to you can just go up there and fill up your bowl. The meat and vegetables come on a big wooden tray that it take two people to carry and they unload it all on to the table because that is the food for our family. There is everything. Just like home. Preserved salted fish and pork; char siu, roast pork, roast duck and white cut chicken; duck gizzard and beef stew; ginger lobster, steam fish, boiled shrimp, stir-fry vegetables, choi sum, pak choi, steam eggs, wanton noodles. And we just eat, in the noise and the heat, and with the little ceiling fans whirling round and round.
All the time we eating I see them moving a little wicker basket from one table to the next. All ’round downstairs, and out on to the veranda and then someone take it upstairs. And a long time after when they bring it back down they go in the yard with it. Then after that they come back inside and bring it to Mr Chin.
Mr Chin stand up and Zhang stand up, and Mr Chin give the basket to Zhang and they bow. And then Zhang turn ’round and he bow to Ma and I think to myself well this thing getting on like a wedding banquet. So I don’t understand what is happening, except I know for sure that the basket full of money.
After the dinner over, Madame Chin get out a basket with four shut pans and give it to Ma so that she can take home some of the leftover food.
Two days later when Zhang think we well enough rested him say, ‘You boys save from death. You come make new life. Time you turn your hand to something.’ And him walk towards the gate expecting us to follow. He open the gate and stop, and turn to us and say, ‘The Jamaicans angry. They causing a stink because of bad wages and unemployment, so you boys mind how you act. They don’t need no aggravation from you.’ And we step into the lane and the dry morning heat together.
We walk up Matthews Lane till we get to Barry Street, where Zhang know every man and woman in sight, every shopkeeper and market trader. People in grocery stores, laundries, hardware stores, bakeries, dry goods; people who happy to see him; people who just stand up on the street and talk to him and smile and bow their heads.
We visit every shop, and from every one Zhang collect a small brown paper bag, with smiles and bowing heads; and wishes for him to have good health and a long life. Shopkeepers offer ‘Perhaps a small gift for your young charges?’ but Zhang refuse and bow his head in respect. This is how we travel the length and breadth of Chinatown.
Afterwards, Zhang say we must go get something to eat. So we go down a little alley off Barry Street and open a gate into a yard with a lot of Chinamen just standing there, and we go up a couple of wooden steps on to a narrow veranda and open a door where this big room is full of men playing mah-jongg, and shuffling the tiles and making a racket. We walk ’cross the room and Zhang open another door, and that is when the smell hit me. This heavy, sweet, pungent smell.
The room big like the mah-jongg room, and it got a lot of platforms that them laying on with the wooden pillow under their head. There is Chinese men and white men as well. Well-dressed white men, some of them even in the Queen’s uniform. And the little lamps is burning, and they laying on their side with the long pipe puffing over it. Or they just laying there on their back with their eyes wide open. I hear plenty of stories about opium but I never actually see anybody smoking it before. And what I notice is how all of the smokers look half dead and sweaty, and how the men preparing the pipes and serving the tea wearing the changshan that Zhang don’t like, and how quiet the place is. Quiet.
Then we go through into the next room and that is where they got the food. Wooden tables and benches, and steaming rice and a red-hot wok, and steamed pork buns and pickled cabbage. And a open window looking out on to the back of the yard with a wooden shutter prop up with a long piece of old wood. And catching that bit of air is nice because the other two rooms don’t have no windows.
After we finish eating and walking back to Matthews Lane I notice how Zhang look sorta proud the way him coming through Chinatown, puffing out his chest and holding his head high. He say, ‘Back in old days the Negroes steal and burn and loot Chinese shops. But things get better. Chinatown get safe and happy.’
After that it was just one thing after another. Do this, do that. Go here, go there. Ma do this, Xiuquan do that. Me run and fetch, help this man, collect from that shop. It was like Zhang was settling everybody into their place. Fixing them into their routine.
