Hawaii

  “How is that possible?” the handsome young gambler inquired.

  “I left America with forty-one thousand dollars in gold because I discovered the answer,” Uncle Chun Fat gloated.

  “For example?” the student pressed.

  “Take the gold fields,” the Californian began. “For two years they watched me travel from camp to camp, observing everything. But they thought: ‘He’s a stupid Chinaman and he don’t see anything.’ And I will confess I did my best to look stupid. When I had learned as much as possible, I went into San Francisco … Mun Ki, when you do go to America, be sure to go to San Francisco. What a marvelous city! So much happening!”

  “Where did the clever part come, Uncle,” the young man interrupted.

  Chun Fat liked the boy’s attention to detail, and continued: “In San Francisco I went to all the newcomers and told them, ‘I can tell you which land to buy,’ and they always said to one another, ‘These Chinese are very clever. If anybody knows where the good land is, they do.’ And I got rich.”

  “Stupid and clever,” the young man mused. “That’s difficult.”

  “Not necessarily,” his uncle corrected. “You see, the Americans want to believe, so you don’t have to work too hard. It’s difficult only when you want to convince the same man, on the same day or even at the same instant, that you are both stupid and clever. Like on the railroad gang.”

  “What happened there?” Mun Ki inquired.

  His uncle began to laugh heartily and said, “There was this big American boss. When you go to America, Mun Ki, never try to be the boss, not even if they ask you to, which they won’t, because you can always make more money by not being the boss. Well, anyway, if I wanted to run the restaurant for the gang, at my own prices, I had to get permission from this big American, and I simply could do nothing with him until on a certain day when he cried in desperation, ‘You stupid goddamned Chinaman!’ And then I knew things would pretty soon be going my way, because if you can get the boss to yell at you, ‘You stupid goddamned Chinaman,’ everything is going to be all right.”

  Uncle Chun Fat never finished this particular narrative because he was reminded that the household must rise next morning at cockcrow in order to pay proper respect to the dead; and as the village lay sleeping beside the river, with the ghosts of its ancestors ready to assume their positions for the day of celebration, an old watchman who had long performed this ceremony gathered his gong and beater and waited till the third hour of the night. Then, as the first cock crowed, the old man went out into the dark streets and began beating his gong.

  “Ching Ming!” he called to the living and the dead alike. Walking down the winding road that led to the ancestral hall, he continued to beat his gong, and he saw with pleasure lights coming on in the low houses; a young attendant hastened to light torches at the hall, and before the first shimmering darts of sunrise began to sweep in from the east, the Low Village was awake, and Mun Ki’s ineffective father took his position of superiority at the ancestral hall, but it was brash Uncle Chun Fat who hurried busily about, telling the Kees what he wanted them to do.

  Kee Mun Ki, from the brothel in Macao, left his home and walked solemnly to the hall, where a flight of nine scrubbed steps led to the pavilion in which the ancestral tablets were kept. Here he deposited his gifts and made obeisance to those from whom his family honor had descended. He then left the pavilion and joined the members of his family, standing at attention while his father prayed and while his uncle began a bombastic speech: “I am going to buy land on this side, and some more on this side, and what you have seen so far is really nothing. There will be a spacious hall, and where our tablets now stand, we will have not wood but the finest stone. The Kees will be known for their magnificence.” And then his crafty eyes fell upon the extensive family gathered before him and he sighed to himself: “All those poor idiots starving here year after year when they could be making their fortunes in America.” But he knew from experience that the Kees were not the kind of people who would venture forth to unknown lands, and he became lost in admiration of himself for having had the courage to do so.

  He was therefore in a receptive frame of mind when a surprising event occurred in the Golden Valley, one totally without precedent. It was on April 19, 1865, when the fields were beginning to recover from the flood, that a merchant from Canton appeared in the Low Village, leading an American. Normally, any stranger who wandered from the quays of Canton would have been executed, but this man was different, for as a scholar he had requested freedom to travel inland, and it had been granted, so that now he stood in the bright spring sunlight, looking with an appreciative eye upon the strange world thus uncovered to him.

  It took the Cantonese merchant about four seconds to recognize that in this village Uncle Chun Fat was the man to deal with, so he said directly, “The stranger has come all the way from the Fragrant Tree Country to hire people to work in the sugar fields.”

