excerpt from
When Dining with Tigers
(ISBN 0 9585805 2 9)
(Indra Publishing 2000)

Celebrating Chinese New Year

SUN BAIJING LOVED the pastoral surroundings, far from the rush and the squash of the city, the pollution and the noise. Coming as he did from Beijing, a city overcrowded with millions upon millions of patient souls, he appreciated the Arcadian setting.

His eyes followed the road, curved and disappearing round the bend as it hugged the side of the hill which sloped gently down to the shoreline. He looked down. The sight of the sea elated him, spread out below him like a glazed tiled floor. The sea was something he had learned about in school and from photographs in newspapers and magazines and from movies and television, he had seen what it looked like. The live sea however was a geographical feature he had never in his life seen before, born and brought up as he was in a landlocked city. The retreat and the assault of the waves, the taste of salty spume, the salty smell of sea air, wet sand sticking to the feet like a pair of socks, the boom of crashing waves or the swish of lapping wavelets—all these experiences he had never encountered before, never been showered with briny spray nor faced a hair-ruffling sea breeze.
Looking at this vast opal body of water, Sun Baijing experienced a feeling of freedom. He longed to float and lose himself in this wide space, free to roam and to explore its vastness, to drift to its extremities. He had experienced exactly the same feeling of freedom before, back home in Beijing, whenever he stood in the middle of Tiananmen Square, contemplating its vastness and its boundless space, looking idly at the many holiday-makers and leisure-seekers dwarfed by its immensity. This feeling of freedom that Tiananmen Square could evoke in him, this sense of freedom that the wide sea was now eliciting from him, was almost akin to a spiritual experience. Sun Baijing however would be the last person to admit this, not being a religious man himself.

The car laboured up the leafy road and then cruised down the slope. The driver of the car was an Aussie, an older man, in his mid-sixties.
The Aussie turned to Sun Baijing, his passenger, and said, speaking fast for that was the way he talked, "Tell me your Chinese name again. You don't mind?" He adjusted his hat, a brown Akubra. He had the hat on inside the car even though, away from the hot Aussie sun, he needn't wear any headgear. Some of his white hair stuck out from under his Akubra which was rimmed by a narrow black band.

"Of course not." Sun Bijing spoke slowly, "My family name's Sun. My personal name is Baijing, It means White Whale in Chinese." He caught glimpses of the sky and the sea, blue as sapphire, through peepholes framed by leaves and twigs.

"White Whale?" The older man's face lit up. "Can I call you Moby then?" He looked hopefully at the younger man. "That all right?"
"Moby as in Moby Dick? The Great White Whale?" Sun Baijing was excited. He ran his left hand over his short-cropped hair.
"Yeah. That okay?"
"Sure, it'll be all right. You can call me Moby," the young man spoke enthusiastically. "You like the Moby Dick story?" He asked eagerly, taking a puff from the cigarette stuck between his fingers, an Army General cigarette, a brand of cigarettes popular with the middle class in China.
"Yeah, sure do."
"Which part do you like best?"
"The last part. Where Gregory Peck harpoons Moby Dick."
Moby looked confused. "Wasn't it Captain Ahab who tried to do that?"
"Oh, yeah, it was but Gregory Peck was Captain Ahab and he played the part well too.'
Moby at last understood. "Ah, you're talking about the movie. I never had the chance to see it."
"Of course I was talking about the bloody movie. What do you think I was talking about?"
"I thought you'd read the book."
The older man looked shame-faced. "I regret I never did. I should have though. For a retired journo, that's a terrible sin to confess to. One of the greatest books in Western literature and I haven't read it. I had always wanted to but never got round to it. I must sit down one day and read it."
The older man's name was Wally Wilson. When he walked, he seemed to be marching, his arms swinging with military precision. Wally Wilson was Moby's host for the duration of the younger man's stay in Sydney.
Ahead the road, lined on both sides by huge trees, rose steeply, its surface dappled by sunlight sieved through the net of leaves. Through interstices of casuarinas, gum trees and liquidambars could be glimpsed a magnificent house at the top of the hill, just off the left side of the roadway. The house stood close to the edge of a cliff, beyond which rolled a great expanse of blue sea and sky, merging away in the distance into a smudged sliver of land, trees and buildings. Instead of brick walls, the house had glass wrapped all round it.

A man in his fifties was working in the garden. He had an intense, serious demeanour. He was Wally Wilson's next-door neighbour. His name was Lam, a Chinese who originally came from Malaysia. He owned an import-export business. He and his wife and two children, a pair of twins, a boy and a girl, moved into the neighbourhood two years ago. A rumour was making the rounds that there was a third child, a son, the eldest and that he had died in tragic circumstance, how, nobody knew. The family, least of all Lam, never talked about it. It was all a mystery.

Lam loved all things Chinese. If you went into his house, you would find that although the house was modern in design and Western, it however exuded a distinctly Chinese ambience. Chinese scrolls and watercolour paintings of horses, sharp-peaked mountains, goldfish, bamboo and water lily. Chinese lanterns dangled from the ceiling and Chinese wind-chimes, from doorways.
Added to this Chinese look, the interior of the house also had the antiseptic look of a hospital for everything inside was white, even the piano. Everything outside the house not made of glass was white too: the outside brickwork, the fence, the garage doors, the garden furniture, the dog's kennel, the swimming pool and even the Hills Hoist.

The roof tiles however were not coloured white. They were russet, the usual colour of roof tiles. They would have been white if white tiles were available on the market.

Upon seeing Wally Wilson's old Holden coming up the hill, Lam stood up and waved. A weeder in his hand and a smile on his face, Lam stood watching as his neighbour's car came to a halt. Wally Wilson and his young passenger got out of the car. Lam called out a greeting to Wally Wilson.

