Li Jun and the Iron Road Page 2

  As she made her way across the courtyard, she heard a noise from the family quarters. Standing at the window was Second Wife, watching.

  Days passed and Li Jun managed to stay a distance from her boss. She walked on the other side of the hall whenever their paths crossed but she knew it wouldn’t be long before he cornered her again.

  Second Wife scolded her at every turn and once she turned on her. “You dirty mui jai,” she sneered, “if I ever find you again with Mr. Ho, your life will be worthless.”

  Li Jun had no one to confide in and at night she fell into restless sleep, tearing at her covers, praying for a sign that her destiny was not to become the concubine of a slobbering old man. It would be better to be dead.

  She thought her ancestors had heard her when a messenger came from her village. But it was hardly the news she hoped to hear. He brought word that her mother was gravely ill. Could her daughter please be allowed to visit with her in her final days?

  At first Mr. Ho was adamant. No, the house could not manage without her. Li Jun hung her head to hide her tears. Then she had a brilliant idea. She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve and turned to Second Wife, silently begging with her eyes. Wouldn’t she want to get rid of Li Jun for a while, to regain her favoured place in the household?

  Second Wife’s eyes widened as if she had just been given a present. She sidled up to Mr. Ho and, in a seductive voice, pleaded with him to help the girl honour her dying mother’s wish.

  “This act of kindness will bring you good joss,” she whispered. “Your ancestors will reward you handsomely.”

  A few days later, Mr. Ho stood by Li Jun as the ox cart he’d hired arrived to take her upriver to her village. He breathed heavily as he pressed coins into her hand and told her they were to pay for her mother’s funeral. In spite of her hatred for him, Li Jun was grateful for the money — now she would be able to send her mother into the spirit world. She bowed three times to her master but Mr. Ho laughed.

  “You may be learning English but you are not so smart. This is not a gift. You will have to pay back this money … one way or another.” He grabbed her elbow and guided her onto the cart.

  Li Jun did not look back.

  It took her a full day to travel home along the rutted roads. Things had been harder than she imagined. The rains never came. Winds lifted the soil so that nothing grew. More wars against the ruling landlords had devastated the villages. Li Jun felt a profound sadness travelling through her countryside. Her father had been wise to go to Gold Mountain but now he was lost. And soon her mother would be too.

  Inside her mother’s home it was dark and the smell of sickness was suffocating. Li Jun knelt beside the bed and gasped — her beautiful mother had become a shrivelled version of herself. When she coughed, her phlegm was specked with blood. “My poor mother,” Li Jun cried, putting her arms around her. “Look what’s become of you. I should have been here to take care of you.”

  Shuqin held her daughter very close. Her hands were cold to the touch. “No. No. You went to the city so that I could survive here. You kept me alive for all these years. You were only a child when you left. Now you are a young woman. You gave your life for mine.”

  Li Jun trembled as her mother’s voice became thin and her breaths shallow.

  “One last thing, my daughter. Promise me you will go to Gold Mountain to find your father.”

  Reaching under her pillow, Shuqin pulled out the only memento she had of him: a tintype photo. Li Jun had never seen it before. It was a thin piece of tin etched with a family photograph of herself as a baby in her mother’s arms, her father standing beside them. The image of his face was worn to a blur and Shuqin explained why. “Every night since he left I say, ‘Good night, my cherished husband.’ Then I touch his face as if he was here.”

  Li Jun lay beside her mother, cradling the photograph in her hands. “I promise, Ama. I will find him.”

  “I do not want to think this,” whispered Shuqin, “but if he has died, you must bring him home to rest beside me.”

  She took a last shuddering breath and stared at her daughter with milky, vacant eyes. She was gone. Li Jun choked on her tears and traced her fingers over the photograph, caressing each face, until she fell asleep with her mother wrapped in her arms.

