her all the way through school and university, and still the world promised to be everything she might wish for.

It was only when she ceased being a student and became instead a young woman looking for a husband, or employment, that Melanie realized being Chinese could be a problem. There was the patronising way strangers sometimes spoke to her, in tones that presupposed she would never dare speak back. There were interviews where people commented on how good her English was. And then she went up for promotion and was passed over because ‘she wasn’t assertive enough’. The position went instead to an outsider, a young man who didn’t know her clients as well as she did but who could certainly throw his weight and voice around. As an adult, she discovered that those fairy tales about being an exotic Asian princess were not her dreams alone, but a common fantasy for many of the men who wanted to buy her drinks and work their way into her bed. Their willingness to ignore reality was frustrating, to say the least, and depressing in the event.

But this was not the fault of her Chineseness alone. It was also the general situation of many of her friends, working women who discovered that times had changed but things were not really that different. Men now wanted a partner who was educated and witty, who would bring home a salary to match theirs. But they also wanted this same woman to cook well, keep the house clean, to look after the babies and be able to iron their shirts in the morning. Melanie and her girlfriends commiserated with each other in laneway bars and hipster cafés over the high rents, the double-standards, and the general unwillingness of their dates to commit to someone who might earn more than them. Melanie and her friends had trained to be bankers, lawyers, government policy-makers. They found themselves now, five years down the track, in jobs that required them to work until midnight putting together Powerpoint presentations or assembling documents that few people would actually see. As the years started to add up they mentally adjusted their future families from three children, to two, down to one, and tried their best to keep an encroaching sense of anxiety at bay.

Some of her friends gave up, and moved to New York. In many ways, the dating scene was the same, but there was more work available, more opportunities in banking, and the rents were cheaper. Melanie toyed with the idea. She’d heard that Aussie girls got lots of attention in New York. By crossing the Pacific you became a different sort of exotic creature. In other ways, though, the idea of leaving terrified her. Her mother had always insisted, “We are from here. Your people go way back, back in time in this land.” Buried somewhere amongst the background noise of news and trivia, there were half-remembered anecdotes of Chinese maps showing that they had discovered and charted Australian shores long before the Europeans. Piecemeal memories of a time when China had been curious about the rest of the world, before the Middle Kingdom closed itself off and settled back comfortably into a self-indulgent, self-satisfied stupor.

She told herself she was too Chinese; she wanted to be close to her parents. She lived in a share-flat just a couple of suburbs down the train line from the family home, and returned for family dinner every Sunday without fail. She told herself she was too Australian. She had visited New York a couple of times and liked it, but she couldn’t imagine suffering through the cold there year after year. She couldn’t imagine life without the dry, hot summers, the beach, the gumtrees and the giant ibis rooting through garbage bins at lunchtime.

She listened to friends, and relationship columnists, and tried to be more open-minded as to who she went out with. She installed a dating app on her phone and met men from different parts of Sydney, men from different backgrounds. Two more years went by, and she was passed over for promotion once again, this time because she ‘wasn’t enough of a visionary’. The young man who had taken the Directorship last time was moved across to the bank’s Singapore office. Another young man took his place. This one not as loud as the first, but with the same overbearing confidence and tendency to ask Melanie to fix the lunch order when they had their weekly team meeting. She broke up with her latest boyfriend, who she had been enjoying very much, when he made it clear that he would never consider taking time off work to be a stay-at-home dad. He was an administrator who earned half of what she did and he told her all this while they dined at a fancy restaurant, where she was expected to pick up the bill. She tried to point out that the future, as he envisioned it, was impractical. He disagreed. There was not much left to say after that. New York began to look more promising.

One weekend, feeling fed up and despondent, she raised the possibility with her parents. There was a pause, a staccato beat that threatened to become a legato, finally broken by a gentle cough from Melanie’s father. Silence was a common means of communication in their house. In the spaces between words, no commitments were made but all judgements held. The cough allowed them to progress naturally to safer topics, such as the tenderness of the char siu pork, and who thought the Swans were going to win next weekend. She might almost have doubted that she’d spoken out loud – perhaps she had only uttered those words in her mind, a clear demonstration of the ‘lack of assertiveness’ that was holding her back – except for the mournful look that her father gave her when dinner was over.

