DOWN AND OUT AGAIN [190 - 192]

Pag. 190

DOWN AND OUT AGAIN 

I told my father I was rich. I told him I’d worked so hard in the months that had gone by that I’d saved a bundle of cash. Enough to go back to Australia in style, so I could support him and my mother in their old age. 

He didn’t call me a liar. Pride was as important to him as it was to me. 

Before I left, I went to a jewelry shop nearby, an expensive place that I’d stared at from the outside in the past. The owner looked at me with suspicious eyes, but treated me politely once I flashed my roll of cash. Even loaded down as I was with the money Oh Chang had lent me, the prices were steep. I chose a Rolex watch for my father, which cost over HK$3,000, and a gem-studded ladies’ watch for my mother. 

After my purchases, I barely had enough to buy my ticket, pay back some debts—I didn’t expect ever to come back—and give a gift to the building manager. 

“It’s to pay you for watching my place,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t take the money otherwise. “Buy something for your granddaughter.” 

And then I said good-bye to him, to my apartment, and to the city of Hong Kong forever. 

My mother was very happy to see me and congratulated me on my success. The watch almost made her cry—it was the nicest thing she owned, and the first thing I’d ever given her. My father wasn’t as pleased with his gift. I know he was wondering where I’d gotten the money—knowing that I couldn’t have earned it in such a short time. 

“Son,” he said quietly. “You remember what I told you at the airport when we left?” 

I nodded. “Don’t worry, Dad,” I said. “It wasn’t like that.” I explained that my contract was for work on three films, which I’d been able to complete very quickly, so I’d gotten a bonus from the studio as compensation. “And then I decided that there are enough stuntmen in Hong Kong—I should be with my parents.” 

He glared at from under his bushy eyebrows. “Oh, you’ve suddenly turned into such a good son, eh?” he said. 

Pag.191

My cheeks turned a little red. “Listen, Dad, if you don’t want the watch, I’ll take it back.”

“No, it’s a very nice watch,” he said. “But I’m not so stupid that I don’t know what time it is, Kong-sang. Remember that.” 

He clapped me on the back and walked away, polishing the face of his new Rolex. 

For a while, life at the embassy was just as it had been the last time I’d come to Canberra. I had nothing to do. I still couldn’t speak much English. I sat around my room, and when I got bored, I went to the kitchen where my father worked and watched him cook. I guess I’d been an annoyance when I was a little kid, following my mom or dad around; now I was an embarrassment. 

After my father almost dropped a pile of dishes running into me as I leaned glumly against a counter, he set the dishes down and grabbed me by the arm. 

“Son,” he said, controlling himself. “I’m sixty years old. I can still cook, so I cook for a living. You’re twenty years old. Will you still be able to fight when you’re sixty?”

Then he hustled me out the swinging door. 

I got the picture. That day, I had my mother enroll me in a basic English class and began to do my best to learn some useful skills. 

The class was taught at the government school, and it was full of Arabs, Chinese, and Indians, people from all over the world who’d emigrated to Australia. The teacher was a tiny middle-aged woman who came up to my chin, and I was one of the shorter students. 

“Look, class, we have a new student,” she chirped, making me stand in front of my assembled schoolmates. They were all adults, and most of them were older than me. None of them looked as if they had any idea what she was saying. “Young man, what’s your name?” 

I understood that much, so I told her. “My name is Chan Kong-sang,” I said, in broken English. 

“I’m sorry, dear?” she said. 

“Kong-sang.” 

She blinked. “Hong Kong?” 

“Yes,” I said, thinking she was asking where I was from. 

“Your name is Hong Kong? How unusual.”

I shook my head. “No, my name is Kong-sang. I am from Hong Kong.” 

I’d exhausted my supply of English words. 

“Oh, okay,” she said. “Well, we’ll just call you Steven, then.” 

I shook my head again. If they were going to call me by an English name, it might as well be the one that the embassy staff used. “Paul,” I said. 

Pag. 192

“Pow?”

I pointed at myself. “I am Paul.” 

Finally understanding, she smiled, and introduced me to the class as her new student, Paul Chan. 

It was obvious that there wasn’t going to be a lot of learning going on in this class. 

I did work hard, or I tried to, anyway. But I couldn’t even get past the ABCs. Trying to listen to the teacher made my head ache, and the bright outside view from the window seemed to call out to me.

After so many years of physical activity, sitting in the classroom day after day was pure torture. I was wasting my time. 

“Dad, I’m quitting the class,” I told my father, after one particularly frustrating session. “School isn’t for me. If I don’t do something that lets me move, I’m going to explode.”

Any last dreams my father might have had of my becoming a scholar evaporated. The next day, he introduced me to a friend of his named Jack, a big, hearty Australian man with rough hands and a deep voice. 

“Jack is a construction worker,” my father told me. “He said there are jobs available at the site where he’s working. You won’t need to talk to anybody, and you can move around as much as you want.”

It didn’t sound like such a good deal to me—moving bricks around in the hot sun. But what choices did I have? I would rather have been beaten every day than go back to class. The next morning, Jack showed up to take me to work. 

“You look like a strong kid, hey, Kong-sang?” he said, grinning in the pale early light. “You can do a lot of work, hey?”

I nodded. I didn’t know what he was talking about anyway. Then we got to the construction site, already swarming with workers. 

“Hi, Jack!” shouted one, obviously a friend. “Who’s the Chinese kid?” 

Jack looked at me, and then looked back at his friend. It didn’t take much for him to realize that Kong-sang was not a name Australian construction workers would get an easy grip on. “Aw, hell, his name’s Jack, too,” he said.

“That’s cute, Jacko,” said another. “How we going to tell you two apart?” 

The workers broke out into laughter. 

“Simple,” he said. “I’m Big Jack, right? He’s Little Jack. Now that’s enough out of you lot, get back to work.”

Over the months, “Little Jack” became “Jackie.” I decided I liked the name, and began correcting the embassy staff whenever they called me “Paul.” 

And that’s how Jackie Chan was born.