A Time of Ghosts. Hok-Pang Tang
again urged us to leave. Father insisted that we must remain and speak with Grandma Hsü.
That night we went to her former home and saw her – fingers all bloody from bamboo splinters that had been driven under the nails – hair disheveled and dirty – and she seemed to have aged decades.
She and my father talked a long while. Then he turned and gave me a small amount of money. I was to hurry with it to the house of the man who had helped us and to leave it with him as thanks. “Come back immediately,” Father urged me, but I needed no coaxing.
While I was gone he somehow managed to hire a man to help us escape. We were to leave upon my return, but something went wrong. There were no boats to be found in the darkness, and we had to spend the night at Grandma Hsü’s house.
Early in the morning I awoke tired and woozy. The house was empty. I went outside and no one was about. I heard screaming and chanting coming from the far side of the village. Curious, I followed the sound, and came to a large gathering of people. They seemed to be watching something. I could not see what it was, so I pushed through to the front. There I saw Grandma Hsü half-buried in the mud. Beside her was a great mound of dirt. They were burying her alive and packing down the soil around the body with their feet. I stood there stunned and helpless, knowing there was nothing I could do.
Hands grabbed my arms, and a man pulled me out of the crowd and away. He took me to a house, pushed me inside, and told me to stay there. Then he locked the door and left.
I waited for what seemed an endless time. At last the door opened, and there, to my relief, was my father.
It was late in the day. After a hurried meal of more foul-tasting rice-powder cakes, we set off after sunset down a dark road. I must have been very exhausted. I dimly recall someone picking me up and carrying me on his back. Finally we came to the edge of the river and boarded a tiny sampan in the darkness. I fell asleep immediately and when I awoke we were back in Canton.
My father had somehow managed to negotiate a deal with the farmers in Seundak. He was to send them money for Granny Hsü’s release. The money was sent. Eventually she was freed, but not long after came word that she had died.
CHAPTER SIX
THE DARK MESSENGER
In the years before the Communists came to power, New Year’s Day was an annual religious outing for my family. All the stores were closed. The streets were filled with children lighting firecrackers and people going to the temple. On our way there we passed many pious Buddhists prostrating themselves in the street, extending their bodies on the ground, raising their hands above their heads in the sign of veneration, getting up, walking three steps, and prostrating again. They repeated this all the way from their homes to the temple.
The temple itself was a very large complex of buildings called the “Palace of the Three Buddhas,” for the three main images it contained. My grandmother was the chief instigator of our visits. Father came along only to placate her. He had no interest in all the trappings of popular “folk” Buddhism with which the temple was filled. His view of the meaning of life was that all the world is merely coincidence.
How well I remember it! It was always crowded with people when we arrived. We went through the entrance gate and began the climb up the great stairway of 108 stone steps, each representing a star in the sky, in popular belief, and thus one of 108 gods. As we ascended we passed more of the pious, who were bowing three times on each step before continuing on to the next.
My immediate goal, being a boy, was a temple to the right of the great stairway. It contained an image of the Ox Boy, a youth sitting atop a great and placid ox, playing a cheerful tune on the bamboo flute held to his lips. My task was to go up to the image and pat the ox three times on the head so things would go smoothly for me in the coming year, and so I would be as obedient to my parents as the compliant ox to its rider.
The temple was a place of purported marvels. We always had to stop at the big stone with the print of a foot visible in it, supposedly the stone from which Buddha ascended to Heaven. There was also a heavily frequented fountain surrounded by visitors filling bottles with its reputedly healing waters, the first of two curing agents one could find there. The other was the ash of incense burnt before the images on the great altar, which visitors would gather from the huge metal pot in which countless sticks of incense were constantly smoking. It was taken home to be consumed for relieving ailments.
On the great altar were the figures for whom the Palace of the Three Buddhas was named. Though popularly called buddhas, they were actually Daoist gods. On one side was Fu-Hsing, with a small boy. He gave good fortune and the gift of children. No one could be considered fortunate who did not have children. On the other was Lü-Hsing, wearing an elaborate hat and belt indicative of worldly status. One approached him for a good position with power and respect. In the center was the image of Shou-Hsing, a kindly-looking old man with his elongated, bald head fringed by gray hair. His eyebrows were long and sagging, and he held the peach of immortality. His blessing was the gift of long life. Before the three images, bowing and muttering, were people holding bamboo cylinders filled with flat, inscribed sticks of bamboo. They would bob to and fro, intoning their petitions and shaking the bamboo cylinders, from each of which a single stick would eventually fall. That stick was inscribed with a number. It was taken to a nearby individual who, for a few coins, would present the bearer with a piece of paper on which was written a saying or poem in archaic Chinese. That was the answer to their prayer. Many could not read it, and so took it to another man not far off who would examine it carefully and tell them in plain Chinese what it meant – whether the bearer should travel north, or buy a certain house, or marry his son to a particular girl, or how a student might fare in school. In short, it was a system of fortune telling and advisory prediction, and it was very popular.
I went about from place to place with my family, enjoying the busy chatter of the pilgrims, the gardens, the flowers, the fish pond filled with carp that could live out their lives unmolested, the smiling buddhas seated on clouds and on lotus blossoms, and the huge clouds of incense rising up before the great altar. The annual outing always gave me much pleasure, and on the whole it was a most pleasant place.
There was one area of the temple, however, that I entered with trepidation. Behind the temple holding the three main images was another, a vast hall containing the statues of eighteen deities who had power over many aspects of nature and life. They were sculpted very realistically. Some held fearsome weapons. Others had huge and intimidating eyes, and one blew fire from his mouth. I would pass slowly from each to each, timidly impressed by their frightening appearance and power.
The worst, however, were in a side hall. There I gazed uneasily at one deity holding a great wok filled with burning oil in which miscreants would be plunged after death. Another held a bed of knives for further torture of evildoers. The most terrifying to me was the hideous Dark Messenger of the God with the Book. The God with the Book was Mara, God of Death. He stood in that shadowed place with a massive opened volume in his hands. In it was recorded the name of every human and the date when his life would end. Mara kept close and unfailing watch on his records, and when an allotted lifespan neared its end, he would send out his frightful Dark Messenger to snatch the unsuspecting person out of life and into the world of death and the eighteen levels of Hell. The temple was a visual lesson for children – obey your parents, behave well, or you will come to a bad and terrifying end!
It always took us some two hours to see everything and to pause on our circuit and chat with friends. My grandmother, being a major donor to the temple, received very special treatment. She was taken to a private room where she was given tea, and a sumptuous, specially prepared vegetarian lunch was set before her and any friend she might care to bring.
That was our New Year’s Day, when one changed into new clothes and shoes, and met with the gods in preparation for the coming year.
Now all that was past. The Communists had decided to crush religion. Temples were closed, monks were sent to the countryside to become farmers or pressed into factory labor. Nuns were