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Pag. 15

SCHOOL DAYS

Thinking back to those few years living on the Peak, I’d have to say I was happy. I could have been content spending the rest of my life in that house, helping my mom fold clothes, watching my dad curse as he chopped vegetables, and explaining the world as I saw it to my friend the ambassador’s daughter. Even the early morning workouts, as painful as they were, had a beautiful side: as the sun rose up over the mountain, it painted the city and the bay below in gold, like a giant chest of treasure.

So it came as a nasty surprise when my father told me my days of innocence were coming to an end.

“School?” I shouted, stomping my foot in rage. School was the place where the neighbors’ kids wasted all the best parts of the day. It meant dressing up in sissy clothes, spending hours in a stifling classroom, and learning things that were of no use to anyone. I could learn everything I needed to right here at home. Probably more.

Of course, like other arguments I had with father, this one was a complete waste of time, and so a few days later I found myself taking my first bus ride down the Peak to the Nan Hua Elementary Academy. On my way down, I ate my lunch, even though I’d just finished breakfast.

Nan Hua was a very good school, one of the best in the area, and I was extremely lucky to have a chance to go there. The teachers were patient, the classrooms were spacious and brightly lit, and the students were all from well-bred families.

I hated it from the instant I walked through the schoolyard gates.

Every minute I spent there was torture (except for lunch hour, and occasionally, gym). Trapped in a classroom with nothing to do but puzzle at the words in my texts or listen to the droning voice of the teacher , I almost missed the aches and pains of my father’s morning regimen—a sore body was better than a numb brain any day. The boredom forced me to find ways of amusing myself. I’d make faces at other students, or thump rhythms on the desk with my palms, or fall out my chair by accident…over and over again.

After a few noisy but enjoyable disruptions, the teacher would usually drag me out into the hall.

“Chan Kong-sang, you’ll never amount to anything!” she’d tell me, her

Pag. 16

face stretched out in anger. It would be all I could do to avoid breaking into laughter. (It really was a very funny expression.)

In those days, teachers could be creative with their punishments. Usually I’d have to stand for the rest of the period holding a desk over my head. Sometimes I’d have to wear a sign around my neck, explaining the nature of my crime. Like, “This is a noisy, ill-behaved boy.” Or, “This boy lost all of his books.” Or, “This boy has not done his homework.” Sometimes it would just say, in a couple of characters, “Useless!” To be honest, I couldn’t read very well back then, so I’d have to make my teacher’s word as to what they said.

Standing out in the hall was peaceful, at least. And if no one was looking, I’d gently put the desk down, lean against the wall, and catch a few winks. Learning how to sleep standing up was probably the most useful thing school ever taught me.

Actually, now I regret not having paid more attention in school. You can’t ever go back again, and I’ll never know the pleasures of the classics, or higher mathematics, or the great lessons of history. Once in a while, I wonder what would have happened if had taken the other path, the one that led to high school, and college, and a respectable career in business. Or maybe law, or medicine.

I could have been the world’s most famous doctor.

Instead of the world’s most famous patient.

I never did get the hang of being a student. Each morning, before I left, my mother would give me money for the bus ride home—not wanting me to take the long hike up the Peak in the evening. Well, I’d usually use the money to buy snacks, and then rely on the kindness of strangers to get a ride home. It’s surprising how many strangers were willing to pick up a small, ragged-looking Chinese boy walking up the side of a mountain.

If I had no luck hitchhiking, I’d walk home, which would take hours. To save time, I’d usually take a shortcut the last couple of hundred feet, a scramble up the side of a cliff that would put me in our backyard. With any luck, I’d be able to sneak in the rear entrance and find my mom before my dad found me.

When I wasn’t lucky, which was often enough, at the top of the climb the first thing I’d see were my father’        s work shoes. Looking up, I’d see the rest of my dad, his face rigid with rage. Without a word, he’d grab my arms and haul me up, marching me into the house, down the hall, and into the garbage room, not even letting me change out of my school clothes first.

Dad wasn’t the only obstacle I’d have to get past in my daily trip back home. As I dragged myself up the cliff, sweaty and annoyed, I’d hear braying laughter—Hyah ha hanh! Like a pack of hyenas.

Cap. 17

“Hey, guy, look—there’re monkeys on this mountain!”

The neighborhood bullies who’d tormented my friend the ambassador’s daughter were rich enough to have drivers take them up and down the mountain. So by the time I’d gotten back home, they’d already be there—waiting for me.

“What’s the matter, boy? Lose your bus money?”

“Or are you too poor for the bus?”

“Hey, what do you expect? His parents are just servants, anyway.”

