英文小说：A Shadow in Surfers Paradise(46)天堂之影

洋八路

Chapter 46     1/2




Next day they went to the campus for registration; it had been raining, so after that they all stayed at home.

The following morning Bing woke up early at 6:30, and feeling very refreshed and also inspired by a lot of bird singing outside the window, he decided to go for a walk.

The others were still asleep. He opened the door, stole across the living room, and opened the front door quietly in case he disturbed Maria who slept in her temporary bed around the corner.  

He was immediately greeted by the soft rays of the morning sun. The cloudless sky was pale blue, lazily serene. The dog-tail grasses by the steps, now fully soaked in the sunlight, appeared very different from the day before. A new layer of mist seemed to cloud upon its delicacy; without the apparent wind, the tails were motionless, but if you looked closer, their very tips were indeed moving and quivering to the subtlest airflow.      

Descending the steps and crossing the lawn, he arrived at the neat sidewalk of the street and ambled on.  

So fresh was the air that a single deep breath didn’t seem enough for him; so he inhaled again, and again. The quietness and desolation of his first impression of this place were gone. The birds of various shapes and colours and cries filled the morning. They jumped up and down and across the branches, darted between the gaps in the trees, walked or danced smugly on the ground, and whirled and swooped as swiftly as butterflies. Under a giant tree, the sun, shattered by the leaves, were making fantastic dapples in the canopy; its dark trunks were darker, the white ones whiter. And, the shadows, cast by the trees and the electric poles and the lush shrubbery and the shining and glinting cars, were just a cool set of brush strokes.

The house roofs were glittering; the antennas, no longer ugly and lonely now with the kiss of the morning sun, were clothed with a colour of pink, as if fresh blood was circulating in their limbs.  

Several ravens, all black and ominous looking, perched on the leafless twigs of a dead tree. Strange, they did not cry. A row of pine trees, thin and tall and cone-shaped, stood solemnly, pointing skyward like swords. A palm tree, with its split leaves dripping and trickling and shuffling with watery light, appeared to be so content and peaceful. And there was another tree, of what name he didn’t know, whose leaves, part green, part red, part yellow, were constantly moving. Some of them worked so hard that they finally broke from the twigs, spinning and falling to the earth, slowly, and gloriously.

Then a few blocks away, he saw a young man, with a bang of a door closing, coming out of a house, and walking briskly in Bing’s direction. His ruddy, ‘Chinese’ face was eager and vigorous; striding past, his legs and arms looked so strong and powerful, as if muscles in them were being built up every second. Then two girls, again, of ‘Chinese face’, slid out from another house nearby; side by side they were trotting on the footpath. Their lustrous hair was floating with a tint of gold, and their breasts, animated by their quick steps, were jumping as if impatient to spill the milk.

‘Where are they going this early?’ Bing wondered. ‘No classes today, and even if there are, it is not as if they have to hasten for them.’

Without an answer to his query, he walked on. He had learnt before coming to Australia that the seasons here were different from China. Chinese summer ranges from April, May and June, while Australians from December, January and February. At this time, Australia was just in transit from summer to autumn. However, apart from some colourful trees, there was no hint yet for the autumn. The front lawns, the hedges, the leaves and flowers, were still fresh and bright under the glare of the Sun.           

Then, a sudden stray thought reached him that, those young hurrying Chinese, at this early hour, were most likely heading for work, to offset their tuition cost and other expenses, which would be outside their parents’ ability to pay from their small income in China. Considering his own situation, the tuition for his first term was paid by borrowed money. He had to earn by his own hands, in the new land, Australian money to pay back the debt, plus much more cost that would occur as his course progressed.

The moments of apprehension for his future began chilling his mind, which, only minutes earlier, was so enraptured by the blissful, luxurious air in the street. An urge of something in his disturbed heart drove him quickly back to the house.
Maria was leaning against the wall in the porch. With one hand on her waist, she was smoking a cigarette.

‘Hi, Wang Sir,’ she greeted him, ‘you got up early.’

