1st May 2013

Here I am again, though missing my Monday deadline.  Trouble is, there is so much to do, being a writer. I am now doing the final edit of my next book A Chinese Odysey -The Ming Admiral.
Also in the pipeling is the sequel to the first book Memories in the Bone which will be called A Chinese Diaspora - Shifting Winds, Drifting Sands. At the moment this has the working title of A Life Divided, which a friend says is too boring. So there we are. And recording Memories in the Bone for audio books, for those who have less than perfect eyesight or who love listening instead of reading -- esp. on long car journeys.
so I apologise.
Next Tuesday, May 7th, will see me at the Takapun Library, a really nice one on the North Shore of Auckland, launching Memories in the Bone. So I am hoping there will be a decent turnout of folks to help me celebrate.
But before that The Auckland Symphony Orchestra of which I am a playing member, is performing To Russia with Love - a programme of Russian melodies that takes in the title of the programme as well as Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, etc. A very rousing performance is guaranteed and we play to full houses several times a year, including the lovely Town Hall in centre city.

Anyhow, I hope you've all been enjoying my 'stories for the soul' and will continue with the sad story of A Maid I Knew.

Lau Kiew went out every evening taking the cash earned that day from the tin box under the shop counter. One day, when the youngest was six months old, he bought an old blue Austin and announced to his startled family that he had quit his job at the Municipal Office and was now operating his own taxi service. “There’s more money that way, and it’s my own car to use anytime,” he told them, showing off the Austin.
Lau Kiew’s new venture made even less money. Frustrated, he took his rage out on his family. Grandma kept out of his way whenever he was home. She spent such times in the vegetable plot or took to her bed immediately after dinner with her prayer beads. The frightened children pretended sleep at the far end of the communal platform bed on which Lau Kiew, Linlai and the baby slept closer to the door. Bedbugs crept out between the slats at night to feast on them. Each morning they woke with tiny bloody sores all over their bodies and faces. But nobody complained. Bedbugs were part of their nocturnal slumbers as much as the mosquitoes and the heat.
                                                                      *
       Three months into his taxi business, Lau Kiew announced he was putting Lan out to service. “She must contribute towards the family,” he said, “she’s thirteen now.”
       “But what can she do? She’s still a child,” Linlai protested before a thought occurred to her. “You are not going to sell her, are you? You are not going to sell her into prostitution? Not our daughter, not our first born!”  She began wailing, clutching her last born to her bosom. The children in between started wailing too while Grandma and Lan looked at each other, petrified into silence.
       “Shut up, all of you! I will not sell her but I will hire her out to a rich household as a servant. That way, she’s worth more to me.”
                                                                     *
And that was how Lan came into my family. I remember well the day Papa drove home with her. I had run out to meet him and stopped short when he opened the back door to let this thin, deeply tanned, sobbing girl out. She wore a worn cotton dress of faded flowers and clutched a brown paper bag containing her belongings. Long greasy plaits hung down her back and she wore old flip flop rubber sandals on her calloused dusty feet. I paused to study this rude apparition. She saw me watching her and her snivelling stopped. We stared at each other awhile, me with the haughtiest look I could muster on my eight-year old face under which she withered.
“Say hello to Lan, Lengleng,” my father said, “she will be your maid from now on.”
I ran back into the house, yelling for Mother. “I don’t want that dirty girl for a maid!”
My mother chuckled and patted my head. “Don’t be silly, she’ll be fine after a bath and fresh clothes. Anyway, looking after you is just one of her duties. She can be trained.”
Mother was right. Kai Cheh, the housekeeper who had been with us since I could remember, soon had Lan scrubbed up. The next time I saw Lan, she was smelling of soap, floundering in a pair of Kai Cheh’s black cotton trousers and white blouse, fastened all the way down the front with small looped cotton toggles.
Mother smiled, amused. “I shall have some clothes altered to fit you very soon”.
Lan’s first duty was to serve dinner. Seated between my parents, I watched as she struggled with the bowls, chopsticks, and platters of food. It was obvious she had never seen fine chinaware before, or good quality chopsticks. She was clumsy and handled them as if they would break in her hands. The number of dishes awed her, I could see. Meanwhile, Kai Cheh’s yell from the kitchen -- “and don’t forget the water glasses. They’re in the second drawer of the sideboard,”-- rendered her into a state of acute nervousness.
Mother said, “Don’t worry, Lan, take your time.”
I watched but said not a word. I knew the difference between this maid and myself.

