PART III: sell at true constant price （「真正不二價」）

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In front of my grandfather’s shop laid a doorplate, saying “sell at true constant price” （「真正不二價」）in five Chinese characters. However, many years later, I have realized its real meaning was “Real sells at uniform price”. In other words, “Real” was the name of shop and “at uniform price” indicated the principle of running business. Perhaps it was my grandfather’s inflexibility and stubbornness that put him deeply in debt, and then he went bankrupt and had to leave Floral Cloth Street. Grandfather was very single-minded with his business, and that was also his attitude to do everything. However, his betrayal of my grandma was the only exception.

 

Everything in the 60s seems to be on the rise, Floral Cloth Street remained a place full of possibilities. The whole street was immersed in a festival atmosphere, full of noise and clamour, much like a traditional Cantonese lamb stew: women with the desire to look attractive were like the flame and the boiling stew was bubbling. The appetizing aroma greeted everyone. Every lady who walked into the Floral Cloth Street would leave with her arms full. Printed fabrics were new and fashionable, each one could make the oriental Tang suit of Connie Chan and the western pleated skirt of Josephine Siao*. Variety of designs and colors made various beautiful scenes. However, my grandfather persisted in selling woolen fabrics. He believed a yard of woolen fabric was equal to ten yards of printed fabrics. But he forgot that a man could wear a suit for ten years while a woman might change her clothes every day. Floral Cloth Street was falling into ruin, and my grandfather failed in business and​ quitted the street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do not fully remember how did the organizer close down. What I remember is that, when I left Floral Cloth Street, I never expected I would return again to it after more than twenty years. Soon after my brothers left, they sent me away as well, together with my father and my grandfather’s second wife. My father moved to work elsewhere, and I haven’t heard of him ever since. My grandfather’s second wife and I were sent to an outlying island, because of the lower living expenses there. All good things must come to an end. Several years later, people who had lived in Floral Cloth Street were wandering from place to place. Probably only the moan of the kitten, from the water butt on the rooftop, witnessed the whole street buildings to collapse one by one. The era of the Floral Cloth Street had passed.

 

My grandfather, literally, escaped from the Floral Cloth Street. He was in debt and went to Macau as a levanter. Several years later, when he came back to Hong Kong, my father and uncles have eked out a living with market stalls. My grandma was still busy at cooking and washing endlessly. She fainted once while playing mahjong and passed away. Everyone in Floral Cloth Street became poorer and older. My grandfather’s second wife married him for his money, but in the end, she only had an old man in debt. In grandfather’s latter years, he became more amiable, so his features are clearer in my mind. He then became a carpenter, and made sound amplifiers for my uncle, so that my uncle could make a living selling them. After my wedding, every time I visited him, he would give me some fine wooden guns, made for my son. Rattan was winded around the stock of the gun, and all the timber was highly polished, which got me a good feeling when taking it. However, my children were not interested in playing with them because these guns could not make sounds or shoot.

 

In the last thirty years of his life, my grandfather looked weary and taciturn. The voltage of his words decreased to zero. He seemed to became a black flannelette, rolled inwards and impossible to open. He did not want to change anything. Life never explains its shape, and my grandfather never talked about the past, just as ife he had forgotten everything. As for me, I inherited his stubborn personality, just sticked his image in the centre of the store in Floral Cloth Street, let him stand alone under the squeaky ceiling fan and keep the stereotyped figure of a peremptory, heartless old man who didn’t love children. In the end, grandfather’s image took another shape, with his hands lifting the flowers on the calico fabric. History is consistent, but emotions can change. Unexpectedly, I found out I was truly and deeply in love with my grandfather. Maybe because of my father, my kind grandma and my younger uncle who often talked to me, because of my two older brothers who were middle aged, and I even felt pity for that women, my grandfather’s second wife, who snatched my grandma’s husband. Why? Perhaps it is because I had been out of my little world and experienced many things, so I have already been far away from that street.