‘Hehe, yes,’ he said shortly, fascinated with the smoke puffing out of her mouth. ‘Have the others got up yet?’

‘Yes, they have. They’re cooking noodles.’

‘Hehe, I should do the same,’ he said, as he opened the door and slipped in.

David sat at the table eating. ‘Where have you been? I didn’t know you were getting up.’

‘Just took a walk outside.’

Now Mei, who was also at the table waiting for her noodle to cool down, spoke gladly, ‘Anything interesting? Wang Teacher, have you found more ravens in the street?’

‘Yes, indeed, quite a few in a dead tree, but strange, they were not crowing at all.’

‘Haha, you sound like you like their voices.’

‘Well, just a type of bird,’ Bing said, pouring hot water into his noodle bowl. ‘I don’t mind hearing something different.’

‘So much bird noise in the morning,’ interposed Susan, ‘I was awoken by a loud twittering just outside the window.’

‘Today is a beautiful sunny day,’ he said. ‘What do we do today, any plan in mind?’

David replied: ‘Do we need to see some rental houses? We must find a new place if we want to move out after our two weeks here.’

‘Yes, we ought to settle first before we can think of anything else.’ Bing was actually thinking of finding a job as quickly as possible. ‘Let’s make some phone calls to see if there is chance of seeing some places today.’
After finishing his breakfast, Bing dialled three numbers to make appointments, but none of the numbers answered.

‘So, what do we do today?’ Bing said, disappointedly.

‘I just think why don’t we go to the city?’ David proposed, ‘we have two weeks to look for somewhere to live. Even if we can’t find a place in two weeks, we can always extend our stay here a bit longer.’

The suggestion immediately inspired four of them. Delighted with the idea of wandering around the city of Melbourne, Bing checked the map he had bought the other day, and found the city streets very easy to follow.

‘Look,’ he pointed to the map, as if in discovery, ‘the streets of the city are regular and straight, very much like being cut out by a ruler and a knife.’

The other three came over. ‘There is a river, what is called?’ David’s eyes were searching, ‘oh, here, the name, Yarra River.’

‘Yarra?’ asked Susan wonderingly, ‘Yarra, sounds familiar.’

Bing looked at her, grinning, ‘You might have confused yourself with the curse of Japanese soldiers, Bage Yarru?’

‘Haha, yes, yes, Yarru, Yarra, no wonder. Don’t they sound very similar?’ Bing noticed that this was the first time Susan had laughed. To think a small, emotional girl from Shanghai was exhibiting such mirth simply because of the name of a river.
‘Look, I’ve got a good way to visualise the city,’ David stood up, and bent over the map, ‘it is just like half a map of chess play. Here is the Yarra River, and all other crosses and verticals are just like the lines and rows in the chart of Chinese elephant-chess.’

Bing looked at the map again. Yes, indeed. Swanston St, Russell St, Exhibition and Spring Streets were the verticals; and Flinders, Collins, Burke, Lonsdale and La Trobe streets were the rows. ‘So Swanston is supposed to be the centre line of the city?’

‘Yes, there’s a bridge at the end of it, linking the south part of the city. But the south is not as structured as the north.’

‘What bridge is it?’ Bing asked. The idea of a bridge never failed to inspire his interest.

‘It says St Kilda Road,’ but David was not convinced, he searched further, ‘look, here, Prince Bridge.’

‘Such a romantic name. Okay, let’s go.’

‘How do we get there?’ asked Mei.

‘A bus? We’ll ask Maria.’

Maria told them to take the No.75 tram at the stop at Burwood Highway to Swanston & Flinders Street.   

It took them about an hour to arrive at their destination.