I’d be tired, my shirttails hanging out, my face smudged, but a second later, I’d be making the biggest of the bullies eat a dirt sandwich.

Those fights weren’t like in the movies.

There isn’t anything pretty or graceful about a fight between two young kids. Everything is arms and legs, poked eyes and ripped clothing and sharp gravel stuck in awkward places. Even the winner ends up looking like an avalanche survivor. And I wasn’t always the winner.

I remember one fight when this wealthy little brat I was pounding on grabbed me by the legs and pulled me off balance. I went down, and he went down on top of me. My body hit the hard ground. My head hit an even harder rock. Everything went dark.

The boy I was fighting with was the son of another ambassador—I don’t remember what country—and as soon as he saw me, stiff and motionless on the ground, he ran to find his father. The other kids scattered.

When his dad came over, he turned white with horror. If I died, there’d surely be a scandal. This was an international incident in the making. (These days, maybe I would have sued them, but at the time, I couldn’t do anything.)

Anyway, I woke up in my bed in dark, a huge bump on my head, feeling nauseated. Little flashes of light, like tiny comets, seemed to shoot through the blackness. And my entire skull hurt. I was floating in a bath of pain.

The door opened and my father walked in. “Ah Pao,” he said. “This is from your friend.” I lifted my head with effort and saw a parcel in his arms—a large, fancy box of chocolates. I think they were French, even.

Dad brought it over and set it down next to the bed, and quietly left to go cook dinner.

Even though I was sick to my stomach, I was also hungry. Well, I was always hungry.

That box of chocolates, the entire box, didn’t even last an hour. I crawled back into bed trying hard not to throw up—after all, they were French chocolates, and I didn’t want to waste them. Getting hit in the head had turned into the best thing that had happened to me in a long time.

That didn’t last long. When my father came back, smelling of scallions and sesame oil, he saw the crumpled tissue paper scattered around the bed and the sweet smear of chocolate around my month and exploded. 

Pag. 18

“You ate the whole box?” he shouted.

“Ooh…” I said, caramel rising in my throat.

Without another word, he pulled me out of bed and gave me a sound spanking. If I was well enough to eat four dozen milk chocolates—some with cherry liqueur centers—I was well enough to take my medicine.

If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. I never did any homework. I’d tear my good school clothes in fights or in scrambles up my special shortcut. I’d throw my books and schoolbag off the Peak, giving no thought to the fact that my parents would only have to buy me new ones. Each time, I’d face the music—lectures, spankings, a night in the trash room—with a shrug and a smirk.

I ended up being told I’d have to repeat the first year of primary school, and even if I wasn’t learning anything, my parents were: they were beginning to realize that their son was not the scholarly type.

My parents pulled me out of school and I went back to my old routine of following my mom around and getting under my dad’s skin.

And that was the end of my academic career.

I guess I thought I was pretty smart, getting out of school that way. I’d watch the rich kids driving down the mountain to a fresh day of hell, laughing to myself as I looked forward to another warm afternoon on my own. The last laugh would be on me.

I imagine the conversation as having happened something like this. My mother and my father ran into one another in the corridor that dominated our world.

“Lee-lee, we have to talk about Ah Pao.”

My mother, afraid of what was coming next, remained silent, but reluctantly nodded.

“That boy is out of control,” my father said. “He has no direction, no self-respect.”

“He’s a good boy…” she said in my defense, sounding tentative.

“He needs to learn how to be a man.”

Then they talked about the future and about the painful subject of money. The post with the French ambassador had been a lifesaver, but it was not allowing them to save anything else. My father’s cooking and my mother’s housekeeping had impressed the ambassador’s friends to no end. Other job offers had come. Some of them were too good to ignore. One of them was too good to pass up: a job as head cook for the American embassy…in Australia.

Not only would the job pay more money, it would also give us the chance to get Australian residency, maybe even a chance someday to move to the United States. Even back then, there was uncertainty about the mainland, and my father had learned from personal experience that in uncertainty lay danger.

Pag. 19

But taking the job in Australia would mean leaving the family behind, at least for the time being. And while my mom was a strong woman, I was too big now to be put in a washbasin and left to splash around.

Finally, Dad, a guy’s to the bone, went back to the traditional source of advice for men all over the world: his drinking buddies. They’d helped him decide to keep me, even lending my dad money to pay for my mom’s operation. Now they suggested a way of getting rid of me—for my own good.

“It’s a hard life, but a good one.”

“He’ll get some discipline.”

“Maybe he’ll even become a star.”

And they all shared a hearty laugh. But the decision was made. My dad would take me to the place that would become my home for the next decade of my life:

Yu Jim-yuen’s China Drama Academy.