The frost of the twenty-first year of the Republic came early and fierce. By the start of the tenth lunar month, the bluestone slabs by the well were already covered in a glaring layer of white grit. Fifteen-year-old A-Lin knelt in the bone-piercing cold, the dull thud of her wooden washing baton striking the coarse cloth unnervingly clear in the deathly quiet of dawn, startling the last few sparrows pecking at rotten vegetable leaves on the fence. The cold pierced her thin knees like needles.
From the direction of the ancestral hall, urgent bronze gongs exploded suddenly! A-Lin's hand jerked, the baton nearly hitting the coarse cloth in the wooden basin – her menstrual cloth. Its edges were stained with a dark crimson blotch. Last year, on the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month, it had been the same death-summoning gong clamour when bailiffs, astride snorting mules, delivered the notification of her husband Lin Da-zhu's death in battle at Shanhaiguan. That stiff yellow paper, stamped with a blood-red official seal, still lay beneath the icy *kang* mat, stacked with the notice announcing the death of her father-in-law, Old Lin Shuan, who had fallen in the Zhili-Fengtian war in the seventeenth year of the Republic. Together, they were like two red-hot branding irons, pressing day and night against her already scarred heart.
"Conscription! All able-bodied males, seventeen to forty, report immediately to the ancestral hall for inspection! Latecomers will be treated as deserters!" The rasping voice of Village Head Wang the Cripple tore through the thin mist. A-Lin hurriedly shoved the basin into the shadows behind the firewood pile. Looking up, she collided with the sight of her mother-in-law stumbling out of the low courtyard gate like a crazed old beast, clutching a chipped kitchen knife. Her deformed "three-inch golden lilies" stamped crooked, chaotic prints onto the frozen earth, like the two half-melted, precarious candle stubs on the altar table, weeping wax.
A-Lin shrank behind the gnarled trunk of the old elm, her heart clenched so tight she could barely breathe. On the ancestral hall's stone steps, the bailiffs' cowhide boots gleamed blindingly. The village head, sucking on a brass pipe, jabbed a bony finger at the open register: "...Lin household head, Lin Shuan, died in battle at Zhili-Fengtian front, twenty-seventh day of the fourth month, seventeenth year of the Republic; eldest son Lin Da-zhu, died in battle at Shanhaiguan, twenty-third day of the twelfth month, twentieth year of the Republic..." He paused, his murky eyes sweeping over the mother-in-law's face twisted with rage and despair. "...Second son Lin Tie-zhu, turned sixteen this year, stature sufficient. By law..."
"Heaven strike you dead! Are the officials trying to sever our Lin family line?!" The mother-in-law's shriek was like a dull knife scraping a pot. Her cleaver *thunked* into the corner of the cypress altar table, shaking ash from the incense burner. "Two lives fed to the cannon mouths weren't enough?!"
The lead bailiff, a scar running across his face, sneered and raised his whip. "Old hag! Military orders are iron! Assemble at the village entrance at the third quarter of the fifth watch tomorrow! Dare be late or hide him..." The whip cracked with a terrifying snap. "...Treated as deserters! Whole family punished!" That icy voice, like icicles under the eaves in deepest winter, carrying a chill to the bone, stabbed into the hearts of everyone present and shattered A-Lin's last shred of hope.
**-----**
Dusk fell like spilled ink, swallowing the last glimmers of light from the paper window of the earthen house. A-Lin carried a bowl of thin vegetable gruel towards the corner of the east wing – a space partitioned by a ragged straw curtain where Tie-zhu sheltered.
"Zhu-zi, eat something," her voice was parched. The fifteen-year-old Tie-zhu didn't reach for the bowl as usual. Huddled in the shadows, knees drawn up, his shoulders slumped. Deep hollows beneath his eyes held a fear that didn't belong to youth. He looked up, voice hoarse: "Sister-in-law... at noon... Village Head Wang leaned over the wall... gave me half a flatbread..."
A-Lin's heart sank. Tie-zhu's Adam's apple bobbed, a difficult swallow. "He said... Penang, in the South Seas... they're hiring washerwomen... sign a five-year contract... can get an advance... ten silver dollars settling fee..." Ten dollars! An unimaginable fortune! How much coarse rice could that buy? Enough for a padded coat for Dong-sheng? Enough for medicine for Chun-ni's cough?... Temptation and fear tore at her fiercely.
A desperate glimmer flashed in Tie-zhu's eyes, quickly smothered by gloom. "The Head said... if you sign the contract... he can find a way... to make me 'sick'... avoid the conscription..." His voice was barely a mosquito's hum, eyes fixed on his worn-out shoes. The fear of death and the confusion about the future made this promise of "sickness" the only straw in a sea of despair.