‘Look, that is the iconic Flinders Railway Station,’ Susan pointed at the building, as soon as they got off the tram.
The station, made of stone, looked rather firm and heavy. Its top was capped with a dome, with a thin needle pricking the tender flesh of sky. In the middle of its brow was an eye of a big clock, and below it, the entrance was like an arched, ghastly mouth, with a row of round clocks adorning its gums and teeth. Looking at its length, the body crouched like a massive caterpillar. For a moment, Bing was thinking of other iconic stony constructions such as the Great Wall, Tiananmen Rostrum, and the majestic buildings along the Shanghai Bund. But none of them seemed to have a foundation as solid as this.
Its interior was very different from its external facial expression. Shining, it was not like a historic building. However, over the train platforms, the old, golden feeling still prevailed. Victoria, at the very beginning, was a place for people to dig for gold. May that have been the reason the whole station was painted and lit with a colour of yellow?

David made a comment, in Chinese idiom, ‘Jin Bi Hui Huang - Golden shine and glorious magnificence.’

The group lingered there a little longer, before they went out. And looking around, the steeples of churches appeared in Bing’s eyes very prominent and autocratic under the blue sky. Like the Flinders Street Station, it was yellow and stony. Apparently, the colour of yellow and the form of the stone were the two main representatives of age and authority and history. But how about the purple or crimson adopted frequently by many Chinese temples and palaces? And, as he remembered, the coffins in his village, like the one for his grandpa he had seen as a child, were painted dark purplish. He wondered why the coffins were not painted yellow or red or another lighter colour that would definitely appear more hopeful and less intimidating. Then the image of a white coffin sneaked into his mind, scared him and forced him to stop his rampant reflection.  

Mei asked, ‘Where are we going now?’

‘We have not seen the Yarra River yet, it is just over there,’ Bing said.

‘Where is Chinatown?’ Susan looked around, evidently losing the picture in her mind of the chess chart.

‘It is just a little street off Swanston St,’ Bing paused to give a direction. ‘Just keep in mind this bridge and the central Swanston path. And, Swan is Tian’e, and Ston is just stone, if that is easier for you to remember.’

‘Thank you, Wang Teacher.’ She smiled, touching her glass, ‘this is like Nanjing Road to the Shanghai Bund.’

‘Haha, that is a fair comparison, in a way.’ Bing was amused. ‘If Nanjing Road was able to cut Shanghai in two halves.’

‘But, don’t you think the city here and in our country are very different?’

Bing looked at her curiously, ‘Well, continue your thinking.’

‘In Shanghai, every part of Shanghai is a part of the city, even the suburbs look just like the city, while here, “city” only refers to the central area, a small district, or the Chess-Chart as we identify. The suburb where we live, actually the whole Deakin University district is not regarded part of the city.’

‘I would think Melbourne is made of a small city and vast surrounding non-city suburbs,’ Bing said, then finding it rather an awkward statement, added, ‘but what is a city any way? Is there a universal definition of it?’

However, their dialogue was put on hold, for now on the bridge, the Yarra River attracted their attention.

‘Look, even the water looks very much like that of Shanghai Huangpu river,’ Susan exclaimed, ‘amazing, I thought the water here should be clear and blue, like the air and the sky, far less polluted than Shanghai.’

Bing didn’t answer her comment, because he found it difficult to estimate the quality of water due to the sparkle caused by the sunlight. Moving his head to look at it from an angle, he came to agree with her observation. ‘Yeah, I am with you,’ Bing agreed, though still fixing his eyes on the water as if trying to analyse it like a hydrologist. ‘But I don’t think the muddy water is a result of pollution. It is not black and smelly at all. Probably more like the Yellow River, bringing some earth and mud along its way.’

‘Well, whatever it is, one won’t like playing it with bare hands.’

‘You are talking of a luxury in any city in the world, I reckon.’ Bing raised his head to look at her with new interest, ‘playing in the water is only a reality in a village, in my village.’

‘Are you from a village? I thought you are from Chengdu.’

‘I am from a village in Mianyang district. The chief part of my childhood was indeed spent in the stream of spring.’

‘Did you? I only read about the sort of fun in the book,’ she said, ‘it is a shame that I don’t have a memory of ever playing the water in a stream or a river.’

‘You can play in Huangpu river, or Suzhou River, if you desire,’ Bing said good-humouredly.

