PART I

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My grandfather passed away at ninety-four. Before his death, he kept silent for three months, during which he neither ate nor drank and had to be kept alive on a tube. He didn't leave any last words. The following morning, I received a message that he left us. He faded out from our lives quietly and gently. His death was like a piece of scratch paper, full of scribbles, flying away from the broken wooden window sill in a dazzling daylight, leaving several red broken bits floating in the air.

 

He was only sixty years old or so when he went bankrupt. After losing all his money, he realized that his past success in Guangzhou’s clothing business was like a dream that is now long gone. I can not describe my grandfather’s life in detail because we seldom talked to each other. As for his nature, I can only speak about his external appearance. My grandfather’s whole life was surrounded by a dramatic aura, which was like a long tail full of abscesses, always open. Carrying his abscessed tail, he went through the close of the Qing dynasty, his childhood as an orphan, the anti-Japanese war, and the horrible Cultural Revolution. Finally, as a middle age man, he moved to Hong Kong together with his family, including his three sons and one daughter. Generally speaking, my grandfather’s life could be divided into three parts. He spent the first third of his life fighting. In his middle age, he found out that there was a huge gap between the reality and his expectations. Finally, he used all of his efforts in the remaining one-third to forget the first two parts of his life.

 

I met him when he was in his sixties, gradually crumbling. Compared to him, I was tiny and unspectacular. When I saw him for the first time, I was pretty sure that every single word that he said would become the absolute truth in his kingdom. I was only eight years old when I came to Hong Kong with my father in 1962. My grandfather asked someone to get my hair permed, so that I looked like a Hong Kong native. I was tiny compared to my grandfather’s huge and sophisticated network of relationships. So, I need to use all of my efforts and try to become part of my grandfather’s nexus.

 

Floral Cloth Street was located in Central. Its original name was Wing On Street. My grandfather’s business was located there, inside a three-floor Tong Lau, the walls of which were as thin as playing cards. Nevertheless, the Tong Lau was crowded like a beehive. Our home was there as well, housing three generations, along the staff in the shop. People came in and out, speaking in their own dialects, without a smile on their faces. My grandfather never seemed to notice me. As soon as my father and I arrived in Hong Kong, we were enwrapped in his scrupulous attitude. I truly missed my mother who stayed in Guangzhou, so I stood in front of the store and cried all day long. However, everything went on as usual. People wouldn’t stop when they passed by me. The spot seemed to have been designated for a crying girl.   

 

Floral Cloth Street was quite narrow. If you walked along the street, you would definitely get lost in the various cloth. The cloth had a strange but unique scent, like a growing desire. You always wanted to touch or embrace them. The woolen fabrics resembled trees, while the floral clothes were like flowers. Rolls of clothes came down like slopes. The thin cloth at the end of the rack was flapping, letting the sunshine through. Embracing and stroking the wind, the cloth was flying towards the brown and blue sky, broken like a tangram puzzle. On a summer day, when I looked up to the sky, separated by clothes, I felt like I was dreaming a muggy dream filled with the desire of waking up. Before coming to Hong Kong, whenever I woke up from a nightmare, my mother always stayed besides me.

 

There were many stores selling clothes, and everyone seemed to be glued to the next one. They looked so similar that I would always get lost whenever I came back. Sometimes I did not realize that I had arrived at the store until I recognized my chubby Gufu (the husband of my father’s sister). My Gufu’s job was to chat with women passing by while standing in front of the store. After chatting for a long time, those women would buy clothes in our store. My younger Bofu (my father’s elder brother) was also working in the store. He was tall and slim. He had a red swarthy face and had cheeks as friendly as child’s. Nevertheless, he never smiled. His two thick black narrow eyebrows hang high above a pair of big eyes, which always terrified people. However, my instinct told me he was a nice guy because he sometimes looked at me and even talked to me lowering his head. I could not tell my younger Bofu’s facial expressions, same as I could not tell the price of different woolen fabrics. The only thing I knew was that he was the one who selects the cloth samples for the store. The store would sell whichever cloth he bought. The samples that he brought were either dark blue or grey, and were rather ugly. I used to ask my grandma about them. My grandma also had lovely small cheeks. It seemed that she laughed a lot, but she did not. The unidentified European descent gave her fair skin like translucent porcelain. I vaguely remember the blue little veins under her soft, smooth skin, which I couldn’t resist touching. However, as she started to talk, the image of mixed-blood was immediately erased by her pure Zhongshan accent. ‘Silly girl! Don’t you know your grandpa sells wool fabrics and not those cheap ones?’ I answered: ‘But the floral clothes look much nicer than the wool fabrics!’ Grandma turned her wide face and high-bridged nose towards me, and looked at me seriously. She hesitated for a while, turned back again, and said softly: ‘Old-fashioned kid.’ Then she continued preparing our lunch in haste. She had to feed more than 10 people twice a day, every day. Every time I saw her, she was working in the steaming kitchen, broad and lonely back surrounded by white smoke.

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By contrast, the second wife of my grandfather was gentle and tender, but she kept me at a distance. She sat in the shop but always at leisure, too quiet to catch up with the rushing pace of others. Her every act was done in silence. It’s said that she had a poor eyesight, and that’s why she was never asked to go out to buy ingredients and cook. Every day, her only job was to walk back and forward on the wooden stairs. She never made a sound, like a ghost searching for its way back. She was responsible for taking care of me, including sleeping in the same bed with me. Her bed was in the attic, with both its head and foot far away from the wall, leaving plenty of space. The ceiling of the attic was so low that adults had to stoop in this room. If I could choose, I would rather sleep with my grandma. However, she slept with grandfather. I could feel that she really loved me, while my grandfather’s second wife called me bad girl, since I kept rolling in the bed, making her feel dizzy. I was angry with her, always wanted to ask grandma if she was the so-called ‘fox’, but finally I didn’t, for I knew that ‘foxes’ were beautiful, but that woman looked weak and unattractive, with skin in the color of straws, dishevelled grey hair, and the smell of medicated oil. She even didn’t have good eyesight. At that thought, I was convinced that my grandfather was stupid. However, she always wore garments made of the most exquisite floral cloth, which was light and beautiful, with a sense of femininity. It’s a pity that my grandma looked much stronger than her, and thus she had to do the rough work all the time. Only a few years after we left the Floral Cloth Street, my grandma suddenly passed away suffering a stroke, and never got anything in return for her lifelong suffering. But my grandfather’s second wife was ill for a long time. During the last several years of her life, my grandfather made everything he could to take care of her. They were affectionate like a pair of lovebirds, which made me understand the meaning of ‘redundant’ and the strength of the ‘redundancy’.