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Some thoughts on Wayson Choy, Evelyn Lau and on being Canadian while Chinese

January 5, 2010
I have at times wondered if I could have ever been an author, but knowing myself, I'm just not that creative that I would have a good story to tell. However, if I were so talented, The Jade Peony is the kind of book I would have loved to have written.

Celebrated authors write about what they know best. Mordecai Richler wrote about the Jewish experience in Montreal; Dan Brown writes about the Catholic Church; Tom Clancy writes stories woven with military influences; and Wayson Choy writes about the Chinese Canadian experience of the 1930s and 1940s in Vancouver's Chinatown.

Choy was born in Vancouver and grew up during the aforementioned decades in Chinatown. Although Choy is of my parents generation, I found so much that I could relate to in his first novel. It does not matter that his stories are of the big city from decades past whereas my own experience is of the small town in the 1970s and 1980s, the culture is palpable across the years. Despite the age difference, our experience are much more similar than you might think.

Choy was born to immigrant parents, just as I am and we are of the transitional generation that bridges the old country with the new one. We experienced some existentialist angst trying to figure out if we are Chinese, Canadian, or Chinese-Canadian. In some ways, we don't belong to either, because we have one foot straddling the old culture and one foot straddling the new one. These days though, I unambiguously identify myself as Canadian; I am not a hyphenated citizen of this country. It does not mean that I ignore the old culture, but Canada is where I live, grew up and developed into the person that I am and there's nothing in the old country that I can identify with other than ethnicity. I do not have the ability to speak or write Chinese and my values are based on Western liberalism. I'm also a spendthrift compared to the stereotypical frugality that Chinese have - old school Chinese don't crack open their wallets very easily, unless they're trying to save face and impress friends and relatives by fighting over the dim sum bill.

I have an older cousin who would always pay the bill when going out to dinner with his family. Even when I made it clear that I would be paying for the meal, he would sneak ways to pay the bill, including feigning going to the restroom. At the end of the meal, we waited for the bill to come but none ever did, because my cousin paid it while "using" the restroom. Another time, another cousin visited from out of town. Being a college student, he didn't have a lot of bucks, so I gave him some money to pay for the dinner in front of the older cousin (to give him some "face"). But, when the bill arrived, the older cousin immediately grabbed the bill and paid it before my younger cousin could even reach for his wallet.

Being Cantonese is another shared experience with Wayson Choy. Vancouver's Chinatown is populated with and visted by immigrants from China's Guangdong province (formerly known as Kwangtung), which has as its capital city, Guangzhou, formerly known as Canton. Not very far away is Hong Kong, a westernized business Mecca for Cantonese speaking Chinese.

Although, one can generally state that the citizens of Kwangtung province speak Cantonese, the reality is that there are many dialects and that only the people of Guangzhou and Hong Kong speak "proper" Cantonese. The rest speak a variation or a dialect based on which village they are from. The number of dialects spoken in Chinatown is mentioned regularly in Choy's book and the key dialect is from the city of Taishan, better known as Toisan.

Toisan is the origin of most North American Chinese, many of whom will have roots going back to the building of the transcontinental railways in the USA and Canada during the late 19th Century. The people of Toisan are like the Scots; there are more Toisanese living outside of Toisan than are in Toisan.

My family is not from Toisan, but I can confirm that the Cantonese I grew up hearing is not quite the same as spoken in Hong Kong, which is more nasal and higher pitched in sound compared to the flat tone of my parent's village dialect. As a child, my mother explained to me that some of the Chinese friends in my BC hometown came from other Chinese villages and would say things differently than us, but they all seem able to communicate with each other without difficulty, much like the grandmother in Choy's book, who could praise you in one village dialect and then insult you in another.

Some of the phrases used often by Choy are all a part of my own history (my spelling is not necessarily the same as used by Choy in his book):

• "Dai-ga Hong yen" - we are all Chinese people, with the "Hong" being the Cantonese pronouncement for "Han," which refers to the ancient kingdom and dynasty that united China (also the ethnic origins of the Chinese people)
• "Ai-yah!" - I don't think there's really a translation for this, as it's more of an expression of surprise and shock; the utterance of a Chinese mother discovering that her toddler has just taken off his poopie diaper and has proceeded to spread his messiness on the floor (written with a recent experience of mine in mind 8^)
• "Hum Sui Fawl" - Salt Water City, which is what Vancouver is called by Chinese Canadians - Choy at first uses the English "Salt Water City" and when I read it, I knew that it was very familiar, but couldn't quite place it until Choy used the phonetic Chinese words that I remembered that this is what my parents and their friends called Vancouver when I was a young child. Given how long it's been since I've heard this phrase, I'm not sure that it's in much use, but since I don't visit Vancouver's Chinatown at all, I cannot be certain.
• "Mo no" - No brain or mindless; a phrase I've heard a few times in my youth as my parents would admonish me if I did something silly or stupid. The phrase is used to describe Choy's youngest main character, who cannot get straight the proper way to address his elders, because in Chinese, there seems to be a specific term to describe just about every relative and non-relative relationship.

In proper and respectful addressing of elders, a younger person never calls them by name; it's always a title of some sort. An older brother is "dai goh," which is simply, bigger brother. Uncles on the mother's side are referred to one way and uncles on the father's side are referred to another way. Same with grandparents, which caused me some confusion when I read of Choy's children character's referring to their grandmother as "poh-poh."

Poh-poh is what my children call my wife's mother, whereas the kids call my mother, "ma-ma." When I read "poh-poh" in Choy's book, I automatically associated her with the mother's side of the family, but as I read further it was made clear that the "poh-poh" is actually the father's mother. To confuse things further, I never understood the distinction between poh-poh and ma-ma until I had my own kids, because these are not the ways I addressed my own grandmothers. Yes, it's a bit of mess probably due to village differences and the fact that one of my grandmothers was actually a step-grandmother.