To be continued

22.04.2013

I am guilty of the most heinous act -- that of forgetting my daughter's birthday. There she is in Portland, Oregon and here I am in New Zealand, an ocean apart. I only hope she was not lonely on that day. But in truth, I have a thing about birthdays. I'm no good at remembering them, nor giving parties for them. I have analysed long and hard and the whys and have come to the conclusion that it was because nothing was made of mine nor my siblings while we were growing up. We had birthdays that saw not a present, nor a party nor an outing to celebrate the day we came into the world. So I, (cannot speak of my siblings), have not learnt to treat birthdays as special. So I shall phone this precious person in Portland asap.
     Meantime, after the drought come the storms. Airports around the country are filled with disgruntled travellers as flights are cancelled. Auckland, funny enough, is spared the worst. Most fortuitous, but we are damp all the same.

And to now continue A Maid I Knew. All the serialised stories on this blog will eventually go into a book of short stories on e book sites.
 

That was when Grandma knew that Lau Kiew was a habitual liar. His house, a small tin shed not much better than their own was outside of town, on the other side of Penang Hill, too far for them to visit on the infrequent buses of those days.
“I’m not permitted to use the car for private purposes, except on New Year’s Day. So be grateful, old ones, for this privilege.” He told them with a haughty air when they asked.
So they got to see their only daughter and the subsequent grandchildren one day a year, even though they lived only twelve miles apart. Linlai and the children were dropped off and picked up at the end of the day whilst  Lau Kiew cruised around the island with his friends.
Linlai did not have to work hard at the market, but instead she was made to work equally hard in the sundry shop he created out of the front room of their small shack which was on the side of a busy road. It stood twenty feet back, fronted by a dirt yard on which he parked the official car when not in use. He had taken the wall off the front of the house and used tin sidings to close it. He stocked shelves with the same bits and bobs he had brought to her parents’ house when he was wooing them and with the fruit and vegetables he bought every other day at the fresh market. Her job was to tend the shop. Soon, in an effort to maximise profits, he made her grow vegetables in the small bit of dirt out at the back. She had exchanged the faecal stink of her parents’ vegetable farm for the continuing roar, vroom vroom and clink-clank of passing traffic and the unrelenting layers of dust that settled on everything around her. Then the babies came…
                                                                         *
Lau Kiew went out every evening taking the cash earned that day from the tin box under the shop counter. One day, when the youngest was six months old, he bought an old blue Austin and announced to his startled family that he had quit his job at the Municipal Office and was now operating his own taxi service. “There’s more money that way, and it’s my own car to use anytime,” he told them, showing off the Austin.
Lau Kiew’s new venture made even less money. Frustrated, he took his rage out on his family. Grandma kept out of his way whenever he was home. She spent such times in the vegetable plot or took to her bed immediately after dinner with her prayer beads. The frightened children pretended sleep at the far end of the communal platform bed on which Lau Kiew, Linlai and the baby slept closer to the door. Bedbugs crept out between the slats at night to feast on them. Each morning they woke with tiny bloody sores all over their bodies and faces. But nobody complained. Bedbugs were part of their nocturnal slumbers as much as the mosquitoes and the heat.
                                                                           *
       Three months into his taxi business, Lau Kiew announced he was putting Lan out to service. “She must contribute towards the family,” he said, “she’s thirteen now.”
       “But what can she do? She’s still a child,” Linlai protested before a thought occurred to her. “You are not going to sell her, are you? You are not going to sell her into prostitution? Not our daughter, not our first born!”  She began wailing, clutching her last born to her bosom. The children in between started wailing too while Grandma and Lan looked at each other, petrified into silence.
       “Shut up, all of you! I will not sell her but I will hire her out to a rich household as a servant. That way, she’s worth more to me.”

Tuesday 16th April 2013

Well, Autumn's here now, for sure. Misty mornings to promise a fine day after saying goodnight to one that was or grey skies and rain! The neighbours across the road have a great seasonal indicator -- silver birch trees. How I love them. Tall and elegant, graceful and winsome.
Tonight, I am planning what to say for the FACE TV interview that I shall be doing tomorrow morning. It will be edited and screened on Thursday 18th. A 30 minuter trimmed down to 10. And if you haven't heard of it, FACE TV is a good arts channel with programmes on books, etc. That's why I shall be there. To talk about MEMORIES IN THE BONE  and why I wrote it and how it feels to be Chinese in NZ. But then I've always been Chinese everywhere else - UK.US, France, Australia, Japan, etc, etc. One just gets used to be the person on the outside looking in.

Anyway, let's get on with the next part of A MAID I KNEW.

   Here I must explain, in case of name confusion: Lao Yeh is the father of Linlai and Lau Kew is the future husband. The pronunciation is the same. In Chinese LAO is given like an honorary to someone older or old.