  Chun Fat stood enraptured, and his mind leaped back to that memorable day when his ship had stopped in Honolulu and he had been allowed to come on deck to see the great green hills behind the city. How marvelously beautiful those few hours had been, for storms had swept down from the heights and Chun Fat had watched the copious rain spread out like a blanket of benevolence over the rich land. “The Fragrant Tree Country!” he cried. “To go there would be like going to heaven itself.”

  Excited with a wild joy he ran into his house and reappeared with a sandalwood box which he had purchased in Canton for the preservation of his silks, and he passed it around his family, explaining: “Smell it! In the country of which he speaks the air is like this twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Is it better than America?” his nephew asked.

  Chun Fat hesitated. He had loved the wild cold mountains of California, and the lusty grandeur of San Francisco and the Mexican women with their songs, but he could not forget the Fragrant Tree Country. “It is a softer land,” he said.

  “Could a man make money there?” Mun Ki pressed.

  “It’s gentler,” his uncle replied, and Mun Ki’s mind was made up in that instant, for he thought: “If my uncle loves a land more for its beauty than for its money, it must be a wonderful land indeed.”

  Mun Ki was therefore the first to step forward and volunteer. “I’ll go to the Fragrant Tree Land,” he announced firmly, and when the American in the dark suit held out his hand, the Cantonese merchant shouted in Punti, “Take the hand, you idiot! Take it!”

  This infuriated Uncle Chun Fat, who snapped: “We do not require a Cantonese fool who has shoes like rags to tell us how to act. Stand back or I’ll break your head.” Then, to the American, he said, in English, “Me Chun Fat, long time California. My boy, he go.”

  The American again extended his hand graciously and said, “I am Dr. John Whipple. I would like to hire about three hundred men for the sugar fields.”

  Uncle Chun Fat looked at the slim, gray-haired American in the expensive suit and instinctively recognized him as a big boss. “How much you offer to pay that one?” he asked, indicating with contempt the Cantonese.

  “I’m afraid that’s none of your business,” Dr. Whipple replied. “But what did you have in mind?”

  Chun Fat did some fast calculating. In the Kee family alone there were more than one hundred and forty able-bodied men. “Boss, I get you all men two dollars each man.”

  Now John Whipple did his own calculating. The Cantonese merchant whom he had brought with him could speak English, and had helped in that regard, but he had no sense of how to enlist labor. It was pretty obvious that this wily fellow from California knew what was required. But two dollars a head? “I’ll give you one dollar and a half a head,” he proposed.

  Uncle Chun Fat studied this for some time, then replied slowly, “Who gonna argue with women? Who speak everything right?” He enumerated a long list of tasks he could be counted on to perform. “Two dollars,” he said firmly.

  “One-seventy-fiv
e,” Whipple countered.

  “Boss,” Uncle Chun Fat smiled sweetly, “I top man here. Unless I speak, they no go.”

  “Two dollars,” Dr. Whipple surrendered. Instantly Uncle Chun Fat thrust his hand out and grabbed Whipple’s, shouting to his people in Punti, “When you shake hands like this, by god, you believe what you say! I’m warning you, everyone of you!”

  He was appalled, however, by Dr. Whipple’s one stipulation: “Sir, I do not agree to this bargain unless half the men you send are Hakka.”

  Chun Fat looked at the stranger blankly. Finally, he repeated dully, “Hakka?”

  “Yes, you know. Hakka. Up there.”

  “How in the world did he know about the Hakka?” Chun Fat thought despairingly. “Did that foul Cantonese …” To Dr. Whipple he said, “Why you want Hakka? No good Hakka.”

  Dr. Whipple looked him sternly in the eye, and his forty years of trading for J & W fortified his judgment. “We have heard,” he said slowly, “that Hakka are fine workmen. We know that the Punti are clever, for we have many in Hawaii. But Hakka can work. Shall we go up to that village?”

  Uncle Chun Fat faced a desperate impasse. He could see as clearly as he could see his hand those lush valleys of the Fragrant Tree Land. Good heavens, a hard-working Chinese set loose there could make a million dollars if he were clever! And think of the advantage to the Low Village to have three hundred Kees working there and sending money back home regularly. Uncle Chun Fat could be sure of getting not less than fifteen cents out of every incoming dollar. It would be a calamity, a disaster worse than a flood, for the Kees to miss such an opportunity. But this stern, straight man had mentioned the Hakka …

  “Dr. Whipple,” Uncle Chun Fat began cautiously, “maybe Hakka work well but too much fight.”

