Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (20 page)

I encountered citizens in all walks of life working fourteen to sixteen hours a day for meagre wages: taxi-drivers, hairdressers, waitresses, nurses, telephone operators. Compared to London, everything was cheap except for housing. This was the period when Hong Kong developed its reputation as the bargain basement and shopping mecca of the world. Talent and opportunism were the keystones of the economy. Hong Kong became a brave new world to the downtrodden of China.

Stories abounded about ordinary wage earners, some even illiterate, who, by persistent hard work and saving every penny, were able to buy a small flat and even send their children abroad to study. Maids and chauffeurs began to invest in property and speculate on the Hong Kong stock market.

My work at Tsan Yuk was physically demanding but not intellectually challenging. No medical research of any kind was performed while I was there. Sexual discrimination was rampant and blatant. Male doctors earned more than female doctors of the same rank, although we did identical work and took equal numbers of night calls.

I was not at all popular. My fellow interns were piqued that I was permanently installed in the on-call room. Eventually, I was assigned a private room at the hospital for which I paid a very high rent. The hospital administrator congratulated me

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on my good luck in getting the room. She had been told by Professor Chun that my family was enormously rich and I was independently wealthy.

There was nowhere for me to go in the evenings and weekends. I ate most of my meals at the hospital. I spent most of my meagre salary on rent, food, books and (in a misguided effort to gain their affection) expensive presents for my parents such as silver boxes and cashmere sweaters.

My colleagues resented me because I was not Cantonese, and my degree was from London, not Hong Kong. My two advanced diplomas in internal medicine did not belong in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The way I spoke English was considered un-Chinese, different, unintelligible, and irritating. They nicknamed me Loy Lu Foh, ’imported merchandise’.

When I eventually contacted Professor McFadden, he confirmed the offer of a position as assistant lecturer in the Department of Internal Medicine, with free housing. I was sorely tempted to accept, but I simply could not let Father lose face. Later on, I found out that interdepartmental rivalry was rife, and it was a minor feather in Professor Chun’s cap for me to have chosen her offer of an internship over Professor McFadden’s promise .of an assistant lectureship, especially when I already possessed my MRCP from London and Edinburgh. There was another reason for not accepting: by then I already knew that I had to get away from Hong Kong and make my life somewhere else. The position with Professor McFadden would have been permanent. He had been more than generous towards me because he had left the job offer open for one year.

Every Sunday night, we were expected to dine at Father’sand Niang’s newly purchased flat at Mid-levels. Those dinners were ordeals. We had to be on guard the whole time. Niang seemed to know everything, especially those matters we did not want her to know: Gregory’s chronically overdrawn bank account and abundant parking tickets all over Kowloon and

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Hong Kong (’worthy of The Guinness Book of Records,’ according to Father); James’s consumption of whisky; my attempts to rent a larger flat for my two brothers and me so that we could have some semblance of a home life; Susan’s correspondence with a male American friend.

I came to loathe their views expressed at those Sunday night dinners where I invariably remained silent, like a fu zhong you yu (fish swimming in a cauldron) and seething with frustrated discontent.

My parents regularly decried and condemned the Hong Kong Cantonese for their avarice, blatant materialism and ostentatious vulgarity. Yet I could not help but notice their own obsession with money. Their prejudices were broad and catholic. Besides the Cantonese, they criticized the Jews, the Indians and the Japanese. As for their potential Nigerian business partners, Niang considered them subhuman and beneath contempt.

