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The Palm Leaf Fan
and Other Stories
Kwai-yun Li
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Legend has it that the first Chinese settler in Calcutta (as
it was then; now Kolkata) was a sailor by the name of Yang
Da Zhao or Yong Atchew or Yang Tai Chew (take your pick),
who jumped ship sometime in the 1770s. East India Company
records show one Acchi petitioning the then Governor-General
of Bengal, Warren Hastings, in 1778, to settle in Bengal and
asking for land to set up a commercial enterprise. Legend
further has it that due to some unspecified service
performed by Acchi, Hastings allowed him to take possession
of as much land as he could cover on horseback in one
morning's ride. Taking full advantage of this offer, the
enterprising Acchi (who was also, presumably, a good
horseman), acquired a large tract of land near Budge Budge,
where he set up a sugar mill, for which he brought workers
from back home in China. These first settlers formed the
nucleus of the Chinese settlement in Kolkata.
Following
Acchi's pioneering efforts, which were not crowned with
conspicuous success (after his death in December 1783, the
sugar factory he founded stumbled on for some years until
being put up for auction in 1803), the growing numbers of
Chinese in Kolkata began 'niche specialization', with the
Hakkas concentrating on shoemaking and tanning, the
Cantonese in carpentry and the Hupei (Hubei) in dentistry
and paper-flower making. Those from Shanghai soon gained
prominence as launderers, while the Hakkas and the Cantonese
branched out into the restaurant business.
The Chinese have been part of the middle-class Bengali
bhadralok consciousness pretty much from the time the
Bengali bhadralok came into existence as a distinctly
identifiable group in its own right. Practically every
middle-class Bengali gourmet (or gourmand) has a favourite
Chinese dish, prepared at a favoured Chinese restaurant.
Others have a particular Chinese laundry where the family's
most precious and delicate garments are given for cleaning
(the local dhobi being trusted with the more mundane
items of daily wear), and yet others who have a particular
Chinese stylist at a particular beauty parlour, without whom
proper grooming seems almost impossible. A few, especially
of the older generation, will not buy their shoes from even
the most touted international brand name shops now dotting
our fair city, trusting instead a Chinese shoemaker in
Bentinck Street who, they will claim (not without
justification), 'makes the best shoes in the country.'
In the 1950s and 1960s, Kolkata's Chinatown (the only one
in India) flourished with six big Chinese restaurants;
dozens of tea houses; specialty shops selling roast pork,
gold, curios, Chinese jewellery; Chinese tailors, barbers,
dentists, carpenters, shoemakers, and so on. Then there were
the fabled opium dens and gambling joints of Chinatown,
where, or so rumour went, even the police feared to tread
and failure to pay up on time resulted in slow and painful
death at the hands of specially trained Chinese enforcers.
Middle-class Bengalis of my generation seldom came into
direct contact with the Chinese, they existed in ditties
(such as one which spoke of the 'Cheenaman chai-chu' killing
and eating cockroaches with gusto) and flitted by in our
peripheral vision as owners and operators of restaurants and
laundries, as expert shoemakers and skilled stylists in
beauty parlours.
The watershed event for the Kolkata Chinese (as indeed
for any Chinese settled in India) was the India-China war of
1962. The Indian Chinese (or Chinese Indians), many of whom
had never even visited China, were treated shabbily by the
Indian government; many had their citizenship revoked and
were forced to exist as stateless subjects for years on end,
others were put into internment camps in Rajasthan and
elsewhere, and the fear of the midnight knock and tales of
police brutality became part of the collective consciousness
of the Chinese in India as a whole. Tales of Chinese
businesses being shut down and the Chinese-owned
establishments being attacked by violent mobs were common.
Following the 1962 conflict, there began a steady outflow of
the Chinese from Kolkata and their numbers have now come
down to some 5,000 from a peak of about 12,000-15,000
(estimates vary widely) in the 1950s and 1960s.
Indian Chinese, caught as they were in the interstices of
two cultures, nevertheless remained identifiably Indian.
Many of those who have migrated to the West remain, in their
habits and manners, more Indian than American or Canadian or
Australian (or whatever). I was intrigued to hear an account
of a Kolkata Chinese man who after a decade in the USA and
Canada had not picked up a trace of an American accent. When
asked why, he responded that he mostly mixed with others of
his kind (meaning Indians) and had little contact with
'Whites'!
Yet, until the publication of Kwai-yun Li's book of short
stories, The Palm Leaf Fan and Other Stories, in
2006, there have been few accounts of what it meant (and
perhaps still means) to be a member of Kolkata's Chinese
community, available to a wider reading public.
Kwai-yun Li's book does not pretend to be a definitive
account of life among the Kolkata Chinese and that is the
biggest strength of this slim volume. Taking up apparently
simple tales of domestic life in Chinese Kolkata, so to
speak, this book manages to create a powerful and poignant
picture of what life was like for the Chinese, especially
for girls and young women, in the 1940s, the 1950s, and the
1960s in Kolkata.
The short stories in this volume are marked by a sureness
of touch and an acuity of observation that match the best in
their genre. In a a few simple strokes, in largely
unvarnished language, Kwai-yun Li is able to evoke the
humidity and stickiness of the Kolkata summer, the
invariable flooding of Kolkata's streets during the monsoon
rains, the crowded roads of central Kolkata, the coexistence
of relative wealth and acute poverty in the lower
middle-class neighbourhoods, money worries, arranged
marriages, the insecurities of 1962 and its aftermath, among
many other things.