He had come to Australia on scholarship, a skinny, nervous-looking nineteen-year-old whose long fringe kept flopping into his eyes. One of nine siblings, it had been a series of firsts for him. First time on a plane. First time in an English-speaking country. First time attending university classes. First time completely on his own.

Melanie’s mother had spied him wandering around the Quad at Sydney Uni, looking lost. When she stopped to ask if she could help, he looked at her with startled eyes and blushed. Her mother knew in that moment that she was going to fall in love with this sweet, gentle soul. To this day, her father maintains that he was simply looking for his classroom when a tiny Chinese girl dwarfed by her backpack emerged from the crowd and said something to him, “in that bloody incomprehensible Aussie accent.” He denies blushing. But he does admit he was rendered speechless.

Not being a man predisposed to retrospection, he hadn’t told Melanie much about those early years. He had a good life in Sydney, and he was quick to point that out. But at night, as he huddled over the phone, she would hear snatches of Cantonese and laughter that belied his homesickness. With three brothers and five sisters, these phone calls came frequently, especially now that they cost next to nothing. And after every conversation, without fail, he would pace the house restlessly.

Unlike others they knew, no one from her father’s family had followed him out to the West. They had come for visits and duly expressed their appreciation for the size of his house, the lawn, the double garage (“so much space, so much space!”), and yet it was clear that none of them really envied him.

He had made a life for himself, that is true, and found himself a beautiful wife. But his wife’s Chinese was heavily accented, nearly incomprehensible. His daughter’s even worse. The houses in Sydney were roomy but the streets were empty. It was a city that sprawled out to nowhere. A nice place to visit on holiday, not necessarily a place where any of them wanted to stay. Back in Hong Kong, in the vertical city of lights and fortune, was where they felt alive. Why would they want to give that up to come here, to simply wait their time out amongst foreigners? And besides, back in Hong Kong they all had each other. Life without family, what sort of life was that?

So he remained, an immigrant amongst other immigrants, a stranger feeling out his way alongside other strangers. He never lost the sing-song of his Chinese accent but over time it came to be overlaid with the broad, growling stretches of an Australian one, a combination that Melanie found at once acutely embarrassing and comforting in its familiarity. As he mangled the English language into new permutations, he tried to come to terms with the fact that he would likely die in this country, far away from where he was born. That he loved his wife and daughter went without saying, but a part of him couldn’t help but feel melancholic at the fact that they would never know him in his native tongue and therefore never know who he really was inside. He was increasingly resigned to being the quiet and dependable man they knew. The witty and animated version of himself had kept up its frantic chatter at the beginning but, with practice, he had learned to quieten it. To send it gently to sleep so that, on most days, it was simply a memory of someone he had once known but could now barely recognise.

As he walked her to the door he said, “It is difficult to start a new home elsewhere. Why leave unless you have to?”

The other indication that her words had been observed, if not remarked upon, came a week later when her mother asked if she would meet her at the Art Gallery. For her mother, who had worked as a dental secretary her whole adult life, one of the greatest possible joys was to sit with a single-serve pot of English Breakfast tea and a scone on the terrace, gazing out towards the water. When Melanie was a child, they had made the journey once a month. Even then, Melanie was able to connect her mother’s tea drinking with her own forms of play-acting. She wasn’t sure if her mother imagined herself as a colonial stateswoman, a lady of leisure, or simply a patron of the arts. But she swirled those dreams around in her teacup, doused them liberally with sugar and milk, and drew comfort from the warmth in her throat as she swallowed them.

Today there was no mention of tea, however. Her mother gripped her arm and steered her expertly through the gallery, past the whimsical watercolours and the bold impasto paintings, towards one of the more sombre rooms at the back. This one contained photographs mounted on vanilla cardboard. The black and white reminders of a colonial settler history.

