âWho was that man?' I enquired.
âHe my boss in war,' Ah Lam replied.
âYour boss?' I repeated.
âHe East 'iffer B'gade off'sser.'
âWhat is the East River Brigade?'
âIn war,' Ah Lam explained, âmany Chinese pe'pul wan' fight Japanese but he no can do. Got no gun. But some pe'pul got gun.
Communist got gun. They make small-small army, liff in mountungs â¦' He pointed to the east where the land was mountainous with narrow wooded valleys between grass- or bush-covered ridges. âDis mountungs. He call East 'iffer B'igade. He fighter, not sol-jer. Sometime Communist, sometime Kuomintang, sometime just man no like Japanese.'
âBut what did you do?'
âMake trubbul for Japanese.'
After about half a mile the path, now narrower and cut into earth steps, left the paddyfields and started up a hillside carved into terraces upon which was growing a variety of vegetables. Here and there between the terraces were small platforms bearing rows of golden pagodas and one or two graves.
âWhat sort of trouble did you make?' I asked.
âBig trubbul. You know Watah-loo Road, near hotel, is a b'idge for tâain. Kowloon-Canton â¦' he struggled with the word â ⦠Wailway? One time, we blow up. Put plenty PE under b'idge.
Phoom!
No tâain can go China-side long time.'
âWhat is PE?' I enquired.
âIn English he call plas-tic ex-plo-sif,' he enunciated slowly.
âB'itish sol-jer come China-side, giff us.'
We carried on up the hill to a point where the path ran horizontally along the hillside, following the lie of the land. It was easier going now and, in twenty minutes, we reached a steep-sided wooded valley. Just as we were about to enter the trees, Ah Lam froze. I did likewise. Crouching down, he signalled me to move to his side and pointed ahead. Not twenty yards away was a wild boar, his tusks like old ivory, his back bristled. He did not look in our direction and, after a moment, moved off into the undergrowth. I began to stand up, but Ah Lam held me down. In less than a minute, the boar's sow crossed the path followed by seven piglets with light brown coats and thick, dark horizontal stripes.
No sooner were they gone than Ah Lam stood up and, in a loud voice, said,
âHo sik!'
At the sound of his voice there was a crashing in the undergrowth as the boars fled.
âIn war,' Lam went on, âwe eat dis pig. Taste ve'y good! Much more better farm pig.' We crossed a dry watercourse in the centre of the valley then began to follow the ever diminishing path through the remainder of the trees. Halfway to the edge of the woodland, however, Al Lam stopped by a huge boulder, so big it had created a clearing for itself. He sat down on it and gave me two of the bottles of Coca Cola which I opened, handing him one. The Coke was warm but quenched a thirst I did not realize I had until then.
When he had drained his bottle Ah Lam, with characteristic Chinese disregard, tossed it into the trees. I heard it smash on a rock. This done, he slithered down the boulder, crossed the path, squatted down and started to clear away the leaf litter with his hands.
âYou come see,' he said.
I joined him. A few steps from the path, he had uncovered six dull white stones. Each was about the size of a small watermelon and decorated by a similar series of thin, jagged cracks. They were in a line about three feet apart.
âYou know dis one?' he asked.
âNo,' I answered. The stones were a puzzle to me, all the more so for their being in a line.
Ah Lam patted the top of his pate. His hair was cut short, not much longer than a well-used toothbrush.
âJapanese sol-jer head,' he declared matter-of-factly. âSix piece. We kill him here. Hide behind rock, jump on him. Very quick! No noise.'
My toes curled involuntarily as I looked down on the tops of the
soldiers' skulls. It seemed incredible to me that there were dead people at my feet, buried in the earth with no coffin, no headstone, no epitaph. Then it occurred to me. Why could I see the tops of their heads? Dead people lay down in their graves.
âDid you bury them?' I asked.
Ah Lam nodded, grinning. âMus' do or Japanese come fin', take away, maybe kill pe'pul in Sai Kung for punish.'
