what I know about the road sweeper

Fong Hing was his name. The road sweeper, that is. His olive sun-burned face was always gently kind, creased in with wrinkles too old for his actual age, although no one really knew what that was.

What we did know for sure was that when the first villager of the morning stepped out into the Lautokan dirt road, he had already been up for hours sweeping dust and gravel with his corn-husk broom.

He had married a young passport bride from the mainland, we heard. She had come from a rich family, marrying him only to escape the tyranny of the Communist regime.

An unlikely pair – him a poor country boy, her a pale-skinned bride.

She cried at the airport when she saw him.

But they had fallen in love.

Not the Hollywood-Vegas impetuous kind of love, but the measured, prosaic kind, cultivated over many shared bowls of rice and the simple prospect of making a life together.

You could tell she loved him, the way she looked at him in the wee hours of the morning as he got ready for work, watching his dusky silhouette recede into the dark of daybreak.

Indeed, they had created a life together in this Lautokan village, raising four children who were often the talk of the town, being the only yellow faces amongst the Fijian and Indian majority.

They were an adventurous bunch.

It was just last week that the second oldest girl, Meu Chi, climbed a mango tree to pick fruit but lost her footing, scraping her chin on the way down, sweet, sticky blood mingling with the sweet of the mango pulp.

Always the one sneaking off to watch those American black-and-white movies, she’ll probably be the one to run off to some place far away like Canada and raise children who grow up never knowing their grandfather had been a road sweeper in a remote village on the Fijian island of Viti Levu.

This did, in fact, become true.

My mom moved to Vancouver as an 11 year old, mostly due to her captivation with the television set and the fact that we had some relatives that had a basement she could stay in.

And I only found out that my grandfather had been a road sweeper a few weeks back when it randomly came up over dinner conversation.

Having never met my granddad in person, my perception of him had been pieced together from faded photographs stuck between plasticky sheets of my grandmother’s photo album.

He always had a serious look, one that left me wondering what story was hiding behind his stoicism.

I had been told a couple of things by my grandma – that she had cried when she saw him at the airport because he was much shorter than what she had imagined, or that he had worked hard as an entrepreneur in Fiji, having started his own convenience store, noodle factory, hotel and  business selling homemade chili sauce after his stint as a road sweeper.

I also knew she had grown to love him, from the fondness with which she spoke of him and how my mom described her anguished wailing as my grandma stood by his grave.

But, other than those few facts, most of my family history has been a mystery to me.

I’ve never personally been to Fiji or Toisan, the village in China where both my grandparents originated from.

Instead, I’ve searched for the story of my grandparents amongst memoirs of the immigrant Asian experience – the paper menagerie by Ken Liu, a thousand years of good prayers by Yi Yun Li – and yet, nothing seems to fit.

(If you know of a captivating, satisfying Asian-American/Canadian memoir, do let me know.)

Instead, the legacy of my grandparents has been passed down through my culturally-complicated childhood.

My mom mandating that once a week we have only Chinese-speaking dinners, where my mainly Cantonese-speaking Dad had to communicate to us in Mandarin, while she sat mum, oblivious to what we were saying but content that at least we were maintaining a semblance of our Chinese heritage.

Or Mom teaching us how to cook rice the way she had watched Grandma do it in the restaurant. You put your hand in the rice/water mixture and once the water reaches up to your knuckles, that’s how you know it’s enough.

And that if I slept with wet hair, I would get a headache because that’s what Grandma said. If not the next day, then one day in the future, when I’m older.

Instead, I get glimpses of the life my grandparents might have had and wonder how close I am to reality.

Like when I actually lived in China for  two years and saw road sweepers with their corn-husk brooms out in the wee hours of the morning.

Or when I watched Crazy Rich Asians and bawled watching the character of Eleanor Young, Nick’s controlling mother.

Because she represented the oppression of women in traditional Asian culture being passed down from one generation to the next and it made me realize something deep and significant about why my grandmothers are the way they are.

I watch as Grandma’s hands deftly wrap the thick bamboo leaf around the pyramid of sticky rice, a skill I regretfully have yet to master.

“Grandma make more zongzi for freezer,” she tucks the end of the leaf into one of the its soft, chubby edges.

She had asked me before if I had liked chestnuts in my zongzi, and after I had replied in the affirmative, had promptly made a special trip out to the Chinese store to find the best deal there was on chestnuts.

If there was anything I picked up from my Grandma, it would probably have been her love for feeding others, her warm hospitality and of course, her love for finding good deals.

If I could have known my grandfather when he was still alive, I surmise I would have seen how my creative, entrepreneurial spirit was my inheritance from him.

And yet, for all that I can guess about my grandparents from the little fragments I’ve pieced together from the vignettes told in non-chronological order, so much still remains a mystery.

I’m colouring the space in between with my own shades of crayon

– (because isn’t that how memory becomes history anyways?) –

My grandfather still gazes at me from that black-and-white faded photograph, his stoic expression inviting me to spin stories of this road-sweeper turned serial entrepreneur.

Meanwhile, my grandma wraps up another plump dumpling in dark green bamboo leaf, pulling the rattan string tight around its bulges.

She nestles it amongst the other zongzi waiting to be frozen, so we can eat her homemade chestnut-filled zongzi for months after she has left our house.

Her legacy for now preserved in plastic bags full of bamboo leaf pyramids of sticky rice, the zongzi my grandfather probably once ate for dinner the days he was a road sweeper.

A few weeks back, when I was in San Francisco with my mom and sis, I found out my grandfather had been a road sweeper in Fiji over some casual dinner conversation. This new piece to the image I had created of him in my mind intrigued me. 

When my grandma lived with me for a few years in Singapore and the times she visited us in Waterloo (and made us lots of delicious dumplings!!), my favorite thing was to listen to her tell stories of her life in Toisan and Fiji. She holds memories of a life so distant from my own, yet one that is part of my legacy. 

I hope to interview her at one point and record our family history so we pass these precious memories down to future generations (and so no one will ever forget that my grandfather started out as a road sweeper in Fiji!!).

Once I’m done with my mom’s side, maybe then I’ll take on the daunting task of recording my dad’s side of the family – and write about my Ahmah’s life as a rubber plantation farmer in Malaysia. But, another story for another time 😉