A-Lin's hand trembled, gruel nearly spilling. She understood! Not coincidence, but a transaction! The Head needed to fill his conscription quota, Mother-in-law needed to preserve the Lin family's last male heir, and she – she was the sacrifice pushed out to settle the debt! No wonder her mother-in-law's venomous eyes held that hidden anxiety.
A cold dread seized her. Her fingertips brushed the cold, hard object tucked at her waist – the broken silver-plated hairpin. A gift from Da-zhu at their wedding, her only keepsake. Last month, when Tie-zhu had a high fever, her mother-in-law had hysterically blamed her "ill-omened aura that killed father and son," ripping the pin from her hair and smashing it on the millstone! The snap of the pin breaking, the mother-in-law's poisonous glare – it still chilled her. This broken pin, proof of her utter loss of status in this household, now felt like a dagger pressed to her spine. The last shred of hesitation was crushed. Go! For the ten dollars that might be lifesaving, so Tie-zhu could be "sick" at home, and most of all, to escape this hell!
**-----**
The eighteenth day of the twelfth month. Leaden clouds hung low, the wind stagnant as death. Withered branches of the old locust tree at the village entrance hung heavy with icicles, clinking with a mournful sound. Inside the earthen courtyard, the cold stabbed deep.
The mother-in-law sat like a soulless clay idol on the threshold of the main room, clutching two pieces of paper in her claw-like hands – the thumb-printed "contract" and the steamer ticket voucher. Her murky eyes bored like nails into A-Lin's small blue cloth bundle. The bundle was meager: two patched coarse cloth single garments, half a stone-hard mixed-grain flatbread, a small oil-paper packet of coarse salt – secretly given by the foreman's wife at Fourth Uncle Zhao's oil mill: "The South Seas are damp and hot... suck a bit of salt if you can't stomach the water..."
Five-year-old Chun-ni stood rigid as a drawn bow, clutching a worn, earless, cotton-stuffed cloth tiger – sewn from the lining of Da-zhu's old padded jacket. Eyes, so like her father's, unblinkingly followed A-Lin, lips pressed bloodless, fighting tears. Three-year-old Dong-sheng huddled in a pile of straw by the stove, intently gnawing at his finger, raw and bloody. Bloody drool stained the bran crumbs at his mouth – he'd snatched chicken feed yesterday, desperate with hunger.
"Dong-sheng..." A-Lin finished tying the bundle knot and crouched to touch her son's sparse hair. Dong-sheng flinched violently, raising eyes empty and bewildered, filled with a fear far beyond his years. He didn't understand where mother was going, only knew grandma's eyes were like knives, the house cold as a cellar, his belly twisted with hunger.
The flinch jolted the mother-in-law awake. Malice erupted. Her withered finger shot out like a claw towards A-Lin's nose. "Go! Jinx! Killed my man Da-zhu, wasn't that enough?! Want to curse Tie-zhu too?! Take your blood money and get out! Die in that savage land beyond the seas and don't come back! Go!" Spittle mixed with foul breath sprayed A-Lin's face.
A-Lin took one last, deep, greedy look at Dong-sheng's bewildered face, at Chun-ni trembling with suppressed sobs, at the mother-in-law's face twisted like a vengeful ghost. A thousand words choked her throat, dissolving into a muffled sob. Silently, she pulled out the two red hair ribbons she hadn't managed to give Chun-ni in town and slipped them into the girl's frozen, clenched hands holding the tiger. Then, grabbing the bundle – light as air yet heavy as a thousand weights – she plunged into the piercing wind.
At the village entrance, the broken ox-cart stood silent in the wind. The distant uncle driving it puffed on his long pipe, seeing A-Lin stumble towards him, eyes swollen and red. He sighed heavily. "Wife of Zhu-zi... foreign lands ten thousand miles... take care of yourself... don't think of home too much..." The wheels groaned over frozen earth, slowly starting to move. Not far, a heart-rending shriek exploded behind them: "Mama—! Mama—! Don't go! Mama—!" A tiny figure, like a leaf in a gale, stumbled after them, cotton shoes flying off, bare feet leaving bloody red prints on the frozen, muddy ground!
A-Lin's whole body convulsed! She whipped around to see her daughter's tear-streaked face! Grief, vast and overwhelming, burst its dam! She screamed, "Ni-er!" Leapt from the cart regardless, running headlong into the icy wind, oblivious to the knife-like cold. She snatched up the sobbing, choking, ice-cold, trembling child and crushed her to her chest! Tears, cold as ice, poured like a bursting river, drenching Chun-ni's frozen, dirty little face! Trembling, she pulled out the last half-piece of softened malt candy she'd saved and pushed it into the wailing mouth. Her voice cracked, barely coherent: "Ni-er be good... don't cry... listen to Grandma... watch little brother... Mama will earn big money... come back... buy new clothes... meat buns..." Chun-ni clung to her neck, her little body shaking like autumn leaves, crying harder around the candy: "Mama... sob... don't forget... don't forget Ni-er's scar behind her ear... don't forget to come home..." The childish, desperate plea stabbed A-Lin's heart like ten thousand needles! Heart aching as if cut by knives, guts wrenched apart, she pried her daughter's small hands away, thrust her towards a neighbor woman who'd run after them, and fled back to the cart. The salty tang of blood filled her mouth – her daughter's tears? Or the blood from her own bitten lip?
