Firecrackers sounded one after another, sometimes exploding in long strings of crackling pops. The air was filled with the smell of gunpowder, announcing that the Lunar New Year had arrived.
Father got up early and hurried to finish the new clothes for my younger sisters. By evening he had finished sewing them. He quickly moved the sewing machine aside to clear some space so Mother could set up the offering table with incense, candles, and dishes of food. The whole family bowed to Heaven and Earth and worshiped our ancestors.
“Go quickly and call ‘Uncle Opium’ to come eat New Year’s dinner!” Mother told me as she continued arranging things.
“Uncle Opium” was a tailor who worked with our family. That afternoon he had already drawn his wages for the month from Father and gone early to the opium den.
He was in his fifties, yellow and thin, his face wrinkled and sallow like a discarded vegetable leaf in the market. Opium was his habit, his life, his only thing. Every day he had to go to the opium den and satisfy his craving. Otherwise, he would sit beside the sewing machine listless and without energy, looking as though he were ill. That was why everyone called him “Uncle Opium.”
I went out, turned left, crossed two streets, then turned into a narrow lane and came to an association hall. Inside was a dark room where several people lay on beds, slowly smoking long opium pipes that looked like blowtorches. The pipe bowls gave off faint sizzling sounds and tiny points of light.
After my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I spotted “Uncle Opium.”
“Uncle Feng, they’re calling you home for dinner!”
Father had taught me that children must be polite and must never call him “Uncle Opium” to his face.
“Mm, I’ll come in a little while, I’ll come in a little while.”
After saying this, “Uncle Opium” took another long, deep draw before slowly getting up.
By the time I returned home, Mother had set out all the bowls, chopsticks, and dishes. The large table held braised fish, white-cut chicken, stir-fried squid, beef with Chinese broccoli, vegetarian dishes, and more. It was the richest meal we had all year.
My younger sisters had put on their new clothes, and everyone was cheerful and festive. It was New Year’s Eve, the night for the family reunion dinner. Because “Uncle Opium” was alone, Father and Mother invited him to eat with us.
“Uncle Opium” arrived wearing a clean white shirt. Normally he wore only a short-sleeved round-neck undershirt, shorts, and slippers.
He gave each of my sisters and me a red envelope. I knew there was only one rupee inside, but that was already the most he could afford.
Mother once said, “A man like Uncle Opium has been in Burma for decades and doesn’t even own a decent set of clothes. What he earns isn’t even enough to pay for his opium. He really is pitiful.”
“Thank you!”
“Thank you!”
My sisters and I said as we accepted the red envelopes.
“Uncle Opium” drank wine while chewing pieces of white-cut chicken. He loved white-cut chicken best. He said it was the freshest and had the true fragrance of chicken.
“Give Uncle Opium the chicken tail,” Mother said.
We Cantonese have a custom of believing that the meat around the chicken’s tail is the most fragrant, soft, and tender part, and should be given to an elder as a sign of respect. So I picked up the chicken tail with my chopsticks and put it into “Uncle Opium’s” bowl.
He said happily, “Good boy, good boy! Next year you’ll make great progress in school!”
He smiled, showing yellow teeth blackened by smoke.
I did not know much about “Uncle Opium’s” life or about his family back home in Taishan. We were children and did not dare ask too many questions. I only heard that he had a wife and children in his home village, but seldom sent money back.
Every month he asked Father for an advance on his wages. Twice I saw him say to Father while they were working, “Uncle Ye, advance me a few rupees.” Father would take out the money and then record the amount in a little notebook.
“His opium craving must have come back hard,” Father would say to Mother with a note of regret.
“Ah! Whoever married him has a miserable fate,” Mother sighed. “She works hard her whole life and ends up with nothing.”
After the New Year’s Eve dinner, “Uncle Opium” walked away over the