‘Oh, no, no, not Suzhou River, that dirty black stench,’ she said aloud. ‘By the way, how do you know Suzhou river?’

‘I studied in Shangwai for four years.’  

‘Really?’ she was surprised, touching her glasses as if to see him clearer this time. ‘You didn’t tell us on the first day.’

‘Well, that was a long time ago,’ he evaded her comment, pointing a little further up the river, ‘Look, there’s another bridge over there, so beautiful, like the arch of a rainbow.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. Then turning to the left, she called at his attention, ‘have you noticed that?’

She was indicating a wired framework with a thin, high upright pointer like an antenna, or like a giant grasshopper with its hands and legs stretched extraordinarily in the way of a Chinese cook thinning a noodle to extremity.

‘I think it is a TV tower.’

‘No, it is Melbourne Arts Centre.’ She corrected him. ‘It is like a thinner version of the Shanghai Oriental Pearl Tower.’

‘Why, Susan, you seem to have good knowledge about this place.’

‘Well, I just read a bit when I applied for the university.’

‘As for the Oriental Peal Tower, I am not so sure. I’ve only seen it on TV,’ he said, ‘and for some reason, I found its design asymmetrical with its legs, which made it look somewhat limp and precarious with those massive balls hanging above. Maybe I got a wrong impression from the screen.’

‘Asymmetrical? I haven’t noticed that,’ she said, ‘didn’t you see it when you were in Shanghai?’

‘No, the construction was only finished after I returned to Sichuan.’

Now, David and Mei came over. ‘Let’s move on,’ said David.

‘Where to?’ asked Bing, pointing here and there with his latest knowledge, ‘the rainbow bridge, or the Arts Centre, or Chinatown?’

‘What? Rainbow bridge?’ David inquired, curious, ‘you mean that little bridge hanging over there?’

‘Yes, don’t you think it is very stylish and artful looking?’

‘Yes, it is, I hope one day I can sit there fishing.’

‘But I wonder if there are any fish in the muddy river?’ Mei chimed in, and Bing gave his comment, ‘Well, it is only unclear. Without those killing chemicals fishes can always grow well in the water. And according to a Chinese proverb, fishes wouldn’t survive in the clear water, because there is no food, no micro-organism to feed them.’

‘Talking about food, I am hungry,’ David said. ‘Can we go somewhere for lunch first? The fast noodles have long gone from my stomach.’

‘And talking about your stomach, I feel I need go to the toilet first,’ Bing said, half jokingly.

‘I want go to the toilet too,’ Mei said, followed by Susan, ‘Me too,’ followed by David, ‘then me as well.’

Now they had a task. ‘Where is the toilet?’ asked Bing.

David suggested, ‘If only we can find a McDonalds restaurant. It has been the usual solution to my problem when travelling in a city.’

Mei said, directly to David, ‘But still we need to find it first.’

‘Don’t worry, let me ask someone in the street,’ Bing said confidently.

Then Susan advised, ‘Why don’t you check your little map book? Maybe it is marked somewhere?’

Upon her words, Bing took out the book from his pocket, and within a little effort, he found something, ‘Here it is, near the station along Swanston St.’

While leading the team, he didn’t forget to praise Susan, ‘Susan, you know so much about this city. You should be our guide instead.’

Bing was expecting her to say again that she had just read a bit about the city, but she didn’t. So he turned to look at her, and noticed that, touching her glass, she just smiled modestly.

Seeing the signs of the toilet, they were confronted with another issue – they had not brought any paper. But unlike the common practice in Chinese cities, they didn’t see any shop or counter in front of the toilet selling it. Again, Susan had some knowledge to share. ‘I heard that the paper in toilets are free in western countries. And look at other people coming in and out, I don’t think they have to bring their own paper.’

Those men and women, walking fast and carelessly, showed no concern in their faces. So, the four of them went in, and in several minutes came out, all glad that they had been provided with free paper in a toilet first time in their lives.