**-----**
After three days of bone-jarring travel by ox-cart, they finally reached the Chaozhou docks. A wind thick with the salt tang of the sea, mixed with the smells of tung oil, rotten fish, and stale sweat, hit A-Lin, making her dizzy.
The docks boiled with noise. Shirtless, dark-skinned coolies chanted unfamiliar rhythms as they hauled cargo. Foreigners in Western suits, golden-haired and blue-eyed, hurried past, handkerchiefs pressed to noses. Beggars curled in corners. Hawkers shouted their wares. A dense forest of masts, flags of all colors snapping like funeral banners.
Clutching her small bundle, A-Lin huddled nervously among a crowd of sallow, thin women, driven forward by a thickset foreman in patterned silk, a cigarette dangling from his lips, wielding a shiny, thin cane. He flicked the cane tip under her chin, blowing smoke. "Northern girl? Know how to cook curry? Iron a foreigner's shirt collar? Read?" His thick southern accent made A-Lin shake her head in confusion.
"Curses! Another illiterate northern girl!" the foreman cursed. His wrist flicked, the cane whistling through the air and *cracking* against the bare side of A-Lin's neck! Fiery pain exploded! She staggered back, stepping on something slippery and filthy. Twenty muddy copper coins clattered at her feet. "Buy water! Get on the ship! Steerage!"
Deep in the steerage hold, the light was dim, the air thick and foul as a solid curtain. The stench of mildew, sour sweat, vomit, cheap tobacco, latrine buckets, and rusting bilge water fermented and rose. Men, women, old, and young were packed like sardines – numb, exhausted, whispering in fear, coughing, moaning, babies crying.
A-Lin found a space to curl up between a moldy straw mat and the cold hull wall. Beside her, a young woman (Ah Xiang) with a sallow face and a light cough clutched her own small bundle, eyeing A-Lin warily. Finally, she whispered, "Cough... sister, also going to Penang?... Heard it's hot there... got rambutan to eat... sweet..." The flicker of hope was faint. Nearby, a girl (Ah Ping) with a long, oiled braid, eyes alert, clutched a bundle. Something hard and square-shaped pressed against the cloth inside. She was silent as a bristling cat.
"Woo—!" A deep, soul-shaking blast of the steam whistle! The ship shuddered into motion. A-Lin turned, peering through a grimy porthole. The figures on the shore shrank to ants, the familiar land blurring into the distance.
Terror, immense and paralyzing, seized her. She raised a hand to smooth her hair. Her fingers touched something stiff and dry – a stalk of straw. Chun-ni had clumsily tucked it into her hair that morning. Her daughter's tearful voice echoed: "Mama... don't forget... Ni-er's scar behind her ear..."
A woman's voice, desolate and mournful, drifted through the hold's clamor, faint yet piercing. From a corner diagonally opposite, a white-haired, wrinkled old granny sat with eyes closed, lightly patting her knee, humming an unfamiliar, heart-wrenching southern tune:
"Drifting away, ask not the reason why...
Only see mountains far, waters far, people far, home farther still...
Looking back, clouds shroud, mists veil, homeland lost from view...
A lone goose weeps on the cold sandbar, the waning moon shines on the empty courtyard..."
The melancholy melody wrapped around A-Lin's heart like icy threads. She looked down, trembling, and pulled out an oil-paper packet. Inside, a slightly yellowed, worn family photo – taken in the sixteenth year of the Republic. Her father-in-law and husband stood stiffly in ill-fitting new army uniforms, faces strained with forced optimism. That day, the mother-in-law had smiled, a rare thing, adjusting Tie-zhu's collar: "When the men come back, with money, we'll find Zhu-zi a wife, build a new tiled house..."
Her rough fingertip traced her husband's young face, then touched the straw in her hair. Outside the porthole: grey-blue waves of a vast, alien, hostile sea. Inside the hold: stifling, filthy stench, the suffering and confusion of unknown faces. Home: the cold, dilapidated, yet once-warm earthen house; the children whose parting tore her heart; her homeland etched in her bones; all reduced now to a fading photo image and the faint scent of her daughter on a stalk of straw. Immense loneliness and terror flooded her like an icy sea. She buried her face in her knees, shoulders shaking, hot tears soaking through the coarse cloth at her knees. The old woman's desolate song, like a ghost's lament, echoed endlessly in the foul depths of the hold.
