Hainan Dao

Book I Chapter 06

“Married already…?”

Wei nodded.

“But, how? I…” I frowned and looked away.

Wei sighed. “Your father was an incredible man. He was able to provide for all of you, in your family. But he was able to help all of us here, in this family too. It was not unusual in those days, for a capable man to have two or even more wives…”

I scrunched my eyes tight and then began rubbing them. Leaning against the wall, I slid down its length to sit on the floor with my back propped up against it. “Oh, what the hell. Why don’t you start from the beginning, then? Tell me everything, so I don’t get caught off guard and have another heart attack. Heart problems do run in my family, you know?”

“There is not much to tell.”

I frowned. “Well, what about this earlier marriage? Are there other children? Will you two be taking me to see a whole slew of other people later on, and telling me that they’re my brothers and sisters too?”

“No, no. There are no more. Fuhwa is the only one.” He sighed and crouched down beside me. “When your father left for Hong Kong, he didn’t just leave your mother and sister behind. There was his first wife and her son too. While your family later went out to join him, Fuhwa stayed and grew up here. We all tried to manage the best we could, keeping up the farming and so on, but things were difficult. For a long time. And then your father began making money, and he remembered us. He gave much, so that we could all live better. This building, the one that we are in right now, had been the old house, the same one that the Ying family had lived in for many, many years. Your father gave us money so that it might be built again. He even bought pumps and pipes and equipment, so that water from the well could be brought into the kitchen and washrooms.” He gazed into the distance and smiled. “They say it was always his dream, though no one knows why, to bring water inside the building…”

I glanced around me. “My father did all this?”

“Yes, and much more. He also wrote to the government to bring in electricity to the village. And that’s just what they did, though they took a long time to give approval. It was only last year when we first got it. He also started a trust fund so that the old people in the village began to receive a pension every year.” He smiled and shook his head. “You cannot imagine their faces. This idea was too much. To get money just for being old.”

“Why didn’t Fuhwa go out to Hong Kong when he got older?”

“It was your father’s idea. He needed someone he could trust to manage the work done in the village. To make sure that all the ideas that he had brought in were not used wrong. That nobody ruin it for everybody else. In time, the village made Fuhwa the Elder. He has been looking after us now, for the last twenty years.”

I sighed. “He is sick.”

Wei nodded. “He is sick.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“The doctors here say he has the ‘family disease’. And it will come and go until the day he must leave us. The doctors that he has seen in Hong Kong, however, say that he has something called…ar…” He scratched his head. “…ar…array.”

“Array?” I frowned. “You mean…a…RA?”

His eyes brightened. “Yes! That’s it…RA.”

I nodded. “I see…” Rheumatoid Arthritis.

He sighed. “But it doesn’t matter what they call it. No one can do anything. He becomes weaker all the time. No one knows how long he will still be Elder.”