Other information gleaned from Choy's writings that I found interesting is the old custom of digging up the bodies of deceased Chinese seven years after the original burial for reinterring in the old country. I know some European cultures request that at death, the body be shipped back to the old country for burial, but I had never heard of this custom in Canada (likely because it must have stopped many decades ago). It would make sense for this to be requested by those born in China with no family and ties to Canada, that the final resting place should be in the old country. However, I know within my own extended family that the opposite has occurred, that ancestral bones have been exhumed in the old country and brought to a new final resting place in Canada.

Other tidbits that I recognize are the arranged marriages, multiple wives and adoption of children. It may seem odd and anachronistic in 21st Century Vancouver, a city teeming with Chinese, that some people still return to the old country to find spouses, but it continues to happen for men and women alike. I also remember as a child, hearing my parents talk about one of their family friends wanting a little sister for their son. A little while later, we visited those friends and there sitting in a chair, quiet and shy, was a little girl, perhaps two or three years old. Being a "mo no" kind of kid, I didn't think it remarkable that one day, out of the blue, my childhood friend would all of a sudden have a little sister without having gone through the baby stages. But, then, you didn't talk much about the girl's past before the adoption, because once she arrived, she was treated like she had always been there by family and friends.

The secretive nature of Chinese is a theme that permeates Choy's book and it's another experience that we Chinese know oh so well. Chinese do not seem to like to talk about their own personal histories, especially in front of the children. Some basics can be found out over time, but I know from my own history that there's been a secret that my parents kept from me until I was in university. Without getting into the details, it's another thing that I have in common with Wayson Choy.

The Jade Peony is a beautifully written book, but then I'm biased, because it speaks to me and my identity. I read through it voraciously and finished it much sooner than expected, because the stories nourished me.

If Evelyn Lau's brutal teenage experiences speak to the dark side of Chinese culture, Wayson Choy speaks to the romantic, nostalgic side that tries to dig into what it means to be Chinese in Vancouver. This is a changing position in Vancouver, for while the Chinese are the largest visible minority in the city, no longer are the Cantonese dialect speaking Toisan the most dominant group within the Chinese Diaspora.

In the 1990s, leading up to China reclaiming Hong Kong, many Hong Kong citizens immigrated to Canada. Having that valuable Canadian passport was a huge mitigation of the risk of what might happen when Communist China took over. Since 1997, with China taking a fairly hands-off approach to Hong Kong's dynamic capitalism, Hong Kong immigration has relaxed. However, immigration from Taiwan and mainland China has increased significantly. Where once, the only Chinese spoken in Vancouver was Cantonese, Mandarin is quickly catching up and I notice that Chinese salespeople must be able to converse in both dialects to be competitive in the stores.

Chinatown itself is still primarily a Cantonese stronghold, but we're talking about old generation Cantonese, like my parents. As far as I know it, the new immigrants eschew the old, rundown looking Chinatown for the shopping district in the suburb of Richmond, where Chinese are likely now the majority of the residents.

After finishing Lau's book, I had enough of her, whereas I immediately ordered the three other books written by Choy (two memoirs and a second novel that continues the story from the first book).

Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid
From the personal files: I finished off two books during the Christmas break, both of which were of interest to me and my Chinese identity and culture. One turned out to be a difficult book to finish while the other surprised me with how well it captures the experiences of Chinese Canadians. One book is autobiographical while the other is fiction, but both have been critically acclaimed.

Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid by Evelyn Lau has been much discussed in the 20 years since it was first published. It is a journal of Lau's experiences after running away from home at 15 years of age. For two years, Lau moved in and out of various homes and shelters and on occasion, she did spend some time on the actual streets of Vancouver. It's a tumultuous two-year journey that Lau takes us on; a journey marked by alcohol use, drug addiction and ultimately, prostitution, as ways to abuse herself physically and psychologically.

It's remarkable that Lau survived the physical and mental journey, as prostitution in Vancouver can be very dangerous. Some 60 women have disappeared over the years with many of them meeting a very grisly end at a notorious pig farm in a Vancouver suburb. Lau also had to work out much mental anguish towards her parents and her relationships during her two years under the care of the provincial social system.

I found the title to be a misnomer since, as mentioned, Lau did not actually spend all that much time actually living on the streets, although she certainly did spend a significant amount of time working them. What surprised me from Lau's journal is the amount of social services that were available to her, as a minor, by the provincial government. I wouldn't suggest that the services are perfect, but there was enough that if Lau had wanted to utilize them, she could have. She had access to social workers, foster homes and psychiatrists, all paid for by the taxpayers of British Columbia. As a minor, there are more services available than if she had been an adult. However, she spurned much of the efforts of those services by running away from the province three times.

As I kept reading, what initial pangs of sympathy I had for her at the beginning when I only knew a little bit about her history, began to whittle away, as she kept on rebelling and abusing herself.

Before reading the book, I knew of Lau from news stories and the occasional articles she had published in newspapers. I knew that she ran away from home because her parents were demanding and had metaphorically suffocated her. As she described, her parents are always criticizing, always demanding that she do homework, study and bring home straight A grades. And, when there was no more homework or studying to be done, to practice the piano or to do chores around the house. Friends were not encouraged and needless to say, there was no social life for a teenager yearning to just be a regular teen during a very critical time of development.

As an adult, Lau had a rather notorious relationship with another celebrated BC author, W.P. Kinsella. Kinsella wrote Shoeless Joe, which was adapted into the Hollywood movie, Field of Dreams. Kinsella is old enough to be Lau's father and it's been noted that Lau seems to seek out father-figure men for relationships to make up for her own weak and cuckolded father. After Lau's relationship with Kinsella ended, she wrote about it and I remember being surprised at her description of Kinsella being essentially, and I paraphrase here, a stinky old man, literally, smelling like shit (Lau actually used "fecal" in her article). Kinsella was not amused and sued Lau for bringing ridicule upon him and I cannot say that I disagree with the man.

In a lot of ways, I could relate to Lau and her suffocation under the influence of a domineering mother. If you're Chinese, you know exactly what I mean by that comment. There's some irony in knowing people that my parents would consider as model children. Always on the honor roll, working after school or otherwise being home bodies doing homework and mostly doing what their parents wanted or expected. Unfortunately, some of those kids grew up into adults that never married and still live at home with the parents. Behavior that my parents would once praise is now behavior that they would consider unfortunate. Oh look at so and so, in his thirties with no marriage prospects - completely oblivious that the parents led to such a result because they could not cut loose the apron springs and needed to control most aspects of the child's life. They wanted perfect kids and ended up with monks and nuns and this may have been Lau's fate if she had not run away.

