The Year of Finding Memory Read Online Free Page B

could not stop thinking about that long-ago journey in the propeller-driven plane that had taken my mother and me over the Pacific all the way from Hong Kong. I thought about the many times my father had crossed the ocean, how much my parents must have yearned for that place, both of them destined to die in a land that was never home. And for my mother, the exile was permanent, for once she left China, she never returned.

THREE

    A s our large group passed through Chinese immigration into Shenzhen, located on the southern border of Guangdong, my father’s home province, the smooth and efficient train ride from Hong Kong became a distant memory. We found ourselves in the middle of what appeared to be a huge shopping mall, and somewhere in this massive complex, we had to find the station for the bus to Kaiping City, also in Guangdong. My sister-in-law Jen had asked a former schoolmate who now lived in Hong Kong to accompany us to Kaiping. But even Schoolmate was confused by the signs, and so were all the members of our party who could read and write Chinese. We ended up in a garage full of buses being serviced, and Shing, who is asthmatic, started to cough from the fumes.
    Our party of thirteen and thirty-plus suitcases turned back and eventually went up and down one set of escalators at least three times. Simple decisions such as turning left or right became monumental and resulted in mass confusion,with some going in one direction and some going in another. Several times, we were almost run over by buses. My brothers and their wives had travelled very little since their arrival in Canada, leaving them ill equipped to negotiate new surroundings. In exasperation, Michael and I, to Jen’s horror, left the group to search for the ticket booth, although neither of us knew how to speak Cantonese or read Chinese. We came back to find everyone worried that we had got lost, but all were relieved and impressed when we announced that we had found the elusive station.
    The bus vibrated with loud voices, interrupted every so often by a cell phone ringing to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” “Jingle Bells,” “Frére Jacques” or “Für Elise.” Most of the conversation was in Cantonese, but occasionally I would detect my regional dialect. And suddenly, whether I wanted to understand or not, I would know what time one voice would be arriving home, or where another knew to buy cheap underwear.
    It took a long time to leave Shenzhen, a nightmare of random development, with mile after mile of shabby, concrete high rises, factories and highways. Grime coated the buildings, even the newer ones, and looking out the bus window, I saw construction sites, cranes and scaffolding everywhere. The smog blanketing the city was so thick that buildings only a short distance away soon became indistinct. Smoke from factory chimneys hung in the air, and plumes of black cloud tailed many of the vehicles on the road. There was little greenery, and the few trees we saw appeared stunted and scrawny.
    I had read about China’s rapid industrialization, and when I mentioned to a friend that I planned to visit my father’s birth village, she had greeted my enthusiasm with cynicism. I wouldn’t expect much if I were you. That village has probably been flattened and replaced with a factory. I had protested and said that our village was still standing; my friend shook her head, incredulous at my naïveté. But as I gazed out the window at this soul-numbing desolation, the unsettling, orange-coloured sun turning milky and incandescent behind the filthy smog, my spirits sank and I began to question if my friend had indeed been right.
    But gradually we left behind the terrible urban sprawl and entered the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong Province—an emerald landscape of low, rounded hills and wide, flat valleys covered with lush rice paddies and thick groves of sugar cane, bananas and bamboo. Bright, flowering hibiscus bushes grew along the side of the