By 1963 a whole generation of bilingual young Chinese were part of Hong Kong’s work force. Already some of the very rich in Hong Kong were wealthy beyond belief. Their sons and daughters returned from the best universities in England and America, impeccably turned out in dark designer suits tailored in London and Paris, even in the height of summer. They spoke flawless English. The sons sometimes had fan gui nui (foreign female devils) on their arms. The best and most elite clubs in Hong Kong no longer excluded Chinese members. The new divider was not race, but money. In this new Hong Kong of the

19605, there were many Cantonese millionaires far richer than Father and Niang. Since my parents were convinced of their innate superiority over the Cantonese, this state of affairs was difficult for them to digest. Their only defence was to dismiss all Cantonese as uncouth, though inwardly they were envious of those who were making their way even faster in this new society. With exquisite irony Niang occasionally deplored interracial marriages, predicting that their offspring would be ’neither fish nor fowl’. i ,

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One Horse, Single Spear

Seven months into my internship, a twenty-five-yearold Chinese-American medical student arrived. Martin Ching was an exchange scholar from New York University medical school for the month of July. He was the only son of working-class parents who had emigrated from Guangdong to America in the

19305. His industrious laundry worker father and waitress mother placed all their hopes in Martin, saving every cent to send him to medical school and buying a house in Queens so that Martin could live away from New York’s Chinatown ghetto when he entered college. They continued to reside above their shop while Martin rented out rooms to other students to help pay the mortgage. He was a good boy, studious and responsible.

A couple of times in the evenings after work, Martin and I sat around talking. We were both at loose ends and had nowhere to go. He could barely speak Cantonese. The doctors and nurses found it inconvenient to translate everything into English when he was around. Besides, Martin was ’only’ a medical student.

’I have never met such discrimination as that which I’m encountering in Hong Kong,’ Martin told me. ’The people here keep their distance. They are wary and regard me with contempt because I look Chinese but cannot speak or write Chinese fluently. They think I’m dumb.’

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That summer of 1964, the weather was unbelievably bad. It seemed as if the rains would never end. And then one day, typhoon warnings were posted by the weather bureau. All employees except those on emergency call were told to stay at home. Elective clinics were cancelled. Martin and I remained at the hospital because we had nowhere else to go.

Outside, the rain cascaded down in sheets, whipped by a ferocious wind swirling the blue ocean waters into choppy, angry, white waves. Services were suspended at the Star Ferry: no more harbour crossings between Hong Kong and Kowloon until further notice. Traffic disappeared from the roads. We were stranded inside Tsan Yuk Hospital, surrounded by thunder, lightning, torrential rains and gusts of typhoon. Protective wooden shutters were put up in front of plate-glass windows. For those less affluent, long strips of paper tape were stuck across the panes against the wind. Hong Kong was a city under siege from the elemental forces of nature.

Martin and I sat at one end of a long rectangular conference table in the library and watched the fury of the storm outside. The violence of the deluge created an enclave of comfort and safety within.

’You’re wasting your time and talents here,’ Martin told me. ’You can do the work here with your eyes closed, but you still have to put in the hours and get up at night. Why don’t you go to Professor McFadden and accept the job he offered you?’

’I can’t go to Lo Mac!’ I replied. ’I’ve got to get out of Hong Kong.’

’Go back to London then! You can easily get an academic post with two MRCPs.’

’No, no. London is out! I’m not going back there!’ I thought about Karl, and felt a spasm of pain. I could never return to that again. ’Besides, I’ll get nowhere. The cards are stacked against me. Chinese. Female. Racism and sexism are very much in evidence in England.’

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’So what else is new?’ Martin asked rhetorically. ’Racism and sexism are everywhere, even in America.’

’What was it really like, growing up in America?’

’You mean what was it really like, growing up in white America with an Asian face?’

He told me about going to school in Chinatown in New York and identifying only with white America. He hated Chinese school because he did not wish to be different from his white classmates. Gradually he realized that although he thought of himself as American he would always be a foreigner, a Chinese, to his white peers. Martin felt himself caught between two worlds. He became convinced that prejudice was inherent in human nature and was present in every society, including his own home. His parents objected strongly when he once dated a West Indian girl, calling her a see yu gui nui (soya-sauce female foreign devil). He finally concluded that compared to every other place, America was still the most tolerant and enlightened. He considered himself lucky to have been born in the USA.