My own parents were always fearful of me being badly influenced by the kids that smoked, drank and took drugs. After school socializing was considered a waste of time, time that should have been spent doing homework or working in the family's convenience store. My parents were indifferent to sports and playing high school sports was something I did almost entirely on my own by taking the bus to weekend practices and games or, when I had use of the car, driving myself. I was only allowed to play one year of football because my parents requested that I be available to work after school in the family restaurant during my senior year. It was stifling at times, but not suffocating and going away, out of town, to university led to a measure of independence and learning how to take care of myself while still having a parental safety net.

Over the years, I've come to understand that my parents did the best they could and that their values were instilled in them in the old country and that they lived through some of the most challenging times in modern history. They were children during the Great Depression, growing up in a country rife with civil wars, and external threats and occupation by Japan. They've complained any number of times that I had it too easy and that I would never know the poverty and hunger that they did when they were children. It's these experiences that shape their attitude towards frivolity and having fun; because they didn't have much of them when they were children growing up in war torn China. It's also these experiences that have shaped their attitude towards money and not wasting any of it or throwing things out when they might still serve a purpose later on.

One thing that I have no sense of from Lau's book is if her parents had similar experiences as my parents. There is no mention of their history and if they were born in Canada or are immigrants. There's no discussion of Lau trying to understand what it is that made her parents the way they are, they are merely mentioned as being the source of her problems (she's obsessive compulsive towards not returning to her parents) and the cause of her running away.

I cannot help feel that she brought on much of her suffering by her own hand and actions. She had choices, she had resources available to help her, but she chose poorly and/or disdained the help offered. As I neared the end of the book, I felt weary of her overwrought angst and inability to get a hold of herself and get her life back on track.

My thought was that a lot of us have demanding parents and lived lives not that much different than Lau's before she left home, and a lot of us wished for more understanding and patience. However, we didn't run away to live life in a drug-induced haze and sell our bodies on the streets of Vancouver; we got through the teenage years and grew up. Thus, I had to remind myself that I was reading the words of a 15 and 16 year old, a girl still developing in her adolescence and therefore prone to natural self-absorption as most teenagers are. Lau wanted to be a writer from a very early age and she is certainly a talented writer for the book is incredible to have been written by a teenager.

January 15, 2010
I’ve continued my exploration of Wayson Choy’s books. After finishing his first novel, the Jade Peony, over the Christmas break, I bought the rest of his books, including two memoirs and his second novel.

This post focuses on the two memoirs from Choy. Paper Shadows is of the past, describing his childhood in Vancouver’s Chinatown while Not Yet is more recent, describing what he went through when he suffered a severe asthma attack that crippled his lungs, complicated by a heart attack.

Paper Shadows is another delightful read of Choy coming to terms with his Chinese culture and upbringing while also being a Canadian. Choy was born in Canada to Chinese immigrants and grew up in Chinatown during the 1940s and 1950s. While there is a three-decade age difference between Choy and me, so much of what he wrote about being Chinese in Canada during the 1940s and 1950s are things, ideas and experiences that I can relate to.

I’ve discussed some of experiences already in a previous post about the Jade Peony, but here, we have Choy’s real account of his life growing up in Chinatown. They only help to reaffirm the shared experience of an immigrant household. Reading the phonetic words remembered by Choy and it was more than I could do to stop myself from saying in my head, Ai-yah, hi-lah, hi-lah, which roughly translates to, Damn it, yes, yes!

While Choy’s family comes from that great source of the Chinese diaspora, Toisan, my family came from an area a little further southwest in the Enping district. Distance wise, it is about the same as going from Point Grey in Vancouver to Maple Ridge, a distant suburb. In the broader regional overview, Toisan and Enping are two of the four counties that make up the Sze Yup, or Four Counties, so we’re certainly ancestral neighbours. However, even a short 30 to 40 km distance between towns is enough that Choy’s Cantonese dialect will vary mildly from my family’s dialect, but similar enough that I know what Choy is expressing, literally and metaphorically.

Reading about how Choy’s mother would buy clothes two or three sizes too large immediately made me recall how my mother did the same when I was a kid. Other reminisces that come to mind: the smelly herbal soups brewed to promote good health and long life when drunk. My wife cooks up various non-herbal soups, which are not as bad as the herbal variety, but I generally refuse to drink them, because I’ve been there, done that as kid and as an adult, I’m overly sceptical of any benefit from drinking the concoctions. Drinking the soup doesn’t stop anyone from getting sick and the only benefit I can think of is simply in drinking hot liquid (same concept with the fabled chicken soup; it ain’t the soup, it’s just drinking some hot liquids that helps the body).

The secretive nature of Chinese is a pervasive theme in the Jade Peony and it continues in Choy’s memoir. Choy attempts to understand more of his family’s history, but cannot elicit much from his father, even with both knowing that the father is close to death and won’t have much more time. The past is the past and should remain in the past is what Choy gets when trying to dig more with old family and friends.

When Choy is told that he is an adopted child, he is astonished that so many people in Chinatown could know the truth and yet never, in all the years he lived in Chinatown, from any of the friends and family around him, did he ever have an inkling that he was not his parent’s own flesh and blood.

In looking at the past, he touches on the Chinese Head Tax imposed by the Canadian government on Chinese immigrating to Canada. There was the Chinese Exclusion Act, which stopped the flow of immigration when the $500 head tax did not stop Chinese from coming. There is also denying citizenship and the right to vote even if Chinese were born in Canada. Chinese were also forbidden from the professions of law, accounting, engineering and medicine. I don’t think there’s any irony that those forbidden fields are now what Chinese parents hope their children will become. I have little doubt that today, for those fields, you will see many, if not mostly, Chinese names in the graduating classes of the two Vancouver area universities.