The next place they agreed to go to was McDonalds, where the price of burgers and chips was supposed to be more affordable. They walked from Flinders St back to Swanston, hoping to spot the yellow ‘M’ along their way. The two boys walked faster ahead, the girls lagged behind. David, whose hunger seemed to being growing more severe by the second, was advancing like a restless solider, but had to pause frequently to wait for the rest of the group.

However, a considerable distance having passed, and still no sign of McDonalds came to their sight. So Bing approached a man, ‘Excuse me, Sir, do you know where I can find a McDonalds?’

The man looked around for a while: ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’

Bing was about to say ‘Thank you’, when he noticed the same man stopping another man who was walking much faster than the other pedestrians, ‘Hi, mate, you know where the nearest McDonalds is?’

‘McDonalds? Yes, there is one down there, not far,’ said the young man rapidly.

The man turned to Bing, actually to the whole little group who had now gathered around him like kids, and repeated slowly the piece of information, and pointed a couple of times down to the street, as if he didn’t believe the group understood enough English.

‘Thank you very much, Sir,’ Bing expressed his gratitude. ‘May you have a nice day.’

‘Thank you, thank you,’ the man was delighted, resuming his trip.



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洋八路

Chapter 46    2/2





Entering McDonalds, the familiarity of the yellow colour and scent and warmth and decoration, made him, and obviously other three, feel somewhat at home. It was odd to think that people admire new things so much, while at the same time missing the old and the past. If one feels only comfortable in a place they are familiar with, why doesn’t he just stay home for the comfort? Such as staying in China? Such as staying in his village where he could swim in the spring water? But no, people tend to have a permanent need to see more, to receive more stimulants, to eat more, to try more, to love more, to wonder eternally what exists beyond a boundary. We call it adventure, and the adventurous mission is usually dangerous and uncomfortable and suffering, many of them even a risk to our lives. Yet we are still tempted to go and risk, obstinately as if under a spell of a perverse spirit.

Musing, and chewing the hot chips, the heat of which was moderated by the chill of a Coke he was presently sucking, Bing suddenly suspected of the rightness of his coming to Australia. Why did he have to leave his wife, his parents and many other intimate souls for this place? What did he want from his life, from this new land?

For next moment, the elegant face of his wife, her breasts and lips, and the wrinkles and white hair streaks of his mother, and the quiet and discontented lined face of his father, began flashing in his mind.

‘Hurry up, Wang Teacher,’ David said, ‘we need to go to Chinatown.’

Waking up from his little trance, he lifted his head, looking at David who had already finished his beef burger. ‘Now you have enough energy, with the Big Mac…’

‘Not much, I could eat another if I were rich.’

Mei remarked, ‘You talk like you are poor.’

‘Of course, I am; otherwise, I would have bought two Big Macs, instead of one.’

They laughed. And in the midst of their mirth, Bing, seeing that even the two girls had half finished their burgers, began to eat his own. To him, eating a burger was more like a cooking process. The raw vegetables, onions, cheese, cream, and beef were just mixed and cooked in his mouth. His hands had to clutch them skilfully lest the stuff stain his nose or his clothes. Sometimes he felt the way of eating it, with all the hunger of the moment, was not unlike a man greedily kissing a woman from various angles.

On their way to Little Bourke St where Chinatown was located, he saw an odd-looking sculpture on the sidewalk. Simply made up of some rusty iron plates, it was not exactly like anything he could recognise. Then further down, there were another group of sculptures which looked like imitating white-collared workers walking on the street. But they looked excessively ugly, very thin and tall, their eyes bulging, their nostrils thrusting out, their mouths gaping like a fish just caught and brought onto the land. Their startled and bewildered expressions were numb and dumb and stupid.

He wanted to touch the sculpture, but at the same time felt repulsed by its utmost nastiness. It was made of cold metal, not at all friendly and touchable and intimate like the wooden, electric poles. Yet still, as if enchanted by its weirdness and irregularity, he lingered and hovered about them, inspecting their faces curiously, until he had to be called by the impatient David, who, together with the two girls, had already crossed at the traffic lights to other side of the street.