  “I will go to the village alone,” Dr. Whipple said sternly.

  “How you talk with Hakka?” Chun Fat asked slyly.

  Dr. Whipple smiled superiorly at the wily negotiator and said simply, “My friend from Canton will do the translating.”

  “But he no speak Hakka,” Uncle Chun Fat said evenly, smiling back at his visitor.

  With no evidence of frustration Whipple asked, “Do you speak Hakka?”

  “Only one man speak Hakka. My boy Kee Mun Ki. In army he learn few words.”

  “I suppose you want two dollars for each Hakka, too?” Whipple suggested hesitantly.

  “Yes, because speak Hakka very difficult.”

  “Let’s go,” Whipple said with a resigned shrug of his shoulders, and then from the manner in which Chun Fat hesitated he realized with amazement that no one from the Low Village had ever climbed to the High Village. “You’ve never been up there?” he asked.

  “Hakka up there,” Chun Fat shuddered.

  When Dr. Whipple saw how difficult it was proving to be to reach Hakka country, he was momentarily inclined to forget the matter and was about to surrender and allow Chun Fat to supply only Punti, but then his scientific interest asserted itself and he reflected: “I came here to initiate an experiment to see who would best satisfy our labor needs on the plantations, Punti or Hakka, and I’m not going to be bluffed out of that study now.” So he said firmly, “If you can’t lead the way, I will.” And for all his sixty-six years he was as spry as the Chinese, and after a sturdy climb the travelers came at last to the gateway of the walled village, and as they entered and saw the frugal U-shaped homes and the brooding, worm-eaten pole in the central square, on which perched the skull of Char the rebel, Whipple looked about him as if he had come upon familiar terrain and thought: “The climb was worth it. This feels like a New England village. I’m home again, in China.” The feeling was intensified when strong, sullen and suspicious Hakka began cautiously gathering about him, and he could see in their conservative faces portraits in yellow of his own ancestors. Motioning to Kee Mun Ki to interpret, he said, “I have come to take one hundred and fifty of you to the sugar fields of the Fragrant Tree Country.” There was much subdued discussion of this, heightened by Uncle Chun Fat, who officiously passed among the Hakka his sandalwood box, with the assurance: “Where you’re going smells like this.”

  In the end one hundred and thirty Hakka were conscripted for the Whipple plantations, with promises of twenty more to be gathered from other mountain villages, and as the deal was being formalized with much cautious nodding, Whipple happened to notice that these upland women did not bind their feet, and he pointed to one woman and asked Uncle Chun Fat, “Why are their feet normal?” And the Californian replied, “They Hakka. Not got good sense.” And Whipple asked, “Would women be allowed to come to the Fragrant Tree Country?” And Chun Fat replied, “Maybe Hakka women. Not proper Punti women.” At the moment Whipple said no more about it, but he thought to himself: “Some day we’ll need many Chinese women in Hawaii. Be a good idea to bring these Hakka in. They look strong and intelligent.”

  WHEN DR. WHIPPLE and his Cantonese guide had returned to Hong Kong, there to wait in Whipple’s ship for the arrival of the three hundred plantation hands, Uncle Chun Fat engaged in a flurry of action. He assembled his extensive family in the open area before the newly painted ancestral hall, and on its steps he had an imposing chair placed, in which he sat, wearing his satin skullcap, expensive gown and brocaded shoes. To his right, but a little behind him, sat his legal wife, a woman of fifty, while to his left and farther behind sat the two attractive unofficial wives to which he, as a wealthy man, was entitled. The meeting got right down to business, with Uncle Chun Fat informing his four hundred-odd relatives: “This is an opportunity that may never come again. Think of it!” and he leaned back so that the Kees could see him in his days of lassitude. “A young man goes to the Fragrant Tree Country, works a dozen years, sends his money home to the Low Village, where his wife is bringing up fine sons, and after a while he returns a very wealthy man and takes two or three young wives. He is happy. His wife is happy because she no longer has to work. The young wives are happy because they have a rich man. And,” he said dramatically, pointing casually behind him with his thumb, “he can build a respectable ancestral hall in honor of his distinguished family.”