Brushing his grey hair, Lam studied Wally Wilson's young Chinese companion. The man was reasonably tall for a Chinese. He noticed that his skin was pale, the skin of someone not exposed much to the sun. His own skin was brown, his dark complexion acquired from frequent exposure to the harsh Australian sun, he being an outdoor person who loved gardening and fishing. He compared his colour to Wally Wilson's. The Aussie man was pink; the sun tended to turn Europeans that colour.

Wally Wilson said to him, a hand on the young Chinese man's shoulder. "Moby's the house guest from China I've been telling you about, remember?"
Lam offered his hand to the young man, "Welcome, I hope you enjoy your stay in Australia."

The young Chinese said gratefully, "Thanks."
"Staying in Sydney long?" Lam adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles which had slipped down his nose.
"A year. My government sent me here. To do a course. To learn how English is taught in Australia as a second language."
"And when the course is finished, what happens then?"
"I go back to Beijing, to my job at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute teaching English to university students, hopefully a better teacher."
"My son's enrolled at the University of Sydney. He's studying to be a doctor," Lam said with a hint of pride, pushing out his chest noticeably. "Listen, I'm throwing a dinner party Sunday week. It's Chinese New Year, you know."
Lam saw a shadow of sadness cross Moby's face. He guessed the young man must be missing all the festive fun he could be sharing with his family back home in Beijing.

"Yes, I know," the young man said, a trace of regret in his voice.
"You're invited to my New Year party. The food will be Yum Cha."
"Thank you. Yum Cha—what's that?"
Lam took off his gardening gloves. "Sorry, I should have remembered you're from the north and don't understand Cantonese. Here Yum Cha's the Cantonese name for the lunch in Chinese restaurants where food is served in small portions."
"Sounds good. I'm looking forward to the party."
Lam turned to his next-door neighbour, "Wally, you've already been invited. Don't forget to come."
"Of course I won't," Wally Wilson nodded.

New Year always reminds me of the poem by Wang Anshi of the Song dynasty:

As the sound of firecrackers ushers out the old year,
The spring breeze warms up the New Year wine.
The morning sun peeps over the gates of every household
To find not the old Door God pictures but new peachwood charms.

Before he went to bed on his first night in Sydney, Moby sat down and wrote a letter to Zhenzhu, his wife.

Sunday, 2 February 1986.
Sydney.
My dearest wife,
It was only yesterday when I said goodbye to you and Xing and already I miss the both of you. And I have to stay here for a whole year. Imagine that. A whole year. I wonder if I'll be able to stick it out for that long a stretch of time.
The plane touched down at Sydney Airport at around half past six this morning. A warmish, dry morning.

In the plane my companions were an elderly Australian couple, flying back to Melbourne from a holiday in China. I made friends with them. The husband was a big man with sagging jowls, wearing a Mao jacket probably bought from one of the open-air stalls clustered around the entrance to the Ming Tombs. His wife was as tall as he was. She had a pleasant face, a shock of silvery hair over her forehead.
The couple was very informal. They told me their names. His name was Tony and hers Mabel. I shook hands with the husband but when I wanted to shake hands with the wife I found she didn't have her hand stretched out. I didn't know it was an Australian custom for the man not to shake hands with the woman and so women automatically do not put out their hands. Here, they call Australians 'Aussies'.

This was my first encounter with Aussie ways and with this particular Aussie custom. I was taken aback. At first I was at a loss to know what to do. My face must have gone all red. I quickly pulled back my hand and hid it behind my back.

I'm not used to addressing people I've just met by their given names. You know the great emphasis we place on addressing people correctly, using the right form of someone's name or the right title by virtue of his job or status. We always use our family names when making introductions. Consequently I told the Melbourne couple my name was Sun.
From force of habit, I kept calling the husband, 'Mr Tony' and the wife, 'Mrs Tony'.

My host's a lovely fellow, a very simple man; you'll like him. He's sixty-six. He's retired now. He was a journalist before. He worked mostly in Europe in his younger days, Britain in particular. He always wears an Akubra hat even in the house. He only takes it off when he goes to bed. An Akubra's a wide-brimmed typically Australian hat made of rabbit fur. It protects him from the Australian sun, my host tells me. The Australian sun can be very hot and scorching, he informs me. But why he wears it indoors, I learn, is because he's grown used to having it on.

My host has a knack of making me feel at home. His name's Wally Wilson. I always address him as 'Mr Wilson' though he keeps urging me to call him, 'Wally'. I can't bring myself to do that, not that I regard him as not yet a friend or even an acquaintance on the way to becoming a friend. I feel compelled to show him the respect due to him on account of his age.
He's nicknamed me Moby, you know, after Moby Dick the big white whale in Herman Melville's novel, just because my name means White Whale. I like the name. I'm going to adopt it as my Western name.
Aiya, it's a pity that I won't be home for the festivities of the Spring Festival. I wish I could be there with you and Xing when you go to Tiananmen Square so that you and I can help Xing fly kites as we have done in past Spring festivals.
Aiya, it can't be helped. I have to be here in Sydney at this time of the year. It doesn't matter though because I have a chance to make up for the merrymaking I'll miss. Mr Wilson's neighbour, Mr Lam—a huaqiao originally from Malaysia—has invited me to the Spring festival party he's throwing. I'm looking forward to it. I'll tell you all about the party in my next letter.
It won't be long now before Mei gives birth, will it? I hope for Yonggan's sake Mei gives birth to a boy. You know how much your brother, like most of our people, yearns for a son. I hope he gets his wish.

Love to you and Xing.
Baijing.