  There was no family left to help her mourn her mother’s death. Still, Li Jun wanted a proper burial to send her mother into the spirit world. She did the best she could: she arranged for the body to be buried, covered her mother’s altar with a piece of black cloth, and hung a white cloth over the doorway, all the while her sorrow weighing like a stone on her heart. She burned incense and lit a white candle. She cried out mournful wails to her ancestors to remove any obstacles in her mother’s journey to the afterlife, then she bowed and burned joss paper so that her mother would have a rich life there.

  After the burial, Li Jun stayed in her mother’s house for seven days. She tried to remember their happy times together, cooking and gardening. For brief moments she smiled at those memories but soon she fell into a dark place, knowing that she would never laugh with her mother again.

  She had never felt more alone or confused and she faced an urgent dilemma: how could she actually find her father? That would take money, lots of it, for the passage to Gold Mountain. How could she ever pay for the long trip across the ocean? How could she feed herself? What work could she do once she reached the New World? But returning to her life as a little sister in the Ho household was impossible. She cringed, remembering how Mr. Ho’s hands snaked over her body. But if she didn’t return to Mr. Ho, she had no doubt that he would track her down, beat her, and take her as his concubine. Who knew what Second Wife might do then? Li Jun struggled to remind herself that she was first class, she could think this through. She had just enough of Mr. Ho’s money left to travel back to Hong Kong, but what would await her there?

  She was fifteen now. Many girls her age were already married and protected by their husbands and families, but she had no one. Think! she admonished herself. You need a job to get the money to find your father. What can you do?

  There were no decent jobs for women in Hong Kong. It was no secret that women on their own there were lured into brothels. They were promised money and a roof over their heads, but most of the money they earned went to their bosses, they lost their innocence and the chance to get married. These prostitutes were called po xie, broken shoes, and no man would marry such a woman. No, she wouldn’t — couldn’t — do that. Why was life so cruel for women in China?

  “Men are so lucky!” she cried out, slamming her fist onto the table so hard that her teacup jumped. She ran a list through her head. Men were doted on by their mothers. They got the best clothes, the best morsels of meat and sweets, and even the poorest man expected his wife to treat him like an emperor. Men ruled the world while women emptied the chamber pots. Men got paid. Men went to Gold Mountain.

  Ah! Suddenly her heart swelled with excitement and hope. She really was first class! She had the answer to her problems. It was simple, really. She would transform herself into a man and change her destiny. This way Mr. Ho would never find her and she could get a job that paid enough for her passage across the sea. She would keep her promise to her mother and find her father in Gold Mountain.

  Li Jun took the photo that her mother gave her, brought it to her lips, and gave it a kiss. “Thank you, Ama,” she said. “Your spirit will guide me on this journey.”

  The next day, she took the last of her money and bought a razor, some boy’s clothing, and several yards of cloth. Carefully she scraped the razor along her scalp, leaving her hair from the mid-point back to be braided into a Manchu queue. She forced herself to be stoic — she must act like a boy now and show no fear or girlish emotions. She watched her thick black hair fall onto the floor. She would bury it, along with her girlish dreams to marry and have children.

  She wrapped the cloth tight around her chest, flattening her breasts, then put on the rough shirt and pants
of a village boy. She practised walking with a wide-legged swagger, sitting on a three-legged stool with her legs spread, taking up the room of a man entitled to any space he wanted. Hmm … there was something missing. A hat! She pulled on a slouchy one that almost covered her eyes and in a flash of brilliance, she thought, she chewed on the end of a match. She screwed up her courage and spit out a swear word she’d heard boys use and then examined herself in the mirror. Yes, it worked!

  “You are brave like your father,” she told herself. “And you are fierce like a tiger.”

  But what would be her new name? It had to remind her of who she must be from now on. She came up close to the mirror and said, “How do you do? I am Xiao Hu. Little Tiger.”