The central focus of most of the eleven stories is a
(often young) woman. In the title story, the description of
the narrator's mother, 'She spent most of her time in the
kitchen, cooking for Father [a successful businessman] and
any of his friends who happened to drop by . . . I don't
remember her ever raising her voice. She seemed to be always
looking at somewhere we could not see and listening to
something we could not hear', initiates the first of many
accounts of the uncomplaining stoicism and quiet heroism
with which Kwai's female protagonists bear the slings and
arrows of capricious (and almost always male-directed)
fortune. As Jade, the heroine of the only story set partly
outside Kolkata (in Canada) says, 'We have managed so far.
We will have to manage.'
Some of the characters in Kwai's book remain in the
consciousness long after one has finished reading the story
in which they appear. There is Aunty Liang of 'The Buddha is
All-Seeing' who runs a successful temple, turns a neat
profit from the pilgrimages she takes her mostly poor and
widowed devotees on, sets up her children in successful
enterprises and grows prosperously plump from her commercial
success, even as she bemoans fate and her ill-luck in life.
Or, the talented and intelligent Mei Ling, whose dreams of
going to university and becoming a teacher are shattered
with her arranged marriage to the brutish son of a Tangra
tannery owner in 'Sometimes Life Makes You Cry.'
Nineteen sixty-two and the Kolkata Chinese's partly
heroic, partly fatalistic (and sometimes comic) efforts to
come to terms with it is brilliantly depicted in 'Rally at
the Ochterlony Monument', where attempts to demonstrate
patriotism include putting up of the Dalai Lama's and
Mahatma Gandhi's posters in schools and learning Hindi from
patently unqualified teachers, even as young men practice
their kung-fu moves and the narrator's mother equips each of
her children with emergency packs to prepare for the
eventuality of internment.
A counterpoint to the mutual mistrust with which the
Chinese and the Indians treat each other in 'Rally at the
Ochterlony Monument' is 'Babu', a bittersweet account of the
relationship between a young Chinese girl and the Dalit
tea-stall helper who lives on the third-floor landing of her
building.
In an increasingly globalised world, where homogenisation
seems to be the officially-approved order of the day,
Kwai-yun Li's book brings us back to the specificities of
time, space, and location. As Diaspora Studies begins to
gain a foothold in the halls of academe, her book bears
testimony to the common thread of humanity that binds us
all, even as it (critically) celebrates difference. It
offers important insights into many crucial aspects of our
contemporary existence, not least among which would be
histories of migration and settlement, the oppression of
minorities by modern states and state machinery, the common
burdens shared by women (irrespective of ethnicity or class)
and notions of nationality, nationhood, and 'home'.
The Palm Leaf Fan and Other Stories is an
important addition to the growing body of Indian writing in
English. The more the pity that this book is not
available in India. (I got my copy from a friend who got it
from the author in Canada.) Perhaps some enterprising
publisher will take the initiative to bring out an Indian
edition of this book soon. Such an effort is unlikely to go
unrewarded.*
—Samantak
Das
Jadavpur University
Kolkata
*(Note: The Palm Leaf
Fan and Other Stories will be released as
The Last Dragon Dance
by Penguin India in July 2008)
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In an age when the
clamour of minority voices has reached a veritable
crescendo, this collection of short stories by Kwai-yun Li
strikes a clean, clear, crisp note. The new-coin-shiny prose
has the effect of a photographer who miraculously snared
rare pictures of the unhurried yet rapidly transforming
ethos of Chinese settlement from early twentieth-century
India's oldest, most chaotic metropolis. These
documentary-style shorts from Calcutta's Chinatowns offer an
intimate view of the Chinese immigrants who numbered 30,000
in 1947, when India won its independence, and who have now
dwindled to 5,000 due to political and economic upheavals.
Li presents
semi-autobiographical vignettes of day-to-day life that
capture, in the simplicity of a word or a phrase, the slant
of light in crowded Bo Bazaar on a monsoon-heavy afternoon
or the muggy fumes of Tangra tanneries, the sound of
Buddhist chants, chattering convent girls or anti-Communist
sloganeering, the smell of carp in soy and ginger, or of
vomit in restaurants after a wedding celebration.
The stories are
not chronologically arranged, appearing almost in the manner
of a back-and-forth long-term memory as they etch out sharp,
sparse details of diasporic life. The characters express
themselves with similar economy, and the absence of deeper
psychological exploration only heightens the effect of an
old black-and-white photo, capturing for antiquity an
irretrievable time.
And yet, the
stories have none of the cloying nostalgia of many a
diasporic memory; they speak in a voice uncluttered by the
bulge of large-frame history or politically correct clichés.
Li's nuanced exploration of migration, exile, feminism,
democracy, secularism, nationalism, language politics, and
parochialism is all the more remarkable as it does not
seek shelter in easy binaries. She addresses deftly, simply
the role of the individual in the nation and in history with
the dignity of the lone voice, the sole experience, intact.
I can't wait for
a more substantial body of work to appear. The history of
the Calcutta Chinese has found eloquent expression in Li.