Bing had to wait at the lights. He saw two pedestrians, after looking left and right, and left and right again to be convinced of no danger of being run over, bolt across the street against the red light. There were a number of blue and white police cars parked along the street, but no people in uniform emerged to catch the offenders. Nevertheless, compared to the society he had just come from, this place was indeed more civilized. In Shanghai and in Chengdu, where traffic rules were loosely observed by and where the people forever had to compete for limited resources, so called traffic control assistants had to be employed to discipline the half-blind throngs of walkers and riders and drivers. At each street crossing, the assistants, with a red band on their arms, would wave their flags and yell, shout or whistle, demonstrating the everyday road-struggle of the urbane residents.   

However, according to the map, Australia was about four-fifths the area of China, but its population was just one-fiftieth. He wondered what the traffic would be like if one day the population of Melbourne’s three million was expanded six times to that of Shanghai.  

The roadway was also different. Very wide, it was divided equally into three lanes. The middle one was exclusively for trams, which looked like a mixture of bus and train, and the outer two were for vehicles. Each tram  had long propping power-poles like the trolley-buses in Shanghai and Beijing, but its slow sleep-lulling rattling sound, and the long compartment, and its heavy pulling and panting manoeuvre, resembled more a train.

The light turned green and the ticking traffic sound, meaning ‘Walk now’, began beating faster. With his heart lurching, he crossed the road nervously, as if someone or a white ghost was chasing at his back.

The two girls were far ahead, and evidently absorbed in some girlish gossips, neither of them looked once back to ensure their country-fellows were not lost in their wake. Catching up with David, and then together overrunning the two girls, Bing was again assuming a default guide to the little group.

‘Wang Teacher, where to go? I see this is Bourke Street, the entrance to Chinatown?’ Mei’s raised eyebrows were very impressive. ‘But I see no sign that says Chinatown?’

‘No, no, Chinatown is at Little Burke Street, remember the pre-affixed Little,’ he reminded Mei, ‘Little Burke should be just a little distance down the road.’

Shortly afterwards they saw, to their left, a tall and oddly standing arch, which looked very incompatible, very inharmonious to other buildings in the neighbourhood. But, it was Chinese, suggesting nothing but Chinese. For a fleeting moment, the arch impressed him as an entrance to a purplish temple, where people entered to worship Buddha or some spirits of ancestors, to gaze at those ugly-faced, half-man, half-devil figures like the ones he had seen on Emei Mountain.
Straining his neck and looking up to survey the arch, he noticed the colour was not purple, or black or yellow or red or crimson, but a mixture of laced patterns, like the garment worn by women in old Chinese dynasty. In the middle of the crossbeam, from right to left, six Chinese characters said ‘Melbourne Chinatown’.

Again, the stone was there. Two one-piece stone pillars supported a slanted roof. Two tourists sat on each of the outstretched pillar bases. One of them indulged himself with a leisurely smoke; the other tilted a bottle of Coke to her lips, pouring the dark liquid into her mouth very thirsty on such a warm day.

Stepping inside, the two-lane street, compared to Swanston St, was very narrow. No Buddha, no common settings in a temple; it was just a normal alley where the traditional Chinese words were shown as the main shop signage, whilst English, here as a secondary language, was written underneath.

‘Look at the Shark Fin,’ asked Susan, touching her glass, ‘is it the fin of shark they serve? The most expensive food I heard of in China?’

‘It must be,’ said David, ‘but I doubt it is the most expensive here in Australia. Sharks must be plenty and easier to catch here? How about Bear’s Palm, and Swallows’ Nest that used to be eaten by the Chinese emperors and their relatives?’

Mei, whose eyes seemed to have just located the restaurant thus mentioned, was suspicious, ‘I don’t know, the Chinese name of this restaurant means Eating-Is-First. It was not as if suggesting ‘eating shark fin first’.’