  Chapter

  Three

  Hong Kong, 1882

  It was three years later and Chinese New Year was

  approaching. Little Tiger had been working from sunrise to sunset at the firework factory on the hill above Hong Kong, boxing strings of miniature crackers and fancy rockets. New Year was the factory’s busiest time of year. Everyone wanted their own fireworks display to bring their families peace and prosperity in the Year of the Horse. It was a backbreaking day job with only pennies for pay, so Little Tiger looked for every chance to earn more. She picked up and delivered laundry from the Wing Laundry to the gwailo — the white foreigners — and her newest scheme was to buy extra fireworks from her boss at the factory and sell them for a small profit from a stall of her own in the market square. She figured that customers wouldn’t mind paying a little extra for fireworks so they could buy them direct in time for New Year. To run out would be very bad luck.

  She had strung her stall with all sorts of firecrackers and rockets and was calling out “Get your firecrackers here!” but her plea was drowned out by the beat of drums, signalling the start of the dragon dance in the midst of the square. She watched the dancers lift their poles to reveal a gigantic paper dragon head, as brilliantly coloured as the most spectacular of her fireworks. She marvelled at how they made the dragon’s head come alive by lifting, thrusting, and dipping it as they paraded through the market. Other dancers followed right behind, lifting their poles so the dragon’s body followed its head, snaking through the crowds in a slow dance as the drums banged away. Fathers lifted their children up on their shoulders to get a better look. The children screamed with terror as the dragon approached, belching smoke and fire. Little Tiger smiled at them and remembered that long ago she too had sat on her father’s shoulders, knowing he would protect her from the dragons who danced in the parade in her village … and the ones she imagined in her mind.

  Now she was all grown up, struggling to earn enough to keep her promise to find him. When she had returned to Hong Kong as a boy, she’d survived by living on the streets, sleeping in abandoned buildings, and eating garbage. She was dirty much of the time, hiding her body under wide pants and bulky, quilted jackets. She wrapped scarves around her neck to hide her girlish throat. She kept her hair shaved like most Chinese men, halfway back her head then in a long queue down her back. Always she wore her big, slouchy hat to cover much of her face. Despite her disguise, she had started keeping a knife hidden in her sleeve — just in case.

  She kept to herself, afraid of getting close to anyone, lest they discover her secret. Her longing to go to Gold Mountain to search for her father was what drove her. That last letter of his had said he was heading up to Canada, to British Columbia, to work on the railway. That’s where she must go to bring him home — dead or alive.

  The dragon dancers passed through the market and, with a sigh, Little Tiger decided that if she was going to sell anything in this bustling crowd, she’d better wade into the sea of shoppers. She wrapped red strings of miniature snapping firecrackers around her neck and filled a basket with bundles of bigger fireworks that would rocket upward when they were lit and burst into cascades of purples and greens, sparkling brighter than stars. She set the basket on the stall table, leaned back, and pushed her arms through its straps to position it on her back. She staggered under the awkward burden and shifted the basket until she found her balance, then set off.

  She weaved in and out of the crowd calling out, “Get your firecrackers here! Get them now for New Year!”

  She was scanning the faces around her searching for likely buyers, when a missionary lady approached her, cloaked in black and clutching a Bible to her ample chest. Little Tiger often wondered about these strange women from distant Christian countries. They did not seem to be like Chinese women at all.

  First, there was the matter of their hair. Chinese women, except for the ancient ones, had hair black as coal, fashioned neatly in buns or braids. Chinese women dressed modesty, careful to hide their slim but shapely figures under their samfu. Their fashions hadn’t changed since the last dynasty. Even the wives of wealthy landowners wore long jackets with bell-shaped sleeves over billowing pants or skirts. The richer the wife, the more elaborate the embroidery on her jacket. However, a Chinese woman’s beauty was not to be found in what she wore, but in her character and in her duty to her family. This, thought Little Tiger, was the way women should appear.

  But the women from away? Some had hair in colours that defied imagination — red like flaming embers, yellow as summer wheat, brown like the fur of a mouse. Some of the young women let their hair flow loosely down their backs. Others piled it on top of their heads like crowns with tendrils and curls framing their faces.

  And there was no modesty among these foreign women, excepting the missionaries of course. They came in different shapes and heights. Some were fleshy with mounds of fat that jiggled like custard under their long dresses. Others were lean and tall as ghostly birch trees.