âBut why are they ⦠?' I mimed upright as opposed to supine.
Ah Lam's grin extended further as he replied, âJapanese man no like die up.' He stood to attention to emphasize the point. âIf no lie down no can go to heaven.'
Â
Â
My father did not like having to return to the hotel. In part, I sympathized with him. He could no longer live as he had done in an apartment, with servants, entertaining in style, enjoying as prestigious an address as one could get in Hong Kong without living in a house on the mountain.
There was another reason for his dislike of the hotel. My mother was back in close contact with her Chinese friends amongst the staff. In my father's eyes, it was beneath her to befriend what were in effect her servants.
âIn my opinion, Joyce,' he said frostily one evening as he waited for her to dress to go out to dinner, âyou're going native.'
I could hear the conversation through the adjoining door which was ajar.
âLetting the side down,' my mother replied.
âPrecisely!'
âDon't be such a bloody fool, Ken!'
âI don't like it.'
âIn that case,' my mother said, âyou can lump it.'
At this juncture, I knocked and went into their room.
âI've gone native,' I announced proudly.
My father stared at me for a moment then addressed my mother again. âAnd that!' He pointed at me. âYour son's more Chinese than a coolie. He'll have a bloody pole and a rattan hat next. Is this what you want?'
âYes!' my mother replied emphatically. âIt is just what I want. I want a child who knows the world, knows the value of people whatever their race or rank and can appreciate what he sees.' She picked up her evening bag: it was black with silver beads sewn on to it. âWhat I don't want is a boring, narrow-minded bigot with a drink problem.' She smiled amiably. âShall we go?'
Bit by bit, my parents grew even further apart. My mother maintained her gradually increasing coterie of Chinese friends, seldom inviting my father into this circle but, whenever she could, including me in her excursions. I particularly loved going with her to festival celebrations.
Some, such as the Moon Festival, involved little more than a slap-up meal taken
al fresco
with the moon high in the sky and the children carrying multi-coloured lanterns shaped like rabbits, birds, butterflies, dragons and fish. If clouds threatened to obscure the moon, everyone made a loud noise by banging saucepans together or letting off a short string of firecrackers to drive the clouds away. The only aspect of the festival I just could not abide was the moon cakes, one of the very few Chinese foods I found it impossible to swallow. They came in a variety of sizes and looked vaguely like English pork pies. The dough was made of flour, syrup or honey, rice wine and eggs. After some hours, it was rolled out and a filling made of lotus seed paste and whole duck egg yolks, care being taken not to break them. Once filled and shaped in a ball, they were pressed in wooden moulds, glazed
and baked. The Chinese adored them but most
gweilos
found them inedible. The glutinous contents had the unpleasant habit of sticking to the roof of the mouth.
Other festivals, like Ch'ing Ming (or the Hungry Ghosts' Festival) in the spring, were a more exclusive matter and it was a sign of the regard in which my mother was held by her Chinese friends that, after only three years in Hong Kong, we were invited to attend this most personal of ceremonies.
On the morning of the appointed day in early April, we rendezvoused with a noisily joyful gaggle of thirty Chinese in a hundred-yard-long queue at the railway station in Tsim Sha Tsui. Everyone was weighed down by a parcel, wicker basket or string bag. After twenty minutes, we were herded aboard a train which set off immediately.
The train trundled through Kowloon and entered a tunnel in the hills. When it emerged in the Sha Tin valley, it was as if I were riding a time machine. At one end of the tunnel was a mid-twentieth-century city, on the other a timeless landscape of tiny villages, paddyfields, salt pans and fishing junks. If a British man-o'-war had sailed into the cove, cannons blazing, it could have still been the Opium War.
