THE YOUNG MASTER [3 a 6]

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THE YOUNG MASTER

I was born on April 7, 1954, the only son of Charles and Lee-lee Chan. They named me Chan Kong-sang, which means “Born in Hong Kong” Chan.

I guess my parents weren’t very original when it came to names. Or maybe they just wanted to celebrate their relief at making it to Hong Kong, as survivors of a breathless escape from the turmoil of the mainland. Hong Kong was the promised land, a place that offered safety and prosperity. A place where new lives could begin.

By the Chinese calendar, 1954 was the Year of the Horse.

According to superstition, the horse is a sign of energy, ambition, and success. It’s a good year to be born in if you’re a boy—not such a good one if you’re a girl, because tradition says that a female Horse will have trouble finding a proper husband—and my parents were happy that I came into the world under such a fortunate sign. Of course, my arrival in the Year of the Horse was hardly a coincidence; actually, it took an awful lot of stubbornness on my part to pull it off! Most babies are born nine months after being conceived. I, on the other hand, stuck around an extra three months, until my mother was forced to go to a surgeon to bring me into the world, kicking and screaming, by caesarean section.

Maybe it was my rebellious streak that made me refuse to join my parents on time, or maybe it was a premonition of what my future would hold. After all, while comfortably inside my mother, I had privacy, sleep, and all the food I could ever ask for, without having to fight or work or suffer. In fact, I can honestly say that those three extra months were the easiest time of my life.

Nothing like that waited for me in the world outside. Hong Kong in the ‘50s was a hard and restless place, and my family’s position there was at the very bottom of the social ladder, among the thousands of destitute migrants who’d fled to the British colony after the mainland’s Communist Revolution. Still, as poor as we were, we felt lucky to have survived China’s civil war, and especially grateful that my parents had good jobs in the strange new society of the island. Many of our fellow refugees had arrived in Hong Kong with nothing but the clothes on their back and the memories of what they’d left behind. They lived in shacks in the island’s

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crowded ghettos, making paper flowers and cheap trinkets to survive, or turning to less socially accepted—and more dangerous—pursuits.

It was a bad time to be poor. (But then again, when is it ever a good time to be poor?) As the crowds of new immigrants grew, the colony’s swelling population divided itself into two groups: the determined and the desperate. On the one hand, there were those who embraced the city’s unspoken philosophy: Work hard and you’ll survive, do well, maybe even get rich. But meanwhile, in the lower parts of the city, the lives of many of our fellow newcomers were filled with hunger, crime, and fear.

We belonged to the first group—the lucky ones. Soon after coming to the island, my father and mother had found employment with the French ambassador to Hong Kong, a kind gentleman with a warm and caring family. Dad became the ambassador’s cook and handyman; my mother was the housekeeper. And so, when I was born, I found myself not on the tough streets of lower Hong Kong, but in a mansion on the exclusive slopes of Victoria Peak—the home of the wealthy, the famous, the powerful. And me.

I don’t recall the house itself too well.

It was big, I remember, and very grand. In the front rooms, well-dressed Westerners (and sometimes Chinese) would chat and take tea or listen music; upstairs, the ambassador’s family had their quarters, huge rooms with high ceilings and windows that opened out onto the lights of the city below. But I didn’t see these parts of the house very often. This was a different world from the one in which my family lived.

Our place was the rear of the mansion, divided from the air and light of the front by a small door.

If you were to open that door and pass through, you’d find yourself in a long, narrow hall that ran along the length of the house—the highway of our world. It was usually dark in that corridor, except when meals were being served, so it might be easier to find your way around by smell and sound than by sight.

Here’s a quick tour of our world.

To your right, the first door off the corridor: the noise of chopping and sizzling, an occasional curse; the aroma of roasting meat and vegetables simmering in fragrant peanut oil. That would be the kitchen, where my father spent his mornings and afternoons preparing food for the ambassador’s family. Father down the corridor: the soft slush-slush of trickling water, and the sweet melody of a hummed folk song—the laundry room, where my mother washed mountains of fluffy white linens and the family’s fine, beautiful clothing. An then: the smell of incense and wool and dried-grass matting, the gentle noise of an infant’s breathing. This would be our family’s bedroom, where my mother and father and I all slept together.

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Our room was tiny, and it was not what you would probably consider comfortable. There were no windows, and the walls and floor were clean, but bare. The furniture had all been made by my father’s hands, and there wasn’t much of it; a bunk bed, some benches, and a storage trunk. My parents slept together in the top bunk of the bed, and I slept in the bottom one. From the top bunk, you could reach up and touch the ceiling; four long steps would take you from wall to wall.

This was all the home I knew for the first six years of my life, and I was happy there, despite the cramped quarters and the simple furnishings. Actually, I didn’t know at the time just how good I had it.

The next place I’d call home would make our small room seem like a palace.

But I haven’t finished the four. Follow the corridor to its end, and you’d hear the buzz of flies, and your nose would wrinkle at the pungent odors of mold and aging food. This alcove at the end of the hall would be the rubbish room, where the household garbage was stored during the day, to be disposed of at night.

By the time I was a small child, I’d get to know this room very well. More on why later.

I mentioned that I’d started giving trouble to my parents even before I was born. Of all the crazy stunts I’ve done, in my opinion, nothing compares to my mom’s achievement—surviving nearly an entire year of pregnancy, then giving birth to a healthy baby who weighed twelve pounds at delivery. Both my parents were shocked when I finally arrived. My father said he’d never seen such a big baby in his life—he and Mom nicknamed me Pao-pao, which is Chinese for “cannonball.” And I’m sure my mother was glad that she didn’t have to give birth to me naturally….

There was a price to pay for my safe and sound arrival, of course. The bill for my mother’s surgery came to HK$500 (about U.S.$26), and my parents’ savings didn’t come  close to covering that cost. But the lady doctor who performed the surgery must have been impressed by me too, because afterward she approached my nervous father with a deal. She had no kid of her own, she explained to him, and she knew he and my mother had no money. If my father would allow her to “adopt” me, she would be willing to pay for the costs of the surgery and my mother’s hospital stay, and even give my parents and additional adoption fee of HK$1,500.

I’m not angry about the fact that my father thought long and hard about the offer, Two thousand Hong Kong dollars was a lot of money back then, and poor children were regularly given to wealthier friends and relatives to bring up in those days. Maybe it would have even been for the best, because the lady doctor would have brought me up in style.

But I was my parents’ only son. I was a symbol of their new start in

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Hong Kong. I was born under a lucky sign, and I was big and healthy. My father went home and talked about the doctor’s offer with some of his friends, who all said the same thing; there was something special about me, the twelve-month, twelve-pound baby, and if I grew up to be a great man, my father would always regret giving me up. Dad’s friends lent him the money to pay the hospital debt, and (after thanking the doctor for her skillful surgery and generous offer), he took my mother and me home, to the big house on the Peak.