—
Mridula Nath Chakraborty
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Kwai-Yun Li’s
The Palm Leaf and Other Stories¬
explores the lives of Hakka Chinese living
in Calcutta during the 1950s and 60s. This
collection of linked stories reveals the
intricacies of a minority culture living
overseas. To my knowledge, no one has
written about this particular group before,
and the result is a fascinating collection,
which explores what the Chinese have done to
fit into a larger Hindu society. The
feelings associated with multiculturalism
and life in a cultural diaspora are
explored.
These stories have a great deal of heart;
they explore family relationships and how
the Chinese have adapted their lives in
Calcutta. Traditions and beliefs from China
make an impact in the Indian milieu. In
return, the characters inhabit Chinatown,
but are thoroughly affected by the Indian
environment and customs, and the cultures
blend into each other. The voice in these
stories is mainly a child’s, and the reader
learns with the child, through her
experiences. The heart, wonder, and
descriptive nature of these narratives make
this collection both entertaining and
informative. In one particular story, the
narrator watches as her classmate, who
doesn’t care to do well in school, pins her
hopes on getting married. In another, the
characters celebrate Chinese New Year with
the dragon dance. The cultural flavour and
nuances are what make this collection so
compelling. A small history lesson at the
end of the book helps put the stories into
context.
— Alexis Kienlen
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The Palm Leaf & Other Stories
is a vibrant montage of life in the Chinese
community in Calcutta.
Li’s
stories are simple but poignant, using the
clarity of her language to display the
tragic beauty of life. From tales of
arranged marriages to searching for suitable
jobs, these narratives take on lives of
their own, allowing
characters to breathe within the page.
The most striking element of
Li’s
writing is her ability to synthesize
delicate, rich imagery with the dirt of
reality. This writing technique is essential
in effectively representing Indian life,
because it is that very contradiction that
defines the Indian experience.
In
“Rally at the Ochterlony Monument”,
Li
masterfully describes the scene after a
monsoon,
“Two buses stood silent and submerged to the
bumpers, their exhaust pipes clogged with
mud and slime. Two girls in white blouses,
navy ties and starched navy skirts sat on a
rickshaw.”
The Palm Leaf & Other
Stories
candidly explores
the challenges the Chinese minority faces
in a place where the majority is ethnically
Indian.
The most powerful example of this experience
is
“Last Dragon Dance in Chinatown”
in which
Chinese Indians were victimized by Indian
authorities
as a result of Chairman Mao’s Communist
agenda and the autonomy of Tibet. The
story is told from the perspective of a
child,
heightening the sensitivity of the subject,
“One day, I found a copy of the People’s
Monthly under a chair in the courtyard. Mom
told me to throw it away, for we might get
into trouble with the police. But I hid the
magazine under my bed.”
Although
Li
captures the atmosphere of Calcutta with
innate accuracy, some of her characters
seemed to lack the specificity of regional
dialect and mannerisms of speech. However,
this observation certainly does not take
away from the thrust of the stories, as they
are still powerful.
Li
is able to tell a story that is amusing,
lighthearted and satirical and then follow
with a story that is pathetic, political and
heartbreaking. Her stories encompass a wide
spectrum of historical events, family
politics and simple childhood memories.
The Palm Leaf Fan &
Other Stories
is a collection brimming with sorrow,
laughter and an air of grace.
—
Sheniz Janmohamed
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Kwai-Yun
Li’s parents (of Hakka Chinese descent)
emigrated to a small alley in Calcutta
called Chattawalla Gali. These collected
short stories (and the short ones are truly
concise, six to eight pages), reflect on the
marginalized Chinese community that Kwai-Yun
Li grew up in, without a trace of
over-sentimentality or learned helplessness.
Li has now settled in Canada, and these
stories reveal her early years in India.
The Hakka (“guest people”) Chinese in
Calcutta have been immigrating to Kolkata
from Southern China since the 1920s. They
developed enterprises that the Indians in
Kolkata shunned. “The Chinese went into
businesses which the Hindus found polluting:
leather-tanning, hairdressing, shoe-making,
carpentry, and restaurant-keeping.”
Eventually Chinese immigrants to India,
(whether Hakka, or Cantonese from Guangzhou,
Fukkianese from the coastal area, or
Toi-sanese from the fertile Sai-yup
lowlands) became prosperous by the time
India gained independence from the British
in 1947. By the 21st century however,
conflicts between India and China, and
India-Pakistan conflicts pushed out Chinese
businesses. “… the Chinese returned to China
or emigrated to Taiwan, Hong Kong, North
America, Australia and Europe.”
Political conflicts, as we are witnessing
all over the world, take a huge toll on
vulnerable communities. As Mao comes to
power in mainland China, we hear intense
responses for or against Chairman Mao or
General Chiang Kai Shek, who led Chinese
populations to Taiwan.
The short story entitled “Last Dragon Dance
in Chinatown” addresses divisive conflicts.
The young narrator in the story fights with
her friend Raindrop, whose father admires
Chairman Mao. Raindrop exclaims, “Of course
he (Mao) is nice. He is nicer than Chiang
Kai Shek. Father said Chairman Mao is a good
man.”
“My brother says they are both wicked men,”
I said. “Lots and lots and lots of people
died because Mao and Chiang fought and
fought and fought.”
While children are trying to sort out these
realities for themselves, the Indian
government imprisons Maoist sympathizers, as
tensions between the Maoist regime and India
escalate.
The light-hearted, humorous stories are
equally evocative. In the delightful story
“Uncle Worry,” we meet Uncle Chien, who “…
worries when his eldest daughter, Pi Moi,
forgets to call him. He worries that she and
her husband, Mohamed, have had a falling
out. He worries when Pi Moi calls …” And we
are drawn more fully into extended family
life.
