The House of Life 1 by Vann Chow

Author:Vann Chow [Chow, Vann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-13T22:00:00+00:00

The Truth

Outside the imposing wooden doors that belonged to the Siu’s Mansion on Temple Street, there were growing levels of activities as the time of the banquet approached. The mansion of the physician’s family was surrounded by a great stone wall. Within the walls, in front of the mansion, was a sheltered roundabout under a huge red canopy. It was jammed with heavily adorned horse carriages, cycled rickshaws, pedicabs, classic black English cabs, shiny Mercedes Benz and limousines with tinted windows. They were queuing for their chances to drop off their anxious passengers, many of whom were in their best evening outfits and their bodies oozing with the most precious perfumes of the highest fashion they could acquire. There were handsome princes and beautiful princess, government officials, court members of earlier dynasties, diplomats from foreign countries, chairmen of banks, head of notorious gangs, powerful business men and their female companies. There were TV celebrities and talented opera singers but there were also men mixed in them with no particular talent yet inherited a wealthy death among these other men, too.

Outside the main gate of the Siu's estate, throngs of common ghosts that came on foot had been gathering. The first ghost nearest to the gate was an old woman who looked like she was about seventy-year-old, although who knew how old she really was? She had been sitting on her orange plastic stool for the past three or four Shishens, along with many who had experience to the banquet before. They all hoped to get a good seat where they can get plenty of food and in range of seeing Master Siu. Each one, despite destitute and without an official invitation, were in their best appearance. Men have dug up suits and gowns from their burial sites, burnt properties, shattered ruins of their collapsed wardrobes from previous lives or inside the coffin where their bodies were held and women have used the paper-money sent to them by their caring relatives still alive to have dresses and shoes tailored. Many women were comparing and admiring one another’s outfits. Some girls from the 20th century was telling girls from the 30s that they no longer need to wear mandarin dresses, yet another complained that their headmaster had insisted to use it as uniform instead of more stylish tartan miniskirts. Some foreign missionaries were comforting a crowd of peasants who were willing to listen to them preaching. A few women from ancient times who were wrapped in floating silk stood out distinctively because the tail of their sleeves alone measured longer than three yards. There were children among them too. Running and bumping into each other, playing with mud, playing with fingers, sucking fallen barks from trees, laughing or crying. A vast majority of unlucky ones had to come with what they had on at their moments of dead, some even did not have a single piece of rag on, yet they had combed their hair. Everyone wanted to look their best for the festival tonight.

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