They did a lap of the room in silence, her mother’s arm wrapped in a companionable way around hers. Melanie was surprised to see that the display hadn’t changed much over the years. There was one photograph in particular, titled ‘Aboriginal Mia Mia’ that she remembered from her childhood. Four Aboriginal figures, three women and a man, positioned next to a small hut made of bark and leaves. Two figures stood, two sat in repose on the grass. They were all dressed in formal Victorian garb: the man with a waistcoat, the women with corseted waists. One woman held a long stick that towered high above her head. Melanie wasn’t sure if it was a spear or another sort of tool, but she liked the way it made the woman seem warrior-like. She was an anomaly amongst photographs of white men with funny Victorian beards and Aboriginal men with painted bodies and elaborate masks. There was a postcard entitled ‘Australian wildflower’ that depicted a bare-breasted Aboriginal woman smiling expectantly from behind a carefully-positioned waratah bush.

“Do you know why I like this room?” her mother asked.

“Because it’s peaceful.”

They circled back to the photograph of four Aboriginal figures. Melanie’s eye returned to the woman who guarded the entrance to the hut with her tall stick, high collared shirt and defiant stare. Melanie knew that, in reality, the photographer must have positioned her there. He would have told all four people where to stand or sit, to hold their poses, and then to wait for at least thirty seconds while the sun imprinted the likeness of their bodies onto his film. He probably made them hold their poses for at least a minute, maybe more, just to be certain that he’d got the shot he wanted. But perhaps once their time was up, once he’d given them permission to move again and was gathering his equipment, that Aboriginal woman had expertly sent the stick sailing through the air, carving an arc that passed just by his cheek and landed over his shoulder. She wouldn’t have struck him, but her point would have been made. The woman’s angry defiance was there in her eyes, still burning over a century later.

Melanie’s mother wasn’t interested in the women, however. She pointed towards the man who stood amongst them, his gaze perpetually fixed on something just beyond the frame.

“I come here because that is your great-grandfather. My grandfather.”

In the silence that followed, even Melanie couldn’t be sure of quite what was being conveyed. She wanted to ask her mother to repeat herself, but that wasn’t their way. She had heard correctly. Her mother smiled, understanding of her confusion.

“It’s a secret. My own mother only told me after I had had you, when I had become a mother myself.”

“But how is it possible? I mean, wouldn’t we know?”

Melanie glanced down at her hands, unconsciously gesturing towards herself.

“Through what? Through skin? Through eyes? From the nose?” her mother was nearly laughing at her.

Melanie stared into her mother’s face. The brown eyes rimmed by severe black glasses, the hair that had long ago turned white but was carefully maintained in Natural Black (Clairol #122), the tan skin that had become freckled over time. Peering into that face, the panic suddenly welled up in her and she wondered if she would ever stand here with a child of her own or if she was destined always to gaze at an older version of herself.

“I was going to wait until you too had become a mother, but as you’re talking about leaving Sydney, I thought it was time. If something happens to me, you might never know. I wanted to stand with you in this spot and show you. We are from here. Your people go way back, back in time in this land. No matter what other people tell you, you will always belong here. Here.”

Together, arms enfolded, they stared at the photograph on the wall. There were many questions but all would be answered in time. There was a genealogy to be reconstructed, a story of how an Aboriginal man found a Chinese wife. Another story of how a Chinese woman with a mixed-race baby found her way back into Chinese society. A history of the Chinese in Australia, whose roots run deeper than anyone knows.

Melanie couldn’t be sure that this story was the right one. Her mother, after all, was a woman who prayed to various Daoist gods as well as in the Methodist church every week. Her mother was the one who insisted that, if you ate the delicate flesh out of a fish’s cheeks then you also had to pick the tougher bits off the bony tail, to ensure that your luck would ‘come back to you’.

There was something irresistible about this story, though. The crisp image of this man before her, the face of an ancestor. Unlike all the warlords or magistrates or sorcerers she had conjured up during her childhood, this was a man of flesh and blood. Someone who had dreamed, loved, walked on the very same ground she did.

She couldn’t be sure that this story was the right one, but when her mother clasped her hands and bowed her head three times to pay her respects, it seemed right to join her.