Kwai-Yun Li revisits Kolkata’s Chinatown
called Tangra, in the 1920s, a square mile
that sits on “reclaimed swamp land, the
whole area dotted with ponds, fish farms,
and garbage dumps, and … open sewers.” These
stories are a far cry from India, Inc., and
India’s continuous economic growth in the
21st century. Even as we grow, we could
learn from the past, and attempt to
integrate marginalized immigrants more fully
into mainstream Indian life.
—
Jyotsna Sanzgiri
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The Last Dragon
Dance
It was a most
interesting time.” Kwai Yun Li’s eyes go into soft
focus, her thoughts rewind by a good five decades.
The 58-year-old, now
settled in Canada , grew up in the Chinese-Indian
community in Calcutta. And back in the city of her
birth months before the India launch of her book
The Palm Leaf Fan and Other Stories, Li
reminisces about her childhood. Many of these
memories have gone into the book.
The 50s and 60s saw a
great turmoil in Chinatown, especially around 1962.
“The Sino-Indian incident” is how Li can bring
herself to describe the war between the two nations.
“Fear was in the air…fear of being deported or put
into Deoli.”
Deoli, in Rajasthan,
was where a British detention camp for Second World
War Japanese prisoners of war had been reopened in
1961 “to lodge Chinese-Indians”. “We heard Chinese
people were being picked up along the borders and
even children with Chinese names from boarding
schools.” The rumours were not wholly unfounded.
“Some friends in Shillong were put in Deoli and kept
there till 1968.”
Li, then a
12-year-old, remembers how her mother stitched money
into seams of their dresses. “We went to bed like
that. Packets were also kept ready with tea, rice,
blankets… though I wonder how I would have carried
all that at that age.”
Li points to how the
Hindi films of the time demonised the Chinese. She
understands the root of the psychology. “Most people
of the time had seen the Great Calcutta Killings of
1946, remember? So the fear was of neighbours
turning against you.”
But it was not the
war that gave the first push to the Chinese out of
Calcutta. The first batch of the Chinese left in the
1950s, after Mao Zedong got the better of Chiang
Kai-Shek in the battle for China . “Mao’s supporters
left. The Chinese government had even sent a boat
here for them.”
But it was not solely
happenings in China that decided fates here. “A law
was passed that only those among us born in or after
1950 would get Indian citizenship. Of my 10
siblings, only I was eligible. The rest were
stateless aliens.”
This is the setting
of her story The Last Dragon Dance in Chinatown.
“That would also be the name of the Penguin edition
in India.” The stories, she says, were mostly
products of the writing courses she undertook at the
University of Toronto since 1996. “As an accountant
I had a pen in hand anyway. I like doing new
things.” She got a grant for emerging writers from
the Canada Art Council.
But a return to
Calcutta for the research bore mixed results. “The
Chinese are still reluctant to talk about those
times. But imagine naming the road with the US
embassy Ho Chi Minh Sarani! I must put that in my
next book,” she says, giggling.
The structure that
holds centrestage in her memory, the old market in
Chinatown, was gone long before she left. “You
remember that?” she asks her cousin John Lee, who
had dropped by. “There was a wrought iron gate, one
side of which was sagging from the hinges. My mother
sold beansprouts there. We had a rough time when the
market was demolished to make a road. Now, I hear
they are planning a new market there. Where’s the
space!”
Her next project is
linked to Calcutta too. “I want to focus on the
major incidents — the Howrah bridge bombings in
1942, the Calcutta killings in 1946, then the 1970s
when I left for Canada. Part II would be on Canada.
The third part would be on today’s Calcutta — the
cauldron of communities that still exists in those
lanes,” the jolly lady rattles off. “But I have so
much catching up to do!”
— Sudeshna Banerjee
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Silhouette:
WRITING HOME
Kwai-yun Li, the author
of a much-feted novel about Kolkata’s Chinese
community, grew up in the city before settling
in Canada. She tells Sayantan Dasgupta how
stories come out of her own experiences
KWAI-YUN Li, author of The Palm Leaf Fan,
a much-feted collection of short stories based
on the lives of people of Chinese origin settled
in Kolkata, arrived in the city as a child when
her Hakka parents moved from Moi-yen in China.
Growing up in Chhattawalla Gully, she later
later married and settled in Canada. The Palm
Leaf Fan is remarkable for her lucid prose and
her sensitivity in depicting the lives of the
Chinese, a largely marginalised group, in
Kolkata. The volume also carries a very short
“history” of Kolkata’s Chinese community. What
follows are excepts from an interview:
Is there an autobiographical element in your
stories — most of them are set in Kolkata and
focus on people of Chinese origin in the city?
Is this your way of trying to reclaim your past?
Not really “reclaim”; I look at it as more of an
attempt to tell “my story” and to share it with
people who might be interested. The stories do
come out of my own experiences, but writing is a
creative exercise and it invariably transforms
lived experience into something more than a mere
record of events.
You grew up in Kolkata in the 1960s but moved to
Canada in 1972. How has your move to Canada
informed your writing? Has the distance made a
difference?
Canada is a “new” country in many ways. It
practices a policy of multi-culturalism and is
open to nurturing difference. I had Italians,
Syrians, Taiwanese-origin Canadian-Chinese,
Indians and Pakistanis for my classmates there.