Every day, except Sunday, Ma make saltfish fritters with the help of a girl named Tilly. Then Tilly take the fritters for sale in Chinatown. Later she come back, and she and Ma pick duck feathers to make pillows to sell.
Zhang teach us tai chi although Xiuquan already know some from our father. We do it every morning. From the beginning – Grasp Bird’s Tail, White Stork Cools Its Wings, Brush Knee and Twist Step, Carry Tiger to Mountain. To the end – Shoot Tiger with Bow, Strike, Parry, Punch, Apparent Close-up and Conclusion.
Zhang tell us ’bout Sun Tzu and how more than two thousand years ago he formulate a strategy to plan and conduct military operations. And how Mao Zedong still take lessons from Sun Tzu’s writing, and how important it is for us to learn the ‘Art of War’.
Every evening after dinner, Zhang teach us English.
And what we have to do is just help him. Just help Zhang look after Chinatown.
Then one day I doing my chores and meet pushcart boy. I recognise him from that first day when we land. Him follow me all up Barry Street, every stop I make. I go in the shop, him there. I come out, him there, leaning up against some post, or examining piece of old wood, or just kicking the dirt with his hands in him pocket. Not look at me. But I know is me him waiting for. I help Mr Chin and Mr Chung and Mr Lee. I shift barrels, sweep floors, collect Zhang’s pai-ke-p’iao gambling money, but no matter how long I in the shop when I come out pushcart boy still there. In the end I can’t take it no more so I go up to him and say, ‘You following me, bwoy?’
Him look surprise. ‘Me, sah? No, sah.’
‘Yes, you follow me. You come all up Barry Street. I think you go all ’round Orange Street and back again.’ I wave my arm in the air pointing in the direction we been walking all morning. ‘You think you going follow me all day?’
‘Uncle Zhang, ’im fi yu papa?’
‘None of yu business.’
I turn. Walk off. Him follow. Then I spin ’round real sudden and I scream right in his face, ‘Ahhhhhh!’ But him just stand there. Not even flinch. Not even bat an eye. So I turn ’round and carry on walk and him follow.
Later on, is me look out for him. Is me dawdling so him can catch up. Is me bring him glass of lemonade I get from Mr Fung. Is me give him rice and sausage I get from Madame Leung. When we get back to Matthews Lane I stop at the gate and say, ‘What your name?’
‘Hampton Stokes. Tilly me big sista.’
So that was Hampton, and after that him come ’round with me most days excepting when him sister need him to go do something for her. All the time him keep asking me ‘How old you is?’ and I tell him it don’t matter. But it seem to matter to him because him keep asking and asking. So one day I tell him, ‘I was born on the second moon of gui-you, jia-zi in the year of the rat,’ but it don’t mean nothing to him. So I say, ‘How old is you?’ and him tell me fourteen. So I say, ‘Same as me, fourteen.’
Then one day Hampton tell me him got a cousin little older than him name Neville Finley that want to meet me. ‘What for?’ I ask him.
‘Him just want to meet you, man. Any crime in that?’
So one Sunday Hampton take me over to East Kingston to the house where it turn out him live with him sister, Tilly. Miss Tilly seem like she sweet on me already and I don’t hardly know her. All I do every day is say, ‘Good morning, Miss Tilly, and how are you this morning?’ or ‘Good evening, Miss Tilly, have a good night.’ That is it, but all of a sudden she wrapping herself ’round the porch post and giving me some half-toothless smile I ain’t never seen the like of before. Hampton start grinning to himself, so I lean over to him and whisper, ‘She too old for me, man,’ and him laugh out loud so god knows what Miss Tilly think I say to him.
Then him take me by the hand and lead me ’round the back to some old shack of a outhouse he say is his palace. Well it is nothing but a rickety old shed, with a creaking door and open rafters in the ceiling. So I look up and I say to him, ‘Yu nuh, if we fix up the door and put some boarding up there we can use it to store things.’
‘Store what things?’
‘I dunno.’
Right then the door fling open and this tall wiry thing is standing there. Hampton go over to him and give him a
