Journey Across the Four Seas: A Chinese Woman's Search for Home by Veronica Li

Author:Veronica Li [Li, Veronica]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Homa and Sekey Books
Published: 2015-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

Flora’s and Hok-Ching’s wedding in Chungking, 1946

TAPE SIX

GOING HOME

1

Baba was right to caution against traveling too soon. Fighting with remnant enemy troops was still going on in some places. In others where the Japanese had withdrawn, bandits took advantage of the power vacuum to seize what they could. Reports circulated of groups of travelers being stripped of everything down to the clothes on their backs. Men and women were left cowering like pigs in their pink skins. Anxious as I was to see my family again, I had my new family to think of, including the unborn baby inside me.

I waited six months to leave Chungking. By the time I took to the road in March, the country’s reconstruction was well underway. Trains, buses, and ferries were all back on schedule. Compared with the coal trucks that brought me into the province four years earlier, public transportation was a luxury.

Sam-Koo, Hok-Ching, and I arrived safely in Canton. Baba had secured for his son the post of dean of physical education at Chungshan University, which was located on the outskirts of Canton. My personal preference was to return to Hong Kong, but I also knew that my husband’s career came first. Chungshan University had an excellent reputation, and the position of dean was the highest Hok-Ching could hope to attain at this point. Although the monthly pay wasn’t worth a sack of rice, I was confident that Baba wouldn’t allow us to starve.

We found an apartment in a quiet suburb close to the university. The neighborhood was beautifully landscaped with trees and flowering shrubs. Our ground-floor flat faced the street, giving us a nice view of the garden-like environment. The two-bedroom apartment couldn’t be considered big by any standard, but it was more space than I’d ever had in my life. To ask for more in a home, especially a first home, would be greedy. I felt as complete as a woman could be, as a wife, daughter, and mother-to-be.

There was only one flaw in this perfect home. Hok-Ching the husband turned out to be just the opposite of Hok-Ching the fiancé. Our courtship had lasted half a year, not a long time, but as I’d already met the family even before I met him, I felt I knew enough about his background to be confident of his character. His father was the celebrated Wang Yun-Wu, and his two mothers seemed quite normal. After all, wool comes from the sheep’s back—Hok-Ching couldn’t be too different from the people he grew out of. But since I woke up from our wedding bed, he’d dealt me one surprise after another.

I’d thought my fiancé was a gentle person, but the husband I got was prone to abusive explosions. When we were dating, he was kind to everyone regardless of rank or age. No sooner had we walked out of the church than he began to show his other side. If there were a speck of dirt in his bowl, if his handkerchief weren’t ironed to his liking, he would summon the responsible servant and berate her.

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