On May 14th, Saturday, Amy, On Punk and I bid farewell to Tao Sun and his family after another big round of dim sum breakfast and headed for the bus terminal to Huizhou, a developing major city only 26 km from Lianghua.
Huizhou (Chinese: 惠州; pinyin: Hùizhōu) is a city located in central Guangdong province of the People's Republic of China. Part of the Pearl River Delta, Huizhou borders the provincial capital of Guangzhou to the west, Shaoguan to the north, Heyuan to the northeast, Shanwei to the east, Shenzhen and Dongguan to the southwest, and looks out to the South China Sea to the south. Administered as a prefecture-level city, it has nearly four million residents in its area of jurisdiction. There are two main dialects spoken by local people in Huizhou: A Cantonese dialect which is Huizhouhua (惠州話) and Hakka (客家話). The two dialects are somewhat interrelated and similar so people can easily understand each other. As more newcomers from the other provinces come to work in Huizhou, Mandarin has become the other popular language in Huizhou. (Wikipedia)
My plan was to let Amy catch-up with her childhood neighbors there and also try to find the house my brother Pete was born. Amy said she still remember what the house looked like. I would not doubt her this time. My dad, between 1946 and 1948, held a county post at that city. Peter was born in Huizhou which was also famous for its natural lake called West Lake. But, secretly I was thinking about going back to Lianghua again to get a better feel of the village, visit the elementary school and retrieved those broken pottery pieces I found at the farm house.
After we were underway and I began to express my intention to Amy about going back to Lianghua, I can feel the uneasiness in her. She really didn’t want to go back, and moreover, would not let me go there alone. I had to persuade and calm her down the rest of the 2 hours bus ride until we met her old neighbors (back some 50 years ago) at the busy bus terminal at Huizhou downtown.
We arrived in Huizhou (惠洲) around 2 PM after a two hours bus ride from Qingyuan on a modern toll highway. The plan was to get off at Huizhou and stay for 3 nights to visit Amy’s old neighbors whom she had not seen for 22 years. On Punk will change bus there and continue on to Lianghua (梁化) 26 km away.
Upon arrival we found two of Amy’s friends waiting there at the busy bus terminal where people with luggage, cars and buses were arriving and departing constantly. Her two lady friends whom were cousins to each other named Kwai Wah (家華)(70 years old) and Yeun Mae (月眉)(58 years old) were so thrilled to see Amy. I found out later that my brother T.K. once had an eye on Yeun Mae when he was young and had asked Amy to fix him up but Yeun Mae turned down the request. I tried to imagine her being my sister-in-law, but was glad of her refusal back then as I like my present sister-in-law Evelina much better.
Both women complimented on how Amy had not changed after 22 years and insisted on carrying our luggage and went toward a car driven by Kwai Wah’s daughter waiting at the curbside. The daughter, a slender, long hair beauty with a mystic smile in her early 40s drove us through the old part of town in a busy street with trees lined on both sides. We passed the famous West Lake on our left side which was intertwining with the city buildings. It was very scenic and serene amidst the hustle and bustle of city life. Traffic was quite heavy and the road was full of cars and motorized scooters in every shapes and forms both old and new. Pedestrians were everywhere. We arrived at an old neighborhood next to Huizhou No. 11 Elementary School. Kwai Wah’s late husband was a school teacher there and they were staying at the nearby teacher’s apartment. She now owned the place and living with her son (a full-time gambler), the daughter-in-law (a beautician) and her grandson (a precocious, fast action 5 years old).
Amy and I had a quick bowl of beef noodle in the nearby noodle shop as we were getting a little hungry. We then visited Kwai Wah’s apartment and more of Amy’s old friends arrived. They all chatted up a storm about past and present events in their life and kept telling me how closed they were and how much suffering they had endured back in the bad old days. Because they were all branded in the same class (government officials, landowners or business owners) by the communist during the Liberation of China back in 1948, their social status were reduced next to nothing in the village. They had only each other to depend on and survive any onslaught of persecution by others. All these people had moved out of Lianghua some 20 years ago and adapted to the city life here in Huizhou and had been doing quite well. They are now the middle class people in China and owner small businesses, houses for rental and automobiles.
One person in particular that stood out among the crowd was Yee Kwan (陳義君), Yeun Mae’s husband. He had this constant smile on his face (even when he was not smiling) and was always quite animated when he talked. He was a chained smoker, a joker and a repeater of words. He kept saying because of his lack of education (communist took him out of school after 5th grade), he had limited vocabulary. He must have told me 500 times in the exact same words to come back and visit again and all I needed was to buy and a plane ticket and bring some clothes. He’ll house and feed me as we shared the same last name and our ancestors were Xingning men. Amy and I ended up staying at their house for the next three days.
That evening, Kwai Wah’s lovely daughter hosted a dinner party in our honor at a local restaurant . There were more relatives from these two families showed up. The in-laws, kids and relatives all together made up two tables. The temperature of the private room was beginning to heat up as more guests arrived. Of course, they ordered many dishes to show their hospitality and new wealth. Hot soup was the first course and I started to sweat after a few spoonfuls.
One thing I forgot to mention was all the homes and restaurants (except the ones in Qingyuan) had a strange idea for dinner napkins. Instead of paper or cloth napkins, they used toiler papers. Every dinner table in each household or restaurant had this round plastic dispenser (that looked like an upside down angel food cake with a hole in the middle) to house a roll of toilet paper without the inside cardboard core. The toiler paper will then pull from the inside of the roll (rather than from the outside) and led through the hole and paper was dispensed for messy diners and sweaty customers.
With the rising temperature and humidity while I was in China, I have to confess I had spent considerable amount of my time pulling at those plastic containers to gain access to a few squares of the soft tissue to wipe off my sweats. The only problem of using toilet paper to wipe off heavy sweat which was designed to dissolve easily was….. it dissolved easily…..at the wrong time. I had, on occasions, left bits of toiler paper on my forehead and ears and neck area after a quick wipe down during a meal. Occasions like during the village banquet in front of the VIP village officials, at the wedding and farewell dinners. Amy many times had gingerly come over and tactfully removed those unwanted bits of paper off my face. It was quite embarrassing.
Anyway, the dinner was great but noisy. I met Yee Kwan’s youngest sister who was quite talkative with a high pitch voice and she happened to sit next to me during dinner. Her non-stop questioning about my life in American was quite draining and if only Amy had not removed those bits of toilet paper off my face earlier, I would have used it to plug my ears.
I was really surprise myself when I saw how toilet papers were widely use outside the bathroom in China when I went back, but on retrospect, I realized I shouldn’t have been because I’ve simply forgotten that that was the way it was even before I left China. Talk about hilarious with the toilet papers and ketcup “tea” cups. I hope your hearing’s all right after this.
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