Lives of the Family Read Online Free

school there with a two-year program in Chinese medicine. He had wanted to study to be a doctor of Western medicine, but his English was woefully inadequate. The family enjoyed life in the colony. They lived in a spacious apartment in a large and airy colonial house set in two acres of luxuriant flowering trees and plants.A servant came every day to prepare meals for the household, do the housework and walk Fay-oi to and from her primary school. As Min-hon’s course wound down, however, war reached the south of China. It brought floods of refugees into Macau (the colony maintained its neutrality throughout the war) as families fled their cities and villages ahead of the Japanese. In a place already renowned for its casino tycoons and gangsters, lawlessness erupted. Food shortages worsened. Frustrated businessmen shuttered their shops and houses to return to the comparative safety of their rural villages. Min-hon had to curtail his studies. The war had already cut off his father’s remittances from abroad; if they stayed much longer in Macau, they’d starve. Back home in Golden Creek, at least they had their own small garden.
    The household divided up, travelling separately. As with every train and river boat leaving Macau, the boat that Fay-oi and her mother took was jammed to overflowing with people and their possessions. The head boatman brooked no exceptions to his rule: “Everybody must sit; nobody can lie down!” His crew pushed on through the night. The constant retching of passengers sick from the fumes of the coughing motor as it struggled against the current kept sleep at bay. Suddenly, a boatload of men, their rifles silhouetted in the moonlight, halted their passage. They forced the loaded boat ashore and ordered everyone off: “Leave everything behind!”
    Fay-oi held tightly onto her mother’s arm. She wondered if they were about to be shot.
    On shore, two of the gang worked their way through the terrified crowd, speaking to small groups in hushed voices. As soon as the boat’s contents were unloaded, they said, and aslong as no one made any trouble, the passengers would be allowed to return to the vessel and go on their way. Fay-oi buried her head in her mother’s chest. She couldn’t bear the thought of the bandits helping themselves to her wardrobe of school dresses. However, much greater treasure had been left behind on the boat: her mother’s store of jade and gold. Fortuitously, Yee-hing had sewn some cash and jewellery into the lining of the padded jacket she wore.
    The family arrived in Golden Creek to find the houses swollen with returning children and relatives. Many had at one time left for the towns and cities to work or open businesses, and now, to escape the rain of firebombs and fighting in the streets, had come back. With so many extra mouths to feed, food was in short supply. Thievery was a constant threat, mostly from desperate residents of nearby villages. The residents of Golden Creek set up a neighbourhood watch at each end of every lane. Min-hon contributed sixteen guns from his father’s collection, normally used for bird-hunting. “Who are you? What’s your name?” demanded those on watch if they spied an unfamiliar face. If they didn’t recognize the name, they fired a shot.
    Min-hon and his wife decided that, to relieve the pressure on the family’s limited resources, they would head for Canton, where they would take a chance on finding teaching jobs. When Yee-hing’s cash and jewellery ran out, she sold her wedding gifts, bolts of wool and silk. Eventually, goods counted for nothing; food could only be bought with cash. When the soil no longer turned up sweet potatoes, people scrounged for edible berries, then roots of wild plants. Starvation claimed Golden Creek’s first victims. An old lady and two teenaged brothers, their bodies skeletal, lay dead where they had fallenoutside their home. People who’d come from the city told of worse, of piles of dead bodies. Of