Choy discusses how his mother came to Canada, using the documents of another Chinese-Canadian woman who died while travelling in China. The documents are valuable and can be sold for a tidy profit by whoever procures them from the dead woman. Choy’s mother’s family arranged for her to travel to Canada using the dead woman’s identity and as it happened, the husband of the dead woman soon died himself, which required Choy’s mother to make a show of grieving to ward off any suspicions or interest from Canadian immigration officials.

Other ways of getting to Canada include the more prosaic lying about your age, because when the Canadian government finally started letting Chinese back into Canada in the 1950s, it placed age limits on those immigrants. Older than a certain age and you were denied entry, so you needed officials in the old country to supply the appropriate documents “proving” that you are of the right age.

There were also “adoptions,” arrangements in which one family would pay another family already established in Canada to quietly adopt a child into the family. Years later, when there would no longer be any risk, the now grownup adopted child would arrange to take the real family name back.

Other duplicitous methods would be to “borrow a bridge.” I discussed previously how the practice of returning to the old country to find spouses continues to this day in 21st Century Vancouver. Not every marriage is real and breakups are common once the new spouse has received the official citizenship papers. Some marriages are arranged with this in mind and both parties know it’s a sham marriage of convenience, but a tidy sum is given to the Canadian spouse for his or her troubles. Others may have started as real marriages, or thought of as real by the Canadian spouse, only to discover that the Chinese spouse was merely borrowing a bridge to escape China and start a new life in Canada.

The attitude towards girls is another theme, but less so in the memoir than in the Jade Peony. Choy was adopted when his mother was in her late thirties and his father in his early forties. No doubt, his parents tried to have children of their own and only adopted after there seemed no hope of conceiving. There’s no surprise that they would adopt a male baby, because as with most cultures, the family name is carried on with the male heirs. In the Jade Peony, the grandmother character refers to her granddaughter (and indirectly, to herself) as useless and fit only to be sold as a servant for rich families. There is a heartbreaking passage where Choy describes how the men of Chinatown would send back as much as they could earn and yet, it would still not be enough for the family in China. One wife wrote a letter back to her husband in Canada and asked if she should sell their daughter, prompting the man to commit suicide.

The attitude towards girls ties back to Choy’s grandfather, who left a wife and male child (Choy’s father) back in China, while he tried to find his fortune in “Gold Mountain,” what the Chinese call North America. Although the grandfather dutifully sent money back to sustain the family, he was gone for years and the wife had an affair and was discovered. Adultery, especially by the wife, is not looked upon kindly in China and although the government banned the barbaric, vigilante practice of hacking an adulterer to death (to ward off bad luck), the villagers seemed intent on exacting a fatal punishment on the first wife, which forced her to run away with Choy’s father in tow. Choy’s grandfather returned to China after hearing the news and sought out his son to bring him to Canada.

That the grandfather would seek out his only male heir is not a surprise, but Choy later discovers that in fact, his father had two older sisters. The grandfather had no interest in his own daughters, only his son. However, despite this devotion in finding the first son, there is a significant conflict between Choy’s father and grandfather, to the point that the grandfather would later on, deny that he had more than ten children in Canada – Choy’s grandfather found a second wife in China and brought her to Canada, where they had ten children together. Choy was unable to find out what exactly the conflict is between his father and grandfather, but it appears to involve the second wife, a headstrong and stubborn woman who often clashed with his father. The grandfather and wife often argued and ultimately, the wife rejected the grandfather in his final years, forcing him to move in with the son that he once denied. So secretive, so ironic, so hypocritical, so Chinese.

Near the end of the book, we find out that Choy’s parents decide that the only way that they can become successful in Canada is to work for themselves instead of for others. They do what countless Chinese have done in the hundred plus years of the Chinese presence in Canada, they move to a small town and open a business.

My parents history follow a similar trajectory. Slaving away for low wages in restaurants in Kamloops. Being forced to live separately until they could save enough for a down payment on a house. Eventually deciding that they needed to run their own small restaurant to take control of their lives. Later on, building a convenience store and running if for a decade before selling it and getting back into the restaurant business again. All the while, working long hours and sacrificing the comforts and conveniences that I take for granted. I have aunts, uncles and cousins that did the same when they came to Canada to make new lives for themselves.

I don’t think the experience is much different from other immigrant groups. History tells us that no matter which ethnic group, new immigrants congregate with their own in ghettos. As the descriptor would indicate, the immigrant neighbourhoods are in the working class parts of town where some security is provided in being amongst your own. The second generation bridges the old world customs with the new country and the desire is that the second generation will go to school and become successful enough to move out of the ghetto. The third generation becomes fully assimilated and a part of the “melting pot” of Canadian or American society and will have been raised with the notion that through study and hard work, they can strive to achieve whatever it is they want from life. The third generation will have little knowledge of the ghetto life lived by their grandparents and how hard past generations had to work to allow them the comforts of a western life. They get to loaf around at home to play the Xbox or Wii. They play sports and take dance or music lessons. They don’t have to be seven years old working in the family store to give the parents a tiny break from the daily grind of working 13-14 hours a day, every day of the year except for Christmas when they might only work 10 hours on that special day. But then, being able to live an easier life is exactly why the grandparents worked all those long hours for so many years. As my mother used to tell me, we (my father and her) work like horses so that you will not.

Choy’s family eventually return to Vancouver, where Choy graduated from the University of BC, which is a proud moment for his parents, but still worrisome for his mother who despaired at what Choy can do with an English degree. I can relate again, because my parents were certainly proud during my graduation ceremony, but wondered what I could do in life with a History degree.

When I finished the book, I found myself disappointed, because I wanted the memoir to go on and tell me more about Choy and how he ended up in Toronto as a teacher of English at Humber College.

There are also other questions left unanswered. When I read the Jade Peony, there is a chapter that left an impression that Choy is gay due to the intimate way the passage had been written.

The Jade Peony is comprised of stories told from the perspective of three children in the same family. The first set is from the only girl in the family, the second is from the adopted second son and the third is from the youngest son. There is actually a fourth child, the oldest son, but Choy saves his story for his second novel, All That Matters.