My experience has been quite positive in Canada
— the Canadian realities have encouraged me to
look back and that has been crucial for my
writing. Of course, it has not always been like
that and there have been times in history when
the Canadian government’s policies to outsiders
have been less than impeccable, but that is
another story.
The family is a very important institution in
your stories. And you make extensive use of the
child as a protagonist.
Yes, I suppose part of the reason for that could
be that my own family is so scattered. Three of
my sisters, who were born in Kolkata, are now in
China, and my brothers now live in different
cities. You only realise how much you miss each
other on the rare occasions when you get
together. And many of the stories are remembered
and recreated from a time when I was very young
— perhaps that explains the use of the child as
a protagonist.
You have written about the marginalisation of
the Chinese population of Kolkata and have said
that the numbers have declined steadily from
around 30,000 to 5,000. What is it like being
Chinese in Kolkata and where does the Chinese
community go from here?
The population was around 5,000 when I wrote the
book; it must have come down even further by
now. One thing we must remember, though, is that
a lot of the migration of Kolkata’s people of
Chinese origin is driven by economic
motivations. People are moving out of Kolkata
not because they are being driven out but
because they are finding better opportunities
elsewhere.
How have Kolkata’s people of Chinese origin —
the people you write about — responded to your
work? To the kind of family conflicts you depict
in The Buddha is All-Seeing, for instance?
The response has been quite positive, in fact.
Uncle Worry, for instance, is based on a
real-life person and I was very apologetic and
tried to explain to his daughter that while it
was a takeoff on his character, it was
exaggerated, embroidered and amplified to
fulfill the demands of creativity. It was the
daughter who stopped me as said, “No, that is
precisely what he was like; you’ve got it bang
on!”
Are you satisfied with the way the Indian
government has treated this community?
Well, there are a lot of people who feel the
community was treated badly in the past. Things
were difficult during the Sino-Indian war. Some
of the older people feel the government owes the
community an apology for the way it was treated
earlier. But I have been away too long to
comment about the present situation. There has,
however, been a rather unfortunate stereotyping
of the Chinese people in popular media — as
prostitutes and criminals, for instance. I wish
it had not been so.
What are you working on next?
I’m working simultaneously on a novel and a
collection of short stories. The short story
collection will have three sections — the first
one is to have stories based in Kolkata, the
second will focus on my Canadian experience, and
the third section will revisit Kolkata and look
at life in Tangra. In fact, I am in Kolkata now
to research some of the historical contexts for
my future work — the Great Calcutta Killings of
1946 and the 1942 Japanese bombing of Kolkata,
among others.
(The
interviewer is Coordinator, Centre for
Translation of Indian Literatures, and Lecturer,
Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur
University, Kolkata.)
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On March 3, 2007
I had the pleasure of interviewing
Kwai-yun Li, author of The Palm
Leaf Fan & Other Stories,
published by Tsar Books. The
interview, after a reading from her
recently released collection of
short stories, took place at
Chapters bookstore at
Woodside Centre on Highway 7 in
Markham.
Kwai-yun Li grew up in the 1950’s
and 60’s in the Chinese community of
Calcutta, India and the stories are
steeped in the customs of that
community but also in the sights,
sounds and atmosphere of that
fascinating city.
Ms.
Li emigrated to Canada in 1972 and
has, only in the last few years,
begun to explore, through her
stories, the society in which she
grew up. The stories deal with the
situation of a religious, cultural
and racial minority within a larger
society which was itself a complex
one. There were also practices,
within the Chinese community itself,
that often set the fictional
narrator off against the generation
of her elders or against the customs
of her society.
The stories also
depict the divisions that existed
within the community between
supporters of the China of Mao
Tse-tung and those who supported the
Nationalist cause of Chiang
Kai-shek.
Painful historic episodes are also
evoked, such as the border war
between India and China in 1962
which resulted in the deportation of
some Chinese from India or,
hauntingly similar to the internment
of Japanese Canadians here in our
own country during World War II, the
removal of many Calcutta Chinese to
an internment camp in the Rajasthan
area of India and the subsequent
loss of their property upon their
release.
Ultimately, however, the brush
strokes are those of someone who
sees the human, and the comic,
richness of the place and time of
her youth.
Kwai-yun Li read “The Fish Pond”, a
favourite from this collection, and
then engaged the audience in a
fascinating discussion about
identity, writing, favourite
authors, and the history of the
Chinese of the Hakka dialect that
she belongs to, and of this group’s
emigration to many parts of the
world.
After
the reading, I sat down with the
author for a personal interview.
Here are the highlights of that
conversation.
GuidingStar.ca:
This
book is about growing up as a member
of a small community inside a larger
one. But you also tell it from the
point of view of someone who now
lives in Canada, and has for a
number of years.
Kwai-yun Li:
Definitely.
Actually, I have
lived longer in Canada than anywhere
else so, yes, in a way it is ... At
the time that I was writing, I was
just writing stories. But I guess
everything in the book is about
trying to identify what it was like
to be Chinese in Calcutta. Then
again, you see, my Canadianness is
in there somewhere too because I am
looking at these people from the
perspective of a Canadian.
GuidingStar.ca:
You
are also writing as a person who has
reached a certain age and you are
looking back on a much younger
period of your life. Do you feel
that you see some of those events
differently now than you did at that
time?