Following the coast to Tai Po, the train then headed north to Fanling, where we disembarked. Once we were all gathered together, the party headed into the low hills to the south. It was a long walk, first up a disintegrating concrete road then along a path through brush and scattered trees. Finally, we arrived at our destination: three graves and a row of a dozen or so golden pagodas. The women â including my mother â swept the semi-circular platforms before the graves. A man with a tin of red paint touched up the characters on the grave doors. This done, joss-sticks were produced and burnt with everyone, including my mother and me, kow-towing to the ancestors.
After this, food was produced, including, incredibly, a whole suckling pig. Bowls of hot rice ladled from a thermos were placed before the entrance to each grave with a piece of the pig, some steamed vegetables and a little bowl of rice wine. The label on the bottle read
Sam Sheh Jau â
Three Snake Wine. Pickled in the bottle was a small nondescript snake. On the top of the graves, thick wads of Hell's Banknotes were weighted down with a stone. Next to them was placed a car made out of tissue paper stretched over a split bamboo frame. This was set alight, the ashes blowing away on the breeze and adhering to the crackling on the pig.
âThe money is to pay the ancestors' bills in heaven,' my mother whispered in explanation.
âAnd the car?'
âThey haven't got one in heaven, so â¦'
Two of the men approached with armfuls of human bones. Behind them, one of the golden pagodas was open. The bones were placed on the ground where several women dusted them down and set about buffing them up with light tan Cherry Blossom shoe polish. I watched utterly mesmerized, wondering what it would be like to dig up my grandfather and give him a shine.
While the contents of all the nearby ossuaries were cleaned, a picnic was laid out. The human bones were then arranged around the picnic cloth. Every skeleton was set a place. I found myself sitting between my mother and a skull carefully balanced on a heap of its associated bones, the lower jaw dropped as if the ancestor who owned the bones was having a damned good laugh at the rest of us.
âWhat happens to their food?' I asked my mother, not letting my eye off my neighbour's rice bowl. I think I half expected to see it gradually disappear, consumed by the ghost of the skeleton.
âThe ancestors in heaven soak up the essence of the food, then it's thrown away,' my mother informed me.
âIncluding the pig?' I enquired, my mouth watering at the thought of it.
âNo,' my mother answered. âOnly the food in the bowls. We eat the rest.'
No-one spoke to the bones and, when the picnic was eaten, we indeed threw the ancestors' food into the bushes for the ants and birds. With the bones returned to their golden pagodas, we set off for the railway station. As we descended the hills, I saw other families scattered across the slopes of the hills doing as we had done.
Arriving home, we found my father sitting on the balcony of my parents' room reading a month-old copy of an English newspaper and puffing on his pipe. He had temporarily grown a full beard, partly, I suspected, because naval officers were permitted to do so. Indeed, he had unnecessarily asked Mr Borrie's permission.
âSo, feel you've done your bit for someone else's forebears?' he asked acerbically.
There was, however, one festival my father was actually prepared to attend, despite the fact that it contained much that he abhorred â joss-stick smoke, firecrackers, dense jostling crowds and (to him) inedible delicacies. This was the birthday of Tin Hau and my father tolerated it because it entailed a boat trip.
The primary festival of the sea-going folk of Hong Kong, it was held not only at all the Tin Hau temples around Hong Kong but also at the ancient temple in Tai Miu Wan, named â literally â Joss House Bay by early European settlers who referred to temples as joss houses.
The journey to Tai Miu Wan was explained to me by my father, who insisted I sat at a table in the hotel lounge with him as he pored over our impending nautical experience with military
precision, plotting it with dividers and a navigational ruler on a naval chart. He might have been preparing an invasion.
âIt'll take us about ninety minutes to get there from HMS
Tamar,'
he began. âOur party will be taking one of the larger, faster launches. At first, we head towards the eastern harbour, then â pay attention â go on to a bearing east-south-east through Lei Yue Mun and into â¦' he jabbed the point of the dividers into the map â ⦠the Tat Hong Channel. We change to a northeasterly bearing here â¦' he moved the dividers â ⦠once clear of the island of Tit Cham Chau.'