It’s the perspective of the second son, an aspiring boxer, who has a fight with a young Chinese lumberjack that provoked the curiosity. The lumberjack, a fit, tough and handsome man, has been a mentor of sorts for the pre-teen second son, teaching him how to look after himself in fights. During a drunken encounter that became physical with real blows landing from the lumberjack to the boy, things start to get out of hand, but eventually settle down with the lumberjack hugging and comforting the boy after the beating. The close contact arouses feelings in the boy never felt before, which leads to confusion. However, Choy does not go further in describing the boy’s sexual awakening and the way Choy wrote about the incident made me wonder.

I found the answer in Paper Shadows, when Choy recounted a playing incident as a boy that has some parallels to the passage in the Jade Peony. It’s not a fight that awoke Choy, but there is a strong young man and there is some physical contact that caused some confusion in Choy, which took him years to understand. As in the Jade Peony, Choy does not write anymore about this change, but there’s little doubt that Choy has come out of the closet. In Not Yet, there’s no dance and abrupt departure from the dance floor, as Choy discusses his sexual orientation openly. There is no adolescent confusion as in the other books.

Maybe I’m too naïve, but I found it remarkable that given his upbringing, that Choy is so open about his gayness. Chinese culture is very conservative and often times, bigoted towards other cultures, races and “preferences.”

Choy also recounts an incident when his local group of kids in the neighbourhood descended upon a boy who occasionally wandered in their area. The boy was gangly and from the way Choy described the incident, there is something not “right” about the boy, but he didn’t understand at the time what was wrong with him. The other neighbourhood boys started to beat up the boy and Choy, caught in a mob mentality moment, joined in. Although his punches and kicks did not land and do any harm, Choy is conflicted with his actions. Later on, his mother admonishes him and tells him to stay from such people so that their craziness would not infect him like a disease – the strange boy’s parents later institutionalized him.

The mother’s attitude is typical of old school Chinese; stay away from the weirdoes and crazies less they somehow infect you with their affliction. I think old school Chinese probably feel the same about being gay, which is why I found it surprising that Choy’s parents seem to have accepted his orientation without any apparent fuss. We don’t know for sure because Choy does not discuss it further, but it certainly seems that he enjoyed a close if somewhat strained relationship with his father in his last years of life. By strained, I mean that from a cultural and generational perspective, the kind that I experience with my own parents. I just find it odd that Choy would spend so little time in discussing how his family would regard his sexuality, although, strictly speaking, the memoir is about Choy’s childhood in Chinatown and not about his young adulthood.

The old school attitude and Choy’s gayness have a small, but crucial role in his more recent memoir, Not Yet. He remembers the warnings of his elders that with no wife and children, he would die alone. However, through all the medical travails, he finds that in fact, he is not alone.

There are many friends that visit and help during his recovery and just as Choy was an adopted son, he himself has “adopted” people to be his family. He shares a house with a family in the city and is godfather to the only child in that family. There is also a family in the countryside that he stays with for prolonged periods and Choy is also godfather to that family’s two children. In short, Choy finds that he is far from being alone and that there are many people in his life that care about and love him. It gives him reason to live, hence the title, Not Yet, for Choy is not yet ready to die even if he had to face death twice in four years.

In 2001, Choy suffered an asthma attach that was combined with a heart attack. In 2004, he was on the brink of suffering a massive heart attack and certain death if he had not called his family doctor, who immediately recognized the danger he was in. Choy ultimately had to have quadruple bypass surgery.

In Not Yet, the Chinese culture plays a peripheral role in his struggle to recover from the serious heart and lung problems. However, there is a curious passage towards the end that raises an eyebrow and seems like it could have been a scene from M. Night Shamalayan’s movie, the Sixth Sense.

Choy visits Vancouver to conduct further research for this second book and visits a favourite Vietnamese restaurant where he has conducted many interviews. On his visit during that particular time in his hometown, the restaurant owner acts differently and is not her usual welcoming self. On his second visit, after the busy lunch period is over and the restaurant is empty except for Choy and his interviewee, the owner explains why she had been reticent with Choy the day before. She can see ghosts and tells Choy that he has two ghosts with him.

Choy, of course, sees and feels nothing and wonders what’s going on and thinks that it’s some kind of hustle by others manipulating the restaurant owner to get at Choy and some of his money. However, the description of the ghosts gives Choy pause, for one ghost is an old woman, feeling guilty for abandoning him – the biological mother who gave him up as a baby for reasons Choy never found out about. And, a young male ghost, perhaps a boy or a young man that despairs at not being able to say goodbye to Choy properly – a long ago male friend who was very close to Choy in his late teens and who died of cancer after Choy and his family moved to Ontario. Choy is startled, but still sceptical and agrees to a Buddhist exorcism for these ghosts, while friendly, are considered a danger to Choy, for they will feed on his life energy.

It’s a curious passage, but while I cannot attest to any ghostly experiences myself, I can relate to the superstitious nature of Chinese and desire to follow rituals to ward off bad spirits and promote good health and fortune in life.

As a child, during Chinese New Year, my mother would boil a chicken, gather up some fruits and display them on a tray. We would take the tray to the back door (to keep it and us out of sight of the neighbours) and my mother would light some incense sticks, pour a bit of alcohol in some tiny cups and then make me clasp my hands and bow three times. After a few years that ritual stopped. We also stopped eating with small rice bowls and chopsticks and moved onto plates and forks.

Once or twice a year, my mother and I would visit Vancouver to visit relatives and do some shopping in Chinatown. We would also take a moment to head to Burnaby and pay our respects to my grandfather’s grave. I would place flowers in the hole beside the gravestone, designated for flowers. During those childhood visits to the cemetery, it was always outside of the traditional time to pay respects to the dead, which for Chinese, is coincidentally very close to Easter.