                                                            A Maid I Knew

One day, five years into their new life, a young man came calling. She and Lao Yeh were both tilling a row of bok choy when they heard his yell. “Ah Pak! Tai Tai!” he shouted in greeting as he made his way towards them. Even as he approached, she could see his nose wrinkling in disgust.
He stood a short distance away on the narrow walk-ledge, his hands on his hips as he introduced himself. “My name is Lau Kiew,” he announced, “I am a driver.”
They looked at each other, then at him, waiting for more to come. “I met your daughter Linlai at the market. Congratulations for having such a lovely daughter,” he beamed. Then he waited.
“What is that to you?” Lao Yeh shouted back as he squinted in the afternoon sun; his brown skin crinkling up around his eyes.
“I am in search of a wife,” Lau Kiew announced loudly.
“So?” Lao Yeh said, being deliberately obtuse. He did not like the arrogant young man – with his hands on his hips, his long, black pants flapping loose in the afternoon breeze and his khaki shirt hanging out, looking like he had never done a day’s honest labour in his life.
“Well, I want to marry your daughter,” Lau Kiew said in a very confident tone.
The old couple stared at him under the shade of their coolie hats, then at each other. Grandma muttered under her breath, shaking her head.
“She’s only fifteen. Too young for marriage,” Lao Yeh shouted back and they both resumed tilling the row.
Undeterred, Lau Kiew said, “And I am twenty six. I have a skill, I can drive a car. That is my job. I drive for officials in the municipality. I am a good provider. Fifteen is not too young, Ah Pak!”
But they continued to ignore him and he flounced away. That night after Linlai had cooked the dinner, Lao Yeh said, “This man, this Lau Kiew whom you met at the market, came to see us this afternoon. He said he wants to marry you?” At seeing his daughter’s surprise, he said, “You knew nothing about it?”
She blushed and looked down at her bowl. “He spoke to me, Pa, when he bought some garlic chives. I didn’t think any more about it.”
“Yet you told him where we live?” Grandma asked, incredulous at her young daughter’s naiveté. The girl nodded miserably. “Do you like him? Do you want to marry him?”
Linlai chewed her lower lip slowly. “He promised he would buy me a house in town and that I would not need to work so hard at the market ever again. He said he would provide me with a good life,” she mumbled.
“He talks too big, and too loud. We know nothing about him. No, not that one,” Grandma said vehemently. “I don’t buy that one.”
But Lau Kiew was persistent. He brought gifts each time he came a-calling. Soon their tiny shack was filled with bright coloured bits and bobs, oranges by fives, cans of pork from China and toothbrushes, toothpaste and bath soap.  He promised they would not be losing their daughter, but gaining a good son; a good provider with a skill not too many had in those days; that of driving a car. He promised many things; the best of which was that he would use the municipal car to drive her for visits often. Finally, finally, the old couple relented.

11th April 2013

Hello Good People,

I must apologise, I am late with this week's blog. I think I must be getting old, as I've missed two appointments this week. But will try to be regular as of next Monday. Must need oatbran.

Now what's new? You might ask. Well, this coming Wednesday, I shall be trotting along to have a conversation with Lindsey Dawson, editor superiore of many magazines, including NEXT. She, it was, who gave me a 4-page write up complete with gorgeous photos in high gloss in that magazine  when I was a woman in business. I'd never felt so pampered in my life! What with a make-up artist, brought in designer clothes and shoes, etc. And of course, never since.

Anyhow dear Lindsey will be chatting to me about my first book Memories in the Bone on her show on FACE TV on Channel 89 at 7pm. There is a repeat, I believe. We will cover some aspects of the book as well as what it means to be a Chinese in New Zealand. I have some funnies to tell on that one in contrast to the serious issues covered by Memories in the Bone.

Anyway, now I shall go on and let you have the next part of A MAID I KNEW. This short story of 5000 words is based on a maid I had when I was a kid living in Malaysia. So do enjoy it.