  But it was their clothing that set them apart from the Chinese. Most of the wives and daughters of the wealthy foreigners swished and sashayed as they took their promenades in snug silk and taffeta bodices and billowing skirts. These women pushed their breasts together and up until they looked like buns rising. They pinched their waists into whale-bone corsets to accentuate their curves. Little Tiger had been wide-eyed the first time she saw an Englishwoman on the street. How odd that these women called themselves “proper ladies” and labelled the Chinese “heathens” when the Englishwomen displayed their breasts like melons on a fruit cart!

  It was all so puzzling. Just because they looked different and prayed to a single unseen God instead of revering their ancestors, were they not women just the same? Did they not have the same feelings, the same need to be loved by their parents, their children, and their men?

  Ah — their men! The foreigners settling into Hong Kong from many countries — did these men have different desires and hopes than the Chinese men she had met? It was hard to know.

  In carefully enunciated English, Little Tiger greeted the missionary lady. “Happy New Year. Have a fantastic shopping day!”

  The missionary lady made the sign of the cross to bless her but didn’t pull out any money from her pocket. Nevertheless Little Tiger gave a small bow, smiled, and forged into the crowd.

  But she stopped dead in her tracks. There, coming toward her, was Mr. Ho and Little Kwong. The boy had sprouted up into a lad in long pants. Little Tiger wanted to hug him and tell him that his small kindnesses had made life bearable for her, but she didn’t dare get close enough to be recognized by her former master. She pulled her felt hat farther down her forehead and held a handful of firecrackers in front of her face, hoping they would hide her. But someone jostled her from behind and she stumbled headfirst into Mr. Ho, dropping all her firecrackers on the ground. Mr. Ho reared back and his English bowler hat fell onto the earth right in front of her.

  Little Tiger reached down, brushed the dirt off the hat, and handed it back to him, keeping her head down to avoid his eyes. He ran his thumb along the brim, dusted it again with a gloved hand, and placed it carefully on his head. Only then did he look at her.

  Little Tiger was now staring directly into Mr. Ho’s f
ace. What she saw in his eyes was a dark fury but no flicker of recognition. He apparently saw a young man standing in front of him, not the girl who had once been his mui jai.

  He spat out the words: “Be careful, you clumsy oaf. This hat is worth ten of you.”

  Little Tiger bowed from her waist and, with her deepest voice, mumbled a grovelling apology. “Yes, honourable sir, I will be more careful.”

  With a wave of his hand Mr. Ho dismissed the annoying young man and moved on, but Little Kwong picked up a handful of the firecrackers that she had dropped and handed them back to her. She almost cried in gratitude. He was still a thoughtful boy.

  Only when they were far away did Little Tiger allow herself a triumphant smile. She’d fooled the one man who could stand in her way and expose her as an ungrateful and indebted servant. Even the boy hadn’t recognized her. Delighted that her disguise worked so well, she felt a surge of pride. She was truly first class. First Class PLUS.

  “Get your firecrackers here!” she sang out more loudly.

  Trudging through the open square, she noticed a group of men gathered under a new recruiting poster for the Canadian Pacific Railway that was pasted to the wall.

  She stared at the painted image in the centre of the poster. A white man with a curled moustache and piercing eyes seemed to look right at her. She had never seen eyes like his before, so clear and blue. He was a rugged man, a North-West Mounted Policeman with a square jaw, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a scarlet tunic. Underneath his picture, in Chinese and English, a caption read: NICHOL RAILWAY COMPANY. GOOD MEN NEEDED TO BUILD A RAILway. EARN ONE DOLLAR EACH DAY. RETURN PASSAGE PAID.

  Here was the answer to all of her worries about getting across the ocean! Passage paid. One dollar a day. She could travel to Gold Mountain, find her father, and make her own fortune. She took a long, deep breath and felt something new stirring inside her. She hardly recognized it for what it was: hope.