Now that my parents live in Vancouver, we go out during the traditional time and my father would bring food and fruits for display on the grave. Incense sticks are lit and everyone bows three times in front of my grandparents graves. I’d never seen such a ritual before until my parents retired to Vancouver and began to take part in some long dormant Chinese customs. When I look around the cemetery and see other Chinese families doing the same, I realize that what we do is actually pretty restrained, because we do the display of food and drink (to nourish the ancestors), we light the incense sticks and then burn fake money for those heavenly games of mah-jong. But, after the money has been burnt, we clean up and we go home. Other families stay for long periods and literally have picnics on the grave.

I’ve noticed, when visiting Vancouver Chinese homes, many have an altar of sorts. There may be displays of Chinese gods and the various forms of Buddha, but often, there is a portrait of deceased parents or grandparents. Sometimes, incense sticks are burned in front of the portrait, resulting in a pungent aroma being wafted throughout the house. My parents have never been inclined to such displays, so I was quite surprised when I saw them so prevalent in Vancouver. Needless to say, I have no such displays in my own house.

There are other aspects of Not Yet that I can also relate to as well. While my eye problems pale in comparison to Choy facing death twice (possibly even in being dead for a brief moment, according to the passage about the two ghosts), there are some similar experiences. The boredom and inability to do anything meaningful during the recovery process. The long time it took for recovery itself and the tiny, daily improvements, which gave hope. For Choy, that meant having to learn to walk again and developing his fine motor skills such as holding a pen and trying to write. Imagine, being a writer and not being able to write, or in my case, being a photographer and not being able to see.

You take comfort in the small victories you accomplish. For Choy, walking ten steps without assistance or the use of a walker. For me, being able to see well enough that I could go out for a walk in the sun and being confident that I could cross the street safely.

Not Yet is much less about Choy's Chinese upbringing, but there are still elements of that history with Choy recognizing signs and gut intuition, or in some cases, ignoring them at his near peril. He ignored the signs in 2001, which led to the near-death experience, but he knew enough to seek help in 2004, which saved his life. We are the better for him paying attention to those signs and continuing to work on his finely crafted stories.

January 26, 2010 - All that Matters – for those that have not read the book, I have to warn of plot spoilers in my review below.

Reading the book was like sitting down in your most comfortable chair, wearing your most worn comfort clothes with a steaming hot cup of java beside you. It was a return to the lives of the Chen family from Wayson Choy’s first book, the Jade Peony.

In that first book, there were stories told from the perspective of three of the four children in the Chen family. The fourth story, of the oldest sibling, remained untold and we only know of Kiam Kim’s life through the periphery of his younger brothers and sister.

From the Jade Peony, we know that Kiam, as the oldest son, is dutiful to his family and to his studies. We know that he has a girlfriend, Jenny Chong, but not that much else, as Kiam has a minor role in the stories told by his siblings. However, he does have a story to tell and much as with Wayson Choy’s other stories and reminisces in his memoirs, I found some parallels to my own life.

At first, there does not seem all that much remarkable about Kiam’s life in Canada. It starts with a long journey on a ship taking him, his father and his grandmother to Canada, where they will start a new life thanks to the benevolence of a wealthy Chinatown merchant. As Kiam grows up in Vancouver, he’s highly regarded amongst the chattering class in Chinatown, because he avoids the dreaded affliction of being a “mo no” with “mo li” (mindless and without manners). He knows, from the countless reminders, that he, as the oldest, must set an example for his younger siblings and not shame and dishonor his family.

In All that Matters, the most significant part of the story, when Kiam is coming of age as a teenager, takes place in the late 1930s during the lead-up to World War II. China is gripped in the throes of a civil war between the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai Shek and the Communists led by Mao Tse Tung (you’ll forgive my old fashioned spelling, which only serves to date my education). In between the in-fighting where Chinese are killing Chinese, some rationality surfaces and the two sides realize that they have a common enemy in the invading Japanese. They join forces only long enough to defeat the Japanese before fighting each other again until the Communists triumphed in 1949, to create the current People’s Republic of China.

Reading the description that Choy uses as uttered from the Chinese elders and Kiam’s father, “dog-turd Japanese,” reminds me that even today, 65 years after the end of that most destructive war, some Chinese still harbor resentment and bitterness at what they endured under Japanese occupation. “Dog-turd Japanese” may not be used much, but it is still heard every now and then amongst today’s Chinese elders, especially by those that lived through those dark days in the old country.

Choy’s the Jade Peony touches on the Chinese animosity towards the Japanese more so than All that Matters, because of the Romeo and Juliet tragedy as told by Sek Lung, Kiam’s youngest brother. A forbidden romance between a beautiful Chinese girl and a handsome Japanese boy ends tragically at the end of the Jade Peony. The tragedy has a role at the end of All that Matters because of the parallel events taking place in Kiam’s life.

Other Chinese experiences include something that I discussed when writing about Choy’s memoirs, which is the respect paid to elders, dead and alive. I mentioned the tradition of visiting cemeteries to offer food, drink and symbolic money for the dead to use in the afterlife. I also mentioned that some families have picnics on the gravesite, which I did not understand, but thanks to a reader from Nova Scotia, I now understand that doing so is for bringing fortune and luck to the family. This tradition of visiting ancestral graves is known as the Ching Ming Festival, or literally, the Clear (Ching) Bright (Ming) Festival, but often translated in English as the Tomb Sweeping Day (for obvious reasons).

Luck, fortune and generating wealth seem to be very important factors in Chinese life. Although I studied history in school, I did not study Chinese history, so whatever I have to offer here is just a best guess. While China has an ancient civilization, known for cultural refinement and technological prowess at the height of the Chinese empire, most of its people have been poor throughout the ages. Even today, with a burgeoning Chinese middle class consuming as madly as any western society, there is still some ¾ of a billion Chinese citizens eking a meager survival. Just as there was a Chinese diaspora in the late 19th Century, there continues to be a diaspora leaving the Chinese countryside for the urban centers and economic zones along the Chinese coastline that offer opportunities to escape poverty. Just as the new world diaspora sent money back to sustain family in the old country, the in-China dispora sends money back to sustain the rural regions.