                                                                         *

         Grandma and Lao Yeh had, twenty years previously, emigrated from China with their only surviving child, ten year-old Linlai and had settled in Batu Fringhi, in the hinterland from the coast in Penang. Now, as she gulped down each mouthful of food, rendered tasteless by her son-in-law, Lau Kiew’s incomprehensible hatred, she would remember the three sons she had lost in the civil war between the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai Shek and the Communists led by Mao Tze Tung.  How her precious boys had whooped and jumped up and down when fighting broke out! Against hers and Lao Yeh’s wishes, they had gone off to Guangzhou, the capital of their southern province, to enlist in the Communist militia and all had died very soon after. Peasant boys, trained only to use the hoe, were easily killed when faced with guns and swords.
In their bereavement, they had sold their tiny farm and had borrowed enough money from a distant cousin who had emigrated fifteen years earlier, for their passage to British Malaya, a safe haven, and to buy a small plot of land on which they had started a vegetable garden. Oh, how hard they had worked, conserving the pails of faeces from their outhouse to water down as fertiliser for their vegetables each morning.  The only aroma they knew, that they lived with from morning to night to the next morning, was the smell of ordure. They ate with it, slept with it – knowing nothing else – not back in China; and now not in their new land.
Although they sold all that they grew, living only on the cut-offs of the vegetable stems and discarded, insect-ravaged outer leaves, they were never able to save sufficient money to repay the cousin and his name remained on the title deed. Now as she fought back the tears through Lau Kiew’s rants, she would re-live their early times over and over.  That was the only way she had of remembering her gentle husband and to retain her sanity in the most hateful marital environment she had ever encountered in her limited life.
                                                                        *
More next week. Hope this story stirred you in your heart.

Blessings,

Meemee

1st April 2013

Hi there.
I wonder how many people play pranks on the 1st of April these days? In my time, pranks were a part of my day..
I can remember this; running to my dad who was not yet up saying in a frantic voice Daddy, there's a lepper at the gate! He's covered in sores. Those were the days when it was probable ; that long ago in Singapore.  He jumped up immediately, dashed to the door and ... well you can imagine who was the most popular kid in the house that day...NOT!
Or another time when I pretended to faint in class, which brought the teacher running. It was such a good act, she tried desperately to revive me, ordering the other kids to give me air, not to crowd in etc, etc, that it wasn't till my second wink that she realised the prank. Got a wee slap on the arm for that.
But I don't hear of any these days and I guess I'm too long in the tooth now to be bothered.

Well today, I am going to present the first part of  A MAID I KNEW. This is set in Malaysia in the 1960's where I was born. It's a 5000 word short story, and I hope you enjoy this first part and will keep reading.


                                                            A Maid I knew

            Lao Yeh died when his first grandchild, Lan, was eight years old. He had seen her eight times in her young life and had not had the opportunity to bond with her. His grandchildren were distant, unknown and his daughter had become a stranger -- unhappy, guilt ridden, regretful – fearful of her violent husband. Lao Yeh had seen the bruises all over her arms and face when they visited each New Year’s Day – sometimes still red-raw against skin of multi-coloured hues. Lao Yeh had died of hard work and a broken heart when he realised he had married his only surviving child to a liar and brute of a wife beater. But he had not thought of what he was committing his widow to -- perhaps he might have struggled harder to get by, to survive, for her sake. Within a week of his funeral, his cousin had come to collect his due. He was tired of waiting and wanted the farm sold to recoup his money. And Grandma had arrived at Linlai’s door, in her widow’s black pyjamas, holding a small cloth parcel tied up into a knot, which contained all her worldly goods -- and in shock at seeing her daughter’s ‘town’ house and the condition she and the children lived in.
                                                                              *
Lau Kiew vented his quick temper on Linlai as soon as he walked into their shop and saw Grandma squatting on the floor in the tiny kitchen, washing dishes in a tin basin under the tap low on the wall. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded with a resounding slap on her cheek.
“I didn’t know, oh heaven, please, I didn’t know Pa had passed away,” she sobbed, cringing away from the expectant second slap. Her eyes were already red; half-closed with weeping – her sorrow all the greater as he was already buried. She had not seen him since the last New Year visit eight months previously. Her mourning had weakened her, had upset the children and earned the sympathy of her few regular customers. But her husband’s only concern was an extra mouth to feed. He was furious that Grandma’s land had been retrieved by her husband’s cousin, that it had never belonged to them in the first place and now not his to sell.
“Where will she sleep?” he demanded.
At this point, Grandma, who was cowering in the doorway and had witnessed the cruelty on her daughter, volunteered in a meek voice, “I can put my pallet down by the back door.”
Lau Kiew looked at her with the expression of someone sighting a rodent and sniffed, “Well, you can make yourself useful – grow the vegetables and look after the kids. Earn your keep, old woman.” And he stormed out.
So she did. Soon the small patch of ground behind the shack grew even more varieties of vegetables, bringing more customers to the shop. She looked after the older children and cleaned their poor habitat. She and Linlai took turns cooking dinner, and at night, she would sweep out the entrance to the back door and unroll her slim kapok mattress to sleep, weeping for her husband and daughter and their bad joss in life. “Omnimotofo, omnimotofo,” she would whisper-chant as she rolled her prayer beads between her work-worn fingers till sleep overtook her.
                                                                               *
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