"May I have this dance?" The man's
engrish was awful but Barbara gave him points for trying. At least he had more
daam than the rest of the boys standing around ogling her and her cousins. She grabbed his hand and led the way to the dance floor.
The four person band blared out a nice Frank Sinatra tune. She jigged, she jagged, she did all the moves she had been practicing in her room all week and it seemed to do the trick. The eyes behind the glasses seemed to twinkle at her under the flashing lights of the nightclub. She smiled broadly at him but he didn't smile back; it was more of a smirk.
Va da hau queu she thought to herself. Not very good looking. His glasses were on the thick side; and his mouth was sort of
meh, crooked. Ah,
that explained the reluctance to smile.
After the dance was over, he led the way back to her group, bought a round of drinks for her friends, and left. Barbara looked after him and asked Jimmy, the boy her sister was dating, who that guy was. "Yee sze Wong Er Liu" Jimmy replied in Shanghainese even though they were in a nightclub in Hong Kong. She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Mm muh Ying Wen ming tze?" No English name? A shake of the head was her reply.
In the 1950's in Hong Kong, most of the younger generated sported English names. Most names were taken from names of movie stars but since the movies usually took 3-5 years in being distributed in Hong Kong, the names taken were from yesterday's stars. There were lots of Bettys after Betty Grable, and Rosalinds after Rosalind Russell. Judys after Judy Garland, and Joans after Joan Crawford.
To have no English equivalent for his name indicated to Barbara, a sense of identity that needed no borrowing from others for justification. She smiled. Then promptly forgot him.
*****
The 1950's in Hong Kong was an exciting time to live in. World War II was now firmly in the past, only remembered hotly by people old enough to remember the indignities suffered at the hands of the Japanese. Barbara had been young enough that had she walked up to the Japanese soldiers in Shanghai, she would've received a pat on the head and perhaps food even. Her older brother, Simon was just a year older so his memory of the invasion was also suspect.
Jimmy, her sister Carol's boyfriend, was two years older than Simon, and was of the age where suspicion fell easily upon his shoulders. To hear Jimmy talk of the invasion was to suffer through a couple of hours of heated discussion, which Barbara studiously avoided. After all, the war was over and they weren't under Communist rule.
The late 40's, after the war with Japan had ended, was a turbulent time in China. Two factions vied for the soul of China - the corrupt Kuomingtang (Nationalist) party and the dreaded no-nonsense Communist party. Of the two parties, Barbara's family stood firmly on the Nationalistic side. After all, Sun Yat Sen founded that party and the family had ties from before the invasion.
But the Nationalist Party had a dark taint to them; they had, under the guidance of Chang Kai Shek, lost to the invading Japanese Party. The shame of the loss was multiplied when one realized how small Japan was to China. Blame flew onto everything the Nationalist Party touched; and out of this disgruntlement grew the Communist Party, starting with students in the universities that had studied Marx.
Within Barbara's family, a small re-enactment of the war for China's soul took place. Barbara's father had been the principal of the largest English girls' school, and therefore represented the establishment: the Nationalist Party. Carol, Barbara's sister had been in college and had made friends with students that fervently hated the establishment. In their eyes, the descent of China's status in the world as well as the corruption that ran rampant in every government office had everything to do with the Nationalist Party and the influence of Western ideals (apparently, the students didn't appreciate the irony of being influenced by Karl Marx).
When Isaiah Ching, Barbara's father, finally realized that Carol had been allowing her friends to use his school's printing press to print out communist manifestos, he had to make a decision quickly, for the situation he had been placed in was a tight squeeze. On one side, his family had ties to the Nationalist Party. On the other hand, the manifestoes that were posted all over Shanghai might get traced back to his school. What to do? No matter who won the battle for China's soul, people would point to his family as being on the other side.
Feeling that no choice was left, Isaiah packed up his family and fled to Macau, a Portugese colony off the coast of Hong Kong.
Barbara wasn't sure how she felt about leaving Shanghai in 1949. She had just turned sweet 16 (not that anyone in her family had noticed) and in the past few years since the war had ended in 1945, she had enjoyed such freedoms like she never did before. Because both her parents, Sarah and Isaiah were involved with reconstruction as well as trying to keep Carol out of trouble, both Simon and Barbara were pretty much left to their own devices.
On Saturdays in Shanghai, Barbara used to love hopping from movie house to movie house, seeing as many as four movies in a day. She'd hit the morning movie, run and get a snack from a food stall on the way to the second theatre house, see two more movies, get dinner from another food stall on the way to the fourth movie house. Arriving home, Sarah'd ask "Chue sah dee fong, ah?" Where'd you go? And Barbara'd shrug and reply "Kui deen ying." She start to tell her mother about who was in the movie, but before five words got out her mouth, Sarah'd be dealing with Simon's current woes.
So, Barbara grew up in a dream-state of sorts, with movie stars like Barbara Stanwyck to serve as role models. Her class-mates and her poured over the latest gossip rags from Hollywood that were ferried over from the States. Of course, the latest would mean three-to-five year old articles but Barbara and her friends didn't care.
When Isaiah announced the move to Macau, Barbara only had one question. Do they show American movies there?
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