Other familiar experiences, the Chinese predilection to only allow other Chinese inside their homes. Choy writes of Kiam having many meals in the home of his best friend, but he never invites him to his own house to partake of a traditional Chinese meal. It’s not until his friend, Jack O’Connor, is to be sent off to war that Kiam receives the family’s consent to allow Jack a request to have a meal with Kiam and his family. During the discussion to consider allowing Jack in, the various family members joke and wonder how Jack would be able to handle the traditional foods that the Chen family dines on.

I could only chuckle after reading that part, because I’ve felt the same about inviting non-Chinese friends to my home and having them wonder at certain dishes favored by my parents. My own tastes are decidedly western and there are many a time when I would much rather eat a can of Chef Boyardee’s ravioli, soaked in that tangy radioactive orange sauce then to partake of delicacies such as bird’s nest soup or chew on some chicken’s feet. I won’t get into how some Chinese like sucking on fish heads…

As a much longer book than the Jade Peony, and all from Kiam Kim’s perspective, All that Matters takes its time to develop Kiam’s character. There’s the curiosity of his new country, there is the interest in the conversations of the adults, which seem to end whenever they notice the child taking an interest. It took me a bit longer to warm up to the book, but it's still an enjoyable, sentimental read until two-thirds of the way in, where Choy gives us an interesting turn of events of Kiam as a teenager who starts to explore his feelings and desire for his girlfriend, Jenny.

Choy introduces us to Jenny, when she and Kiam are children. Her mother is late arriving for Kiam’s grandmother’s mah-jong party, because Jenny has been causing trouble. Jenny is brought along to the Chen household where Kiam, is the dutiful grandson helping his poh-poh to host the combination gossip and gambling party, while Jenny is left to brood by herself.

From that introduction, we see hints that the Chen and Chong elders would be delighted if Kiam and Jenny became a couple. I don’t know if I interpreted some of the hints correctly, but it seems the relationship is a wink-wink, knudge-knudge setup by both sets of parents, if not explicitly prearranged, as might happen in the old country.

However, as Kiam and Jenny grow into teenagers, Choy gives us a sense of Jenny as a feisty, a sassy and a pretty girl. The two grow closer and while the parents may have connived secretly and provided subtle and not so subtle hints, it seems to me that it’s still up to Kiam and Jenny to carry the budding relationship forward. Familiarity and friendliness create a bond that would seem to lead Kiam and Jenny to the relationship that their parents, and especially Kiam's poh-poh, desire.

But…we begin to see other things develop in the relationship and that made me wonder how Choy would be able to square everything away by the rapidly coming end of the book. When I finished the book, it took a few days of reflection, thinking and rereading some passages again to have it sink in. But on the morning that I began typing out these thoughts, I realized that Choy has given us much of Pearl Harbour (the Ben Affleck/Josh Hartnett movie) with a touch of the English Patient thrown in for good measure (more on this below). In other words, Choy has given us a love triangle involving Kiam, Jenny and Kiam’s best friend, Jack O’Connor. And, like a stay-at-home housewife hooked on daytime soap operas, I was hooked and read during all my spare time to find out how Choy reconciles these three lives.

The passage that started to make me wonder where Choy is taking us with Kiam and Jenny has the two of them sitting on the porch of the Chen house. Kiam and Jenny are talking and then Jack, the handsome neighbor strides by and sits down with the two. They talk, with the backdrop of World War II in their minds, about what their future might hold. It’s a melancholy discussion and midway through, Jack places his hand on Jenny’s knee for a long time. Kiam notices, but says nothing.

After the discussion, Kiam and Jenny walk home and in the hidden alcove of Jenny’s back door, she throws herself at Kiam with a passionate kiss. It should be a good sign for Kiam, but the previous passage and discussion with Jack made it a curious occurrence. I wondered, is Jenny acting this way, because she really desires Kiam, or is she thinking of someone else…

Fast forward a bit and we have Kiam and Jenny studying in the library. They are joined by another friend and as they banter back and forth, Jenny leaves to find some of her girlfriends. Kiam’s friend tells him that their friend Jack is in the basement of the library, so Kiam sets off to find him.

As he enters the basement area that houses all the old newspapers and magazines, he sees Jenny and Jack in flagrante delicto. (Latin for “in the blazing offence” or more commonly as, “caught red-handed,” and also much used to describe being caught having sex).

Kiam observes for a moment and departs back to his table to wait for Jenny to return. A few moments later she does and they depart the library together. Kiam says and does nothing.

What the @#$%!

The betrayal, the anger, the rage! So many emotions would have run through my head if that had been me seeing my girlfriend having sex with my best friend. And yet, Kiam does nothing and lets on as if nothing has changed. I had a tough time believing that a 17 year old witnessing such a scene can try and compartmentalize the memory into the deepest recesses of his mind. It takes him a while, but Kiam eventually decides that what is the past is the past and that he would just keep looking forward towards the life that he expects to have with Jenny.

It staggers belief, but then Kiam is the dutiful son. The firstborn expected to set the example for his younger siblings, to not do anything that would cause his family to lose face, to be praiseworthy amongst all the friends in Chinatown. He does not let his emotions betray him even after seeing something that would devastate others. He holds to his dying poh-poh’s wish that he should marry Jenny and bare many “tiger sons” and nothing that happened before will change those plans.

A pop culture diversion…

Thinking about what I read made me think about various other examples of betrayal. This kind of betrayal is actually quite common and has been told or sung of in one form or another since time immemorial.

In most human cultures, a monogamous relationship is the norm and we make a big deal of ceremonies and rituals to celebrate the union of man and woman. Marriage is seen as a sacred bond in most cultures and even though we live in a time of near 50 percent divorce rates, cheating is still shocking and titillating.

Consider how preoccupied we are with Tiger Woods and his serial betrayal of his wife, Elin. There is also Shania Twain, the very attractive Canadian country/pop music crossover superstar, who divorced her famous rock producer husband, Mutt Lange, after he had an affair with Twain's best friend. More recently, there's the sex scandal that is rocking Northern Ireland, as the First Minister's wife, almost 60, has admitted to an affair with a 19 year old man (not exactly a best friend type of betrayal, but a harsh betrayal nonetheless for the husband).