‘Why don’t we go into the restaurant for our supper tonight?’ said Bing, excitedly. ‘We will then find out.’

‘Are you crazy,’ said David seriously, ‘it could cost a fortune.’

‘Well, Shark Fin may be very cheap here in Australia,’ said Bing, ‘may even be cheaper than Big Macs.’

‘Haha, I wish so,’ David chuckled. ‘But, really this is Chinatown, we Chinese should definitely come here to eat one day.’

‘Why just one day, why can’t we do this every day. There is no reason we shouldn’t help the business in Chinatown.’

‘All right, but if only they can give us Chinese a big discount, for the sake of brotherhood and sisterhood.’

While two men were kidding each other upon the eating, the two girls slipped into a newspapers and stationary shop. They followed them in.

The papers and magazines inside the shop were all in traditional Chinese. Bing was attracted to some special magazines displayed on the shelf. One of them had a name of Fire Qiling, meaning Fire Unicorn. With pictures of naked legs and thighs on its cover, he believed it was a kind of pornographic materials forbidden in communist China. He picked it up, and checking alertly on any eyes that might fall upon him, quickly turned it over, then as quickly put it back. It was well clothed by a layer of plastic, so he was unable to peer into its contents. He should buy one, sooner or later, he thought, when he could afford it. Bu how much was it? He was about to pick it up again to find the price, when Susan and Mei, who were a moment earlier hidden inside the shop, appeared suddenly in front of him. So he had to divert his glance immediately to other objects.

Going out of the shop, four of them continued to explore Chinatown. But there were not many extra things to interest them; all eating places, one after another. Without money in his pocket, and uncertain how much they were going to cost, he felt the restaurants were practically useless. In fact, the whole of Chinatown was useless, unless maybe one day he could come and eat in one of the restaurants, or buy one or two pornographic magazines to appease his curiosity.  

But the enthusiasm of the other three was not as diminished as his, especially Susan, who had evidently learnt quite a lot in advanced about this city and had become very talkative.

She said: ‘Melbourne Chinatown was established as early as 1850, during the Victorian gold rush. It is one of the oldest Chinatowns in the world, and is the second longest continuous Chinese settlement in western countries, after San Francisco in North America, which goes back farther ten years to 1840.’

‘1840? Isn’t it also the year when the Opium War broke out between England and China?’ asked Bing.

She answered, ‘Yes, about that time. Many Chinese were said being carried over to US, like slaves, to build railway and dig gold for them.’

‘Slaves? Never heard of Chinese as slaves. They were not the slaves like black people, were they?’

‘They were undoubtedly slaves, all the people whose skin had a colour, yellow or black or dark were treated as secondary citizens in those days.’

‘But I believe white is just another type of colour, and the secondary people don’t always equal slaves,’ said Bing, surprised and amused to see Susan’s face flushing like a passionate debater over a topic. ‘Slaves are humans sold and bought as common goods like cattle, for a price. But I think Chinese only went abroad to dig the gold or seek a fortune to better their lives outside their own poor, war-stricken country. They were not sold or bought by a force beyond their control,’ he paused to clear his throat, ‘to some degree it was not very much different from the reason you and I have come here today.’

‘Oh, really? Well…’ Susan faltered, so flushed that she had to take time to compose herself, touching her glasses before she continued, ‘well, it was a fact that the Chinese had been terribly treated by white people in western countries. Nobody could deny that.’

‘Hehe, I am not to deny that human history in both China and abroad, on its struggling and stumbling path to civilization, had always been very ugly and brutal. There had been no less horrible treatment among Chinese themselves, between their own kin and relatives, than between people of different races or colours.’ Then, realizing he was almost preaching like a history teacher, and with an intent to avoid too direct a debate with the emotional Susan, Bing turned to other two, in softening words, ‘David, and Mei, what do you think? How do you feel, after one hundred and fifty years since the Chinese first came here to dig gold, to build this Chinatown, that today we left our country and came here again, for a reason and a purpose I don’t conceive as very different from our early pioneers?’