Kwai-yun Li:
Yes,
most definitely. Yes, I do. You
know, for example, I just
interviewed somebody. I was trying
to get information for my next book,
about the concentration camp. And
this woman looked at me---she is in
her forties, from Calcutta---and she
said ‘I’ve got a lot of stories to
tell you but I can’t because I’ve
still got my sisters living in
Calcutta, the secret police is going
to get them’. I mean, this sort of
thing, because I am so Canadianized,
I have to do a double take, thinking
‘what do you mean, they are going to
get you?’ So, although I am
free to write about it, ‘this
happened, the police arrested
people, the army took the people
away’, yet, even now, some of the
Chinese will not talk about it.
They say ‘we’ve still got family
there’. And then, of course, I went
back and I worry about that too
because I’ve got three brothers
living in India, so will it affect
them? ... I don’t think it should
affect them.
GuidingStar.ca:
When I
was reading the stories, I felt that
you identified with the first person
narrator, with that character,
although it’s not exactly
autobiographical. It seemed that
there were places in the story where
she is rebelling a little bit
against the restrictions of the
customs and the culture in which she
lived. For example, she questioned
the arranged marriages, or someone
having to marry someone they didn’t
really want to marry. In one of the
stories, she says someone is too
young to marry. When you were
growing up in that culture did you
ever feel that you were a little bit
in rebellion against it?
Kwai-yun Li:
Actually, I used to be rebelling
against a lot of things. But yeah,
at that time, it seemed so silly.
(The episode of marrying too young)
happened to one person but I didn’t
know her that well. I only knew her
as someone’s cousin’s friend’s
friend. But then, I look at my
brother, he was so happily married,
and that was an arranged marriage!
I was adopted
when I was a week old and my
adoptive mother also adopted a girl
for her son whom she adopted in
China, who was still in China.
GuidingStar.ca:
You yourself were adopted?
Kwai-yun Li:
My
biological parents had nine
children. I was the youngest. My
mother wasn’t in good health and my
sister who was two years older than
me had TB. She died when she was
about seven years old and I was four
or five. So, I was adopted. My
adoptive parents had not had any
children so first she adopted a
boy---I keep saying she
because she seemed like such a
strong person---I should have said
they adopted a son in China.
Then they left the son with an
uncle, and left for India. In India
she adopted a girl to be the wife of
this son who was in China. And then
they adopted me. And after me she
adopted a boy to remember a son who
had died stillborn, or in infancy,
her own son. She did not want that
son to be forgotten so she adopted
this boy, who was a year younger
than me, to be a grandson. He
called me Auntie. So that was kind
of interesting.
GuidingStar.ca:
I hope you don’t mind talking about
this, the fact that you were
adopted.
Kwai-yun Li:
It’s a very common thing. We got
adopted all over the place ... for
example, the fact that my biological
parents adopted a girl to be the
wife of their eldest son.
GuidingStar.ca:
Were
you in touch with your biological
family a lot?
Kwai-yun Li:
Oh yes, I met them at least once a
week. Oh, I was a total brat. When
I went there, I resented me being
somewhere else and so, I was pretty
bad. I would grab my sister’s toys,
and she was sick at that time, and
then I would insist that I take the
seat of one of my brothers. I was a
total, total brat. They ran every
time they saw me coming.
GuidingStar.ca:
This was a resentment of the fact
that they had given you up to
someone else, that they couldn’t
raise you?
Kwai-yun Li:
Because what happened at that time
was that my adoptive father died
when I was one year old. And then,
because of the patriarchal society,
my adoptive family became very, very
poor. Sometimes we didn’t have
money to buy food. So, I had to
actually work when I was about five
years old, to carry water, to wash
dishes, to wash clothes because we
all had to chip in. So, when I went
to my natural parents once a week to
have dinner with my mother, when I
saw them (my natural siblings), they
were playing, they were chasing
monkeys, chasing dragon flies. So,
I kind of resented that too.
I was so much younger, so they
should be working, why should I
be working. I am the
baby.
GuidingStar.ca:
When you were growing up, you went
to a Chinese language school?
Kwai-yun Li:
Yes.
GuidingStar.ca:
Did you have any feeling at that
time that you would write stories,
that you would be a writer?
Kwai-yun Li:
No, actually, all I aspired to be
was an airline stewardess. A
wonderful thing! It was probably
tied in to the fact that I wanted to
leave, to go somewhere, to leave
India. It was a hard life, very
hard.
GuidingStar.ca:
Despite the difficulties of life,
you seem like a very ebullient kind
of person. Do you feel that your
childhood, growing up, was a happy
one? Or was it a difficult and sad
time?
Kwai-yun Li:
Actually, it was a happy childhood.
I know we worked hard but then, so
did my neighbours, the kids, my
friends next door, my friend across
the hallway. We all had to work
really hard. The lower or middle
class Chinese tended to live in one
area. I still found time to play.
I think my favourite thing was to
sneak up on a rooster and pluck the
tail feathers. That was my
favourite thing. And I had my
favourite egg laying hen. I would
feel ‘that is my hen’. I
looked after her and gave her extra
food. We had fun.
GuidingStar.ca:
On the question of identities, you
mention that you are a partly of
Chinese identity, partly of Indian
identity, partly of Canadian
identity. Is writing a way for you
to deal with these various aspects
of your identity?