  He allowed this recipe for earthly happiness to mature in the minds of his listeners and then said, “I am distressed that Dr. Whipple would not take his entire shipload from our village, for we could have supplied him, but even so our opportunity is historic. I am going to point to the strongest young men, and you are the ones who will start for Hong Kong … in three weeks.”

  Uncle Chun Fat rose, passed through the crowd, and arbitrarily nominated eighty-six Kees to volunteer for the journey. Some did not want to go, but they were powerless, for wasn’t Chun Fat the richest man in the world? Who could argue with such a man? When this job was done their Uncle Chun Fat asked, “We now have remaining sixty-four places for the Low Village. Who should fill them?” And there was public discussion of this important point until the gambler Kee Mun Ki, who was proving to be a rather clever young man, pointed out: “Why not take the men who are about to marry girls from our family?” But Uncle Chun Fat rejected this, for it would take money from the village, and made an even wiser proposal, which the family recognized at once as a sound course of action: “We will send everyone who owes us substantial sums of money. And their wages will come to us.” In this way the list was completed. Of the one hundred and fifty Punti who were sent, one hundred and ten did not want to go.

  Following the nominations, there was a moment of relaxation during which Uncle Chun Fat studied his vast family with care, and when the mood was right he coughed twice, and the crowd dutifully lapsed into silence to hear what the great man had to say. Chun Fat, looking thoughtfully over the heads of the gathering, said slowly, knowing that what he was about to propose would come as a surprise to his clan, “I want everyone who, for the honor of his family, has volunteered to go to the Fragrant Tree Country to get married before he leaves this village.”

  A blizzard of excitement struck the Kee family, a
nd many young men who had been forced by Uncle Chun Fat to accept exile to the sugar fields now indicated that they did not propose further to wreck their lives by hastily taking a wife. Grandly, aloofly, Uncle Chun Fat allowed the storm to rage, and when it had reached a climax, he coughed again, and somehow the quiet cough of a rich man is louder than the braying of six paupers, and the great family grew silent. “For example, in my brother’s family I have decided that his son Kee Mun Ki should marry at once, and I have consequently been in contact with …” And here he paused dramatically to allow the family to savor his next words, and no one listened with more apprehension than the young gambler Mun Ki, for no one had told him he was about to marry. “I have been consulting with the Kung family of the next village and they have agreed to betroth their daughter Summer Bird to my nephew. Negotiations are already under way to celebrate this marriage, and, Mun Ki, I must congratulate you.”

  The young gambler gave a silly grin, accompanied by the required show of joy, for he recognized that Uncle Chun Fat had done a good thing for him. The Kungs of the next village, though not so rich as the Kees of this, were nevertheless a distinguished family, the principal difference being that their leader had gone not to California but only to Canton and had returned not with more than forty thousand dollars but with six. Nevertheless, it was a match that all in the Low Village approved, even though no one had yet seen the intended bride.

  “So I insist that every young man marry,” Chun Fat concluded. “Families can start sending out messengers at once to find likely girls, and I think it would be proper if celebrations were combined, so as to save money.” Now that the marriages were agreed upon, and the families realized that they must actually set out to find wives for their departing sons, a new storm of agitation swept over the Kees, and again Uncle Chun Fat waited grandly in his satin skullcap until it had pretty well run its course. Then, with the grandeur of the ancestral hall looming behind him as if to fortify his edicts, he coughed quietly and gave the young men certain assurances. “You young travelers, like Mun Ki, must not think that because you are required to marry here in the Low Village that you may not also take wives in the new land. Oh no, indeed! There is only one reason why you must get married here, and establish your home here, with your legal wife waiting patiently for your return. If you do these things, then no matter where you go, you will always think of this village as your permanent home. You will yearn for the day when, like me, you stride up these sacred steps,” and sweeping his expensive gown about him, he marched into the ancestral hall, from which he cried with real passion, “and you will bow humbly before the tablets of your ancestors. For your home is here.” Gravely he bowed before the memorials of the ancients whose energies had built this village, and in deeply moving syllables he said, “When the white men abused me in California, I remembered this pavilion with my family tablets, and I gained strength to endure their abuse. When the snows were unbearable in Nevada, I remembered this ancestral hall, and they became endurable. Marry a girl from this valley, as I did thirty years ago. Leave her here with your home, and no matter where you go, you will come back.” Then, adding a more immediately practical note, he reminded them: “And you will always send money back to this village.”