In pop music, Rick Springfield and Ric Ocasek of the Cars both wrote songs in the 1980s about desiring their best friend’s girl, who as it happens, used to be their girl (Jesse's Girl and My Best Friend's Girl). And, who can forget the venom from Alanis Morrisette in the 1990s when she shot to the top of the charts with a blistering attack on her former lover (You Oughta Know).

In legends, King Arthur is born of his father’s lust for his rival’s queen. In religion, the last of the Ten Commandments states, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife” (or any of his other possessions).

In television, I remember an original Star Trek episode where Spock has this maddening urge to return to Vulcan so that he can take a wife and mate (a nasty seven-year itch for Vulcans). He returns to the home planet only to fine that his betrothed has already betrayed him. A deadly dual must take place to determine who gets the girl. The girl gets to choose her champion, but wickedly chooses Spock's best friend, Captain Kirk, instead of her lover – why risk having lover boy killed when a human will do.

And, in the movies, who can forget the friendly rivalry between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker for the affections of Princess Leia and that now infamous kiss between Luke and Leia in the Empire Strikes Back...before we found out that she and Luke are brother and sister.

Also from the movies, Pearl Harbor has some parallels to All that Matters. Two lifelong best friends are US Army pilots (no separate USAF yet in WW II), who get into a love triangle with a beautiful nurse before that fateful event in 1941. Except that in Pearl Harbor, Ben Affleck’s best friend, Josh Hartnett, only gets together with his girl after they both think Affleck died in the Battle of Britain. When Affleck returns and learns that his former girl is pregnant with Harnett’s child, he backs off and lets the two of them to go on with their new relationship. However, Hartnett dies at the end, saving Affleck’s life in the aftermath of the Doolittle Raid. Affleck ends up with the girl after all, as well as the responsibility of looking after his best friend’s child. While Affleck felt betrayed, there was actually no true betrayal by his best friend being with his girlfriend, which is a key difference in what happened in All that Matters.

Jack and Kiam have been best friends since the Chen family moved into the house next door to the O’Connors. Through the years, the friendship is shown to be true, with both getting into fights and sticking up for each other. Kiam recounts a harrowing experience where he thought he was going to die at the hands of a knife-wielding Italian hood, only to be saved by Jack (and an Italian barber who notices and curtly motions the young hood away from the two youngsters). Even after the library incident, when Jack overhears an insult towards Kiam, he's ready to beat up the insulter in an instant, but is held back by Kiam.

In the inevitable confrontation between Kiam and Jack about Jenny, Kiam learns that Jack has been feeling guilty about what transpired that day in the library and how it has been eating at him, knowing what he has done to his only true friend. However, Kiam also learns that Jenny saw Kiam at the library and quickly ended the indiscretion with Jack, which also eats away at Jack, because he desires Jenny as much as Kiam does. Jack asks how Kiam could have remained silent and not said anything so as to ease Jack's guilt.

What the @#$% again!

Kiam is the one wronged, but Jack makes him out to be the bad guy because he didn't say anything. At this point, I'm thinking that Choy makes Kiam a patsy, but he's redeemed when he punches Jack in the jaw. It shows that Kiam does have emotions that needed releasing, but he still ends up rationalizing and forgiving Jack, the guy who, without even trying, scores the homerun with his girl while he only ever made it to second base. The worse of it is learning that it was Jenny who sought out Jack and threw that lob ball right down the middle of the plate.

Choy offers that Jenny desired Jack, because he's forbidden, a white man that Jenny cannot have otherwise she would be ostracized by her family. While Jenny has some spunk, she ends up like Kiam, dutiful to doing what her family expects of her, which is to be with Kiam, a nice, unthreatening Chinese boy. When she saw Kiam in the library, she immediately stopped, as if realizing what she had done and what she must do with her life. The result being to purposefully ignore Jack and ultimately rejecting him outright when he comes to declare his love before he confronts Kiam with what he has done.

In the end, Kiam and Jenny do get married and at the end of the book, we discover that they are expecting their first child. Jack went off to war in Hong Kong, which was already told in the Jade Peony, but where that book left the impression that Jack died, he did not. Like Michael Ondaatje's English Patient, he's burned and presumably disfigured and possibly crippled. Choy closes the loop and threat to Kiam, because there's little fear that Jenny will continue to be attracted to Jack physically since that Jack ceases to exist, but there's an impression that Jenny (and Kiam) will be forever haunted by who Jack was and what they shared that fateful day in the library. It is a decidedly bittersweet ending.

The reflection I had after finishing the book, initially focused on the love triangle because what Kiam witnessed at the library is so devastating, but I found that I was more annoyed at how Choy has Kiam react afterwards. To bottle it up and keep it inside led to a feeling of frustration that Kiam's character could be so blinded by what he should do as the oldest son with high expectations that he ignores the signs developing between Jack and Jenny. But...maybe why I was so annoyed in my reflection is that I recognized some of myself in Kiam.

I don't mean that I have any love triangle baggage like Kiam (although I've seen a few involving my friends), but that I'm the only son, the only child and it's been drilled into my head for as long as I can remember that I have certain responsibilities as the only child. To go to university - not going was such a bizarre concept that I could not fathom why so many of my classmates did not immediately enrol like I did after completing high school. To recognize the sacrifices of my parents so that my life can be better lived than theirs and look after them in their old age. To bite my tongue when they say or do something that annoy me. To be the dutiful son that won't bring shame upon the family. Curiously though, I found that after finishing the book and reflecting on it, I personally became a calmer person. I stopped letting a lot of the little things in life annoy me and I began to appreciate what I have in life, a life built on the backs of so many Chinese that came before me to Gold Mountain.

I found myself enjoying All that Matters as much as Choy's other books. The Jade Peony has a tighter feel in writing style, but then that's because that book is more like a series of short stories in one volume, whereas All that Matters is a longer narrative that fully develops the, at times, infuriating character of Kiam Kim Chen. But the love triangle, the reaction, the attitudes and that ever looming 800 pound tiger in the room, otherwise known as being Chinese, all contribute to a very thought provoking book. I do hope that Choy has more in store for the Chen family in future books.

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