**-----**
In a haze of vomiting, dizziness, constant swaying, and numbness, day and night lost meaning. The ship jolted violently! Anchor chains roared! Metal clanged and rattled! The engines gasped and fell silent! The crowd, deadened, stirred like mud disturbed by a stone.
"Here! Penang! Get your things! Off! Quick!" The foreman's coarse bellow cracked like a whip at the hatch.
A-Lin dragged legs heavy as lead, shuffling with the sour-smelling human tide up the slippery gangplank. Her feet touched solid ground. A wave of scalding, humid air, thick with the pungent scent of unfamiliar vegetation and salty sea wind, slammed into her! Suffocating! The Penang sun was like a branding iron, white-hot, blazing down on everything. The heat of the scorching flagstones burned through the soles of her worn cloth shoes!
She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the blinding glare, squinting through tear-filled eyes, bewildered. The scene was more chaotic, noisy, and bizarre than Chaozhou...
Dizziness and fear overwhelmed her. Prodded by the foreman's cane, she shuffled into a long line. At its end, a faded indigo cloth banner read "Wing Fung Co. Recruitment." Behind a battered wooden table stood a tall, red-faced foreign policeman sweating profusely. He raised a tin megaphone, shouting in harsh, accented Hokkien:
"Washerwomen! Daily wage! Two cents Straits Dollar! Lodging provided! Food not included! Five-year contract! Good work! Bonus!"
Sweat streamed down her neck, stinging the lash wound. Drops hit the blazing stones, hissing into steam. Her exhausted gaze drifted unintentionally over the yellow paper register spread on the recruitment table – dense with crimson thumbprints. Beside one trembling, smudged thumbprint, a name was scrawled...
**A-Lin's heart stopped!**
Cold dread shot from her feet to her crown! Under the poisonous sun, she felt plunged into an icy abyss!
**The contour of that fingerprint was identical to the thumbprint on the "contract" clutched in her mother-in-law's hand!**
The enormity of the deception and a sense of catastrophic ill omen coiled like a venomous snake around her heart. Ten silver dollars? Tie-zhu "sick" at home? Did the money truly reach her mother-in-law? Were Chun-ni and Dong-sheng cold and hungry?... Horrifying thoughts boiled like mud.
She snapped her head up, staring fixedly at the tattered "Wing Fung Co." banner! The dark red seal stamped on its corner shimmered in the sunlight – its pattern was startlingly, terrifyingly similar to the seal on the pawn ticket for her camphorwood chest years ago! The seal that meant "**absolute sale**" – **no redemption possible**!
"Line up! Thumbprint! Take your work tag!" The foreman's cane whipped out, striking staggering women, drawing muffled cries of pain.
Suddenly, a tiny, clear voice pierced through time and space, echoing amidst the sweat, tears, and despair, carrying Chun-ni's parting cry:
**"Mama... don't forget... don't forget Ni-er's scar behind her ear... don't forget to come home..."**
It sounded like the last remnant warmth and desperate love of her daughter! A-Lin's whole body shook violently! Instinctively, she raised her hand, **clutching with immense, desperate care the stalk of straw in her hair, sweat-soaked, softened, yet stubbornly clinging!** Her daughter's clumsy love, the last fragile thread binding her to her homeland and her flesh and blood!
Scalding tears surged, mixing with sweat to carve muddy tracks down her filthy face. Tears for the betrayal and despair! Tears for the bleak, uncertain future! Tears for her children, ten thousand miles away, whose parting tore her heart!
Before her: The strange, stifling Penang docks! Heat shimmering off the burning stones! Dark-skinned coolies chanting under heavy loads! Indifferent foreign women! Cold-eyed, baton-carrying golden-haired officials! The foreman's snake-like cane! The "Wing Fung Co." recruitment banner like a gaping abyss!
Behind her: Surging waves, a vast sea severing her from homeland and kin! A home she could not return to!
Home, unreachable. Future, unseeable.
Fifteen-year-old widow A-Lin, rootless duckweed, traded like merchandise by her own kin, cast by fate onto the burning shores of a foreign land. The only thing she could hold tight was this stalk of dry straw in her hair – a gift from her daughter, a symbol of her homeland and her children. Light as nothing, heavy as a thousand weights.
She clenched her jaw, the salty tang of blood filling her mouth – from her bitten lip and the lash wound. Summoning the last dregs of her strength, she refused to collapse under the corrosive despair of the poisonous sun. She lifted her leaden feet and walked, numb, step by step, towards the "Wing Fung Co." banner. Towards the yellow register bearing the familiar, treacherous thumbprint. Towards the unfathomable, swirling vortex of destiny named "The South Seas."