David hesitated, ‘Ehm, well, ehm, to be honest, if only China is an ideal and happy place for us to stay, I don’t know why we should have come here, why we should leave our parents, brothers and sisters. If we come here only to study, that is fine, but as far as I know, most of the students, me, one of them, have come here for permanent residence as the ultimate purpose.’

‘Yes, like water always flows from high to low, so do humans flock, from bad to good.’

Then Mei, who had kept quiet and rather indifferent in the discussion, added, ‘But the fact is we don’t even know if here is worse or better yet. And, I think every person born has a right to move about the Earth.’

‘We will soon find this out if it is a better place or not, and even that it is an entirely subjective opinion,’ Bing went on, ‘and I agree with you, every one who comes into this world not by his own choice, is entitled with a just and heaven-given right to move about the planet.’

David was amused, ‘Haha, if only such a right is not removed by other more powerful, earlier settlers, who may claim they have a right to annihilate your right.’

Bing returned, ‘In that sense, humans may be even worse than the beasts in a jungle who might not  protect, defend and attack a territory with so much blood, hatred, bullets and bombs. Or maybe people just imagine they can forever own, eat and rape the Earth with their mortal claws and teeth?’

Mei complained, ‘This topic is too much,’ then seeing another arch coming to the sight, ‘look, here is another great arch, the pattern is intricate and beautiful.’   

Bing was about to say the arch was ugly and grave, but taken over by Susan, ‘Has any of you heard about a woman in Queensland, who recently aired quite a lot of racist comments about Asian people in Australia?’

‘No, who is she?’ asked Bing.

‘I read about her on internet. She doesn’t like Asian people in Australia.’

‘Oh, she doesn’t like Asians living in Australia,’ he was a little surprised, but only for a short time before he seemed to revive his cynical tone of debate, ‘So what? People of one race naturally like or dislike one another, for various reasons based on their short, limited, narrow experience of life. Things like egotism, prejudice, pride, inheritance, living or deceased glory, languages, quantity of money, quality of clothes, body shape and height and odour, the colour of skin, the size of eyes, jobs, age, sex, power, what we eat and how we play, etc, etc, can all become the sources for our love or hate. And, also keep in mind we often don’t even like ourselves.’   

‘Haha, Wang Teacher, you are really a teacher,’ laughed Mei.

But Susan pursued, ‘But the words of that woman are very disturbing, and would make many Asians angry.’

‘Hehe, you have a right to feel angry, and have a right to air your anger as well, after all it is Australia. So long as she, or you, or we don’t resort to any violence.’

Susan replied, ‘But if she expressed more of those racist comments, the violence might eventually fall upon us. There had been so much terrible history like that, like World War Two, or the Sino-Japanese War.’

Then David interposed, ‘So what can we do? We can do nothing. We are just students and have spent a lot of money coming here to study.’

‘Well, nobody asked us to come here to study. We applied and paid the big dollars to Australia, and its government approved. So we came here, and are supposed to earn the money also from here, to pay back the debt we have borrowed in China.’

Susan sounded rather distressed, ‘But if someone dislikes you, hates and treats you as secondary and inferior residents in this country…’ Bing hastened to join her sentence, ‘then, like what immigrants all over the world have been through, you either adjust and endure and bend, or live or fight or die in the new territory, in the new human jungle we have chosen to enter. And, remember there might be more people who dislike you, rob you, discriminate against you, do you more injustice back in China, in our own beloved home country. Living is never an easy business.’

No sooner had he uttered his words than they reached the end of Chinatown at Spring Street.  

Then they retraced their steps back to the tram station, and so weary and thirsty by their long walking and talking that they closed their eyes for most of the time on the tram back to Peacock Street.

Prior to his sleep, Bing wondered why, in the world, there was no Japantown or Indiatown or Germantown or Englandtown or Greecetown or any other towns based on people’s origin. There was no town but Chinatown.

He couldn’t figure out an answer.
 


-- End of Chapter 46 ---