Martin was a history major at Columbia University before entering medical school. He divided Chinese emigration into three separate waves. Before the Opium War, the egress consisted of artisans, craftsmen and merchants who moved from southern coastal provinces into neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Malaya and the Philippines. For about seventy years after the Opium War, uneducated peasants (the destitute and the poor) poured into America hoping for a better life, until exclusionary laws curtailed their numbers. After the Second World War, affluent Chinese businessmen in Taiwan and Hong Kong started sending their offspring for university education abroad, especially to America. Recent immigration reforms in America facilitated this new wave of ’intellectual immigration’. Often, these students ended up staying in America and never returning home.

’I’ve got two guys from Taiwan renting rooms from me right now,’ Martin continued. ’Neither of them plans to go back.

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One is a pathology resident, the other is an engineer. Since you’re not happy in Hong Kong, why don’t you come to America? A medical degree from London University is well thought of in New York. Come to think of it, a couple of profs on the faculty at NYU are English medical graduates.’

A new vista suddenly opened before me. America! J4 H Met Guo (Beautiful Country)! I stood by the window and looked at the stormy devastation outside, half expecting to see a rainbow over the horizon. ’Thank you for your generosity. You’ve cheered me up more than you’ll ever realize. Your words have filled me with optimism. Why, everything is possible!’

’Listen, I’ll be going back to New York next week. I’ll help you find a job. Don’t look so anxious. You’ll have no problems at all.’

When Martin left Tsan Yuk, it was already the end of July. My contract with Professor Chun was to end in three months. Desperate to leave Hong Kong, I applied to every hospital suggested by Martin. Most of the replies suggested a starting date of i July the following year. However, the Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia accepted me to begin a residency in obstetrics immediately. I later learned that they were anxious to have me because their residency positions had not been filled and they ran the risk of having their entire training programme cancelled. At that time in America, there was a doctor shortage.

I immediately accepted the job offered. Pay was 450 US dollars per month besides board and lodging. There was just one problem. I did not have enough money to buy the airline ticket from Hong Kong to Philadelphia. I wondered if Father and Niang would consider making me a loan.

During Sunday dinner, I summoned up enough courage to announce that I had decided to emigrate to America. This was greeted by absolute silence. Father knew that I was unhappy at Tsan Yuk. He was also aware of Professor McFadden’s standing offer to me at the Department of Internal Medicine. My American plan was new to them.

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I hinted at my lack of resources and wondered aloud whether banks would give me a loan to buy the airline ticket. Niang said, ’Well, Adeline, you’ll never know until you apply, will you? And if the bank refuses, I suppose that’s just too bad, isn’t it?’ With that sort of response, I understood that my chances of getting a loan from them was zero.

That night, I left early because I had an early surgery scheduled the next morning. Around midnight, Gregory telephoned. ’They talked about you after you left.’

My heart sank. ’What did they say?’

’They said that they had tried their best to help you in Hong Kong. Since this isn’t good enough, you’re henceforth entirely on your own. They don’t care where you go from this point. London, New York, Tokyo, Philadelphia; it’s all the same to them. But don’t think you’re going to get a free ticket from them, because you’re not.’

We were both silent for awhile. ’Well, thanks, Gregory,’ I finally said. ’I’ll think of a way.’

After Gregory’s call, I could not sleep. I started to cry and thought how mean they were to begrudge me the price of a plane ticket to Philadelphia when it was nothing to them. Not to express any regrets at my leaving Hong Kong. Not to say a few kind words sUch as ’We’ll miss you’ or ’Write to us often, will you?’ My imminent departure was of no concern except for the possible burden of an airline ticket.

I got up from my bed, put on my scrub clothes and went to the hospital library. It was deserted. I told myself, ’Feeling sorry for yourself and crying isn’t going to get you an airline ticket.’

I sat down and wrote a long letter to the secretary of the Medical Education Department at the Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia.

I confessed to this stranger my sad story. I was single, female and Chinese. All my life I had dreamt of starting a practice in Hong Kong close to my father. When I finally returned home after eleven years, I found nothing but disenchantment. I had