Title: Four extracts from a novel

Author: Alison Wong

In: Sport 23: Spring 1999

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, November 1999

Part of: Sport

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Sport 23: Spring 1999

Wong Joe-Yee

page 134

Wong Joe-Yee

Melon Hill

There are no hills in Melon Hill, only the round tombs of generations lying stretched to the east, their faces looking out over the water. Over the river that winds through a thousand villages on its way from the Pearl, past ten thousand villages on its way to the sea. There are no melons in Melon Hill, only long leaves of rice that ruffle fields green in spring and autumn, and lush groves of lychees, yielding their fruit in summer.

This is our village, famous throughout all of Kwangtung. They say the lychees of Melon Hill are the best in China. Just break the crisp red shell and inside the membrane is dry—a translucent skin filled with green-white flesh, juicy and sweet, fragrant of flowers and full of meat, and at its heart the smallest brown stone, smooth as jade flicked by the tongue. This is the story we tell, the story we have told for generations.

I still remember the fragrance of the flowers, the small cream heads among the dark green leaves. In springtime you can smell them everywhere, and in summer when the fruit is ripening on the branches, the gow-pay-dahn come—the ‘dog fart bullets’—red insects like cockroaches, with their brown spots and their stinking beating wings. I used to sit in the trees eating the smooth white fruit, and they would be there also, sucking out the juice and biting small boys. My mother would scold me for the pain—bunn-dahn, saw-gwah, ‘you stupid egg, dumb melon’, she would say—as she spread knobs of ointment as long as her uncut thumb nails on the great red swellings.

They say the ‘dog farts’ like the taste of men who have been away—the sojourners whose blood is sweet and foreign. But I have never been back.

These are the things I remember: the lychee trees, the gow-pay-dahn, the grassy smell of rice when it is ready to harvest.

I do not remember my wife, only her smooth white skin and tender page 135 hands. The tiny silk slippers, embroidered with flowers, that she wore each night in bed.

My wife writes about my son—my Number Two Son—who was born after my return here. The resemblance is unmistakable. Look in the mirror, she says, and there you will see your son.

All I know is the letters, the envelopes coming back in my own handwriting, self-addressed, so that she cannot mistake this strange language: Wong Joe-Yee, 100 Adelaide-road, Wellington, New Zealand. And inside her beautiful grass script (or sometimes his). Respectful Husband, The roof is leaking, please send 20 man … The river has flooded again and the house has collapsed—should we rebuild with mud bricks or will you send money for fired ones which will not dissolve in water … Cousin So-and-so has died and there are expenses.

Now it is his writing that comes—a sheet of paper so thin, I hold it to the light, almost read the black ink from the other side.

Excellent Father,

I am writing to tell you that Mother died of fever on the fourth day of the fourth month at two in the afternoon. She was sick for three days. I have arranged for her burial in the family plot on the eighth, as this is a favourable day according to the almanac. All the money will be used up to pay the monks and pall-bearers, and to buy the coffin, the bowls and chopsticks, the beef and fish and vegetables.

Your foolish son,

Wong Chung-Lai

1908, the fourth month, the fifth day.

Every three months I have sent 5 pounds home. I have educated my son and repaid our debt. Now I have saved 129 pounds—100 pounds for the poll-tax, 22 pounds for the ship (steerage class), 7 pounds towards settlement expenses. Enough to send for my son.

It has been seventeen years—and she has been buried already three weeks.

page 136

There are many hundreds of lychee trees in Melon Hill, they cover the land across the river. They say the lychees are junn hou sihk, the very best in China. Yes, there are hundreds of trees, but there is only one—half withered, half alive—that bears the gorgeous fruit, the fruit that is given to officials.