Kwai-yun Li:
It probably is on a subconscious
level. Because when I first came to
Canada, I was more or less trying to
be as Canadian, as mainstream, as
possible. And now, a couple of
years back, I swung the other way.
So, yes I think it is a way of me
dealing with the question of who I
really am. I find that I thought I
was comfortable with it but I think
I am still working it out.
GuidingStar.ca:
How old were you when you came to
Canada?
Kwai-yun Li:
Just before my twenty-second
birthday.
GuidingStar.ca:
The bio on the back of your book
says that it was through an arranged
marriage that you came to Canada.
If it is not too personal to ask
this, did it work out?
Kwai-yun Li:
It didn’t work out and I was
actually in bad shape and had to go
and see a psychiatrist for a while.
But I met a lot of great people. I
was working in a place as an
administrative assistant. The sales
manager was a woman and I think she
was one of the first women in the
1970’s, a woman sales manager.
Everybody called her ‘bitch’. She
saw me crying into the filing
cabinet and she came up to me and
said ‘what happened?’. So when I
told her she said ‘you are
coming with me!’ She was so
nice. She took me to look for a
place to live. And, she said, ‘I’ve
got some clothes, and you haven’t
been paid yet, here is some money to
tide you over, and okay I’ve got bed
sheets’. She was a single mother
and she was just so nice and then,
of course, I kind of thought ‘bitch?
bitch must be a good word’. And
then, of course, later on I realized
that bitch shouldn’t be a word used
to describe somebody nice. But yes,
I did meet a lot of nice people,
very helpful and who didn’t want
anything from me. That is when I
wanted to be mainstream, very
mainstream.
GuidingStar.ca:
When
you were young, you were a little
bit in rebellion but you still did
accept to have an arranged
marriage. Was that because the
cultural pressures were so strong
that it is just the way it had to
be, that that was the only way to
get married?
Kwai-yun Li:
Basically, yes. I had one friend
who was in love, who wanted to marry
the boyfriend. She faced so many
obstacles. She was forced not to
see him for many years. Yes,
arranged marriages were the norm.
With most of my siblings, marriages
were arranged. Only one brother
actually met, I mean, chose, his
future wife. The first meeting
between my brother and his
prospective wife, I was there. My
sister was there. We were
chaperoning the couple. Arranged
marriage was a norm, you go with
it. And the other thing is, what
choice did you have? You could not
leave home. You don’t get a job,
and you just don’t leave home, not
as a female. It was very
patriarchal.
GuidingStar.ca:
So,
in a way, that aspect of the culture
that you grew up in really impacted
a great deal on how your future life
would go.
Kwai-yun Li:
Yes, it did. I came to Canada, in
1972 (under the circumstances that I
mentioned). But, two years later, I
met my husband here, in 1974. So,
actually, I did mainstream rather
fast.
GuidingStar.ca:
You
mentioned during the discussion that
you felt a little reluctance to talk
about some of the cultural aspects
of the community because some people
feel a little bit of embarrassment
about some of the customs that
existed at that time.
Kwai-yun Li:
Actually, I think it is more a
cultural thing. We feel that
practices such as wearing the prayer
beads is superstition whereas on a
bus I see people, Catholics, with
their rosaries, saying Hail Marys
and that is not superstition.
Whereas if I say “Na Mo Ao Ni Tho
Fu” (Hail to Amitabha Buddha) people
would say ‘you don’t do that
in public’ it’s superstition. It’s
just a question of society, what you
are brought up in, I guess.
GuidingStar.ca:
But are you meaning that people
today are embarrassed to have these
things talked about? After all, you
are talking about a society as it
was forty or fifty years ago.
Kwai-yun Li:
Well, just recently I was in a kind
of interview, talking to a cousin.
And I said, ‘have you seen the
documentary called Legends of Big
Fat Momma?’ That’s a documentary,
it actually aired on BBC, about the
Chinese community in Calcutta. I
said ‘have you seen that? did you
know Big Fat Momma?’. Because I
kind of vaguely remember her. And
he looked so embarrassed, and said
‘that’s not really her name, it’s
just a nickname, it doesn’t mean any
harm’. He started to justify it.
So, I think the embarrassment is
still there, a lot of it.
GuidingStar.ca:
Another aspect that you talked
about in the book was being a
cultural minority in India, facing
what was at times a kind of
prejudice on the part of the
majority population. You do make
reference to someone referring to
one of your characters as ‘dirty
Chinese’.
Kwai-yun Li:
And there is a rhyme that says that
they eat cockroaches. Oh yeah, but
that is done everywhere. I mean, we
talk about the ‘Newfies’.
GuidingStar.ca:
What was the relationship
between the Chinese and the Indian
population? I know there were these
episodes that you referred to, but
generally, did you get along well
with each other?
Kwai-yun Li:
Yes,
but remember that Hindu society was
very caste oriented, and the
Chinese, especially the poor
Chinese, you don’t know where to put
them, so they put them with the
Untouchables. So, you have to think
that, because it was a caste society
and we didn’t have a caste, so, you
had to be careful. The Brahmins
wouldn’t want to associate with you
because, well, you are dirty, you
don’t have a caste. It was a very
strict caste system. So, we
associated with Anglo-Indians, those
were the Indians for whom one of the
forefathers was English, probably a
soldier. They were Anglo-Indians
and they did not subscribe to the
caste system.
GuidingStar.ca:
But in one of the
stories, entitled “Babu”, the
relationship of the main character
with this young Hindu man was quite
touching. Babu is the one who lost
a leg and didn’t have good prospects
for marriage because of that, and he
drowned. But the girl, the main
character, prays to Ram, to the
Hindu god .....
Kwai-yun Li:
...
you look after him, or else! Yes,
it was to Kali, mainly, because it
was after life. Calcutta is named
after the goddess Kali, so therefore
Kali is very strong there. But you
pray to one of the gods. The
Chinese are very practical. I
visited my nephew’s restaurant, in
Diamond Harbour, a suburb of
Calcutta. He’s got Jesus, Krishna,
Buddha, all the gods, they are all
on the same altar. We’ve got to be
very careful, you don’t want to
leave anybody out. We cover our
bases.
GuidingStar.ca:
There
are also many Muslims in West
Bengal. In one of the stories you
say: ‘the chanting of the temple
blended with the call from the
mosque’.
Kwai-yun Li:
The
Chinese, because they worked in the
leather industries, they tended to
live near the Muslims. The Muslims
were the leather workers. In
Calcutta, there was a huge district,
just warehousing. The rawhides,
they were being salted, literally
with salt. When they threw it out
salt flies everywhere. So, when you
see them coming, when they are just
about to put them down on the truck,
you run, otherwise you will be
salty.
GuidingStar.ca:
The stories are specific, in a way,
but do you feel they have a
universal quality as well? I really
enjoyed them because I have visited
Calcutta and I lived a year in
India, but do you feel that people
who are not from these backgrounds
can still enjoy these stories?
Kwai-yun Li:
Oh
yes. I read the story The Fish Pond
on CBC’s First Person Singular. One
of my friends said ‘this is an
anglicized story’. Maybe that’s
true. I don’t know. But, I do find
that it seems to have appeal.
GuidingStar.ca:
You
mentioned some of your writing
projects for the future. What about
other stories?
Kwai-yun Lai:
Yes, I have a story that was first
published in “Kiss Beside The Monkey
Bars”. It was about what happened
to my mother. She thought, growing
beans sprouts is really hard work,
so maybe there’s money in bootleg
alcohol. So we make moonshine.
That was a really funny one because
you actually made it with firewood,
burning a huge pot of fermenting
stuff, with tubes running
everywhere, and it’s eighty percent
proof! You can set the alcohol on
fire. That was a very interesting
episode. In the story, my friend
and I watch to see if the police are
coming. We bribe the police,
saying, if you are coming to raid,
we will make sure you’ve got a
couple of bottles to get, but please
don’t come when we are in the middle
of making the batch. But sometimes
they do, even though you give them
chai money, tea money.
GuidingStar.ca:
And
... any stories set in Canada?
Kwai-yun Li:
I have quite a few stories set in
Canada. I’ve written one about a
girl who has just immigrated. She
is married. And then I (the
narrator) find out that the father
wants her to cook for the son, wash
clothes for the son, actually wait
on the son, do everything for him,
and also do housework. Otherwise,
according to her, he throws things
around, throws furniture around.
And I suspect that he beats her up
too. But the thing is, to her it’s
unthinkable that you say no to your
father. I found the conflict was
very interesting, so I wrote about
that.
GuidingStar.ca:
That is a story which has been
published, or is coming up ... ?
Kwai-yun Li:
Actually, it is sitting in my
archives. I am thinking of
submitting it somewhere. I wrote
quite a few about how cultures
clash.
GuidingStar.ca:
Why did you want to write these
stories now, at this time in your
life?
Kwai-yun Li:
I think because, in a way, I started
to see things differently. I am
beginning to notice a lot of
culturally interesting things that
are happening, and how the
interaction goes on between the
cultures.
And they are nice
stories. I enjoy writing and I get
to meet some really great people,
like here now. You just never know
what you will come across. And,
writing a book, you do run into
people with, not necessarily similar
interests, but when you talk to them
you gain something, something that
tells you about society, about what
you are looking for. And now I
think I am looking for insights into
how to be more thick skinned. I’ll
work on it.
GuidingStar.ca:
What do you do in your day job?
Kwai-yun Li:
I am an accountant. My day job is
just part-time accounting. I go to
different clients, do the
accounting, do their books, in the
sense of recording their
transactions, mainly for very small
companies.
GuidingStar.ca:
Is it a stressful job?
Kwai-yun Li:
Oh no, it’s fun.
I enjoy it a
lot. For example, the other day, I
went to a BMO shareholders meeting.
I was hoping it was going to be
fun. It was. Hilarious. Amongst
the banks, BMO didn’t do that badly,
they did really well. But among BMO
people, they felt they didn’t do
that well. And the way the
directors tried to cover up!. And
this one guy jumped up and said
‘this is unconscionable’ and started
yelling at the official, and he went
on and on. It was very
entertaining. So, I decided I’m
going to try somebody else. The
next day, it happens that Royal Bank
was having their annual general
meeting. They were the best
performers among the big five
banks. And, of course, it was
really more subdued. And the same
guy who yelled at BMO, jumping up
and down, was now ‘Mr. Chairman, may
I say?’ It was just so different.
It was hilarious. I can enjoy
things like this. And, of course, I
am going to write about this. I am
taking a course at U. of T. about
writing across language and culture
and this is going to be one of my
projects, probably I am going to
write about that.
And who knows, it might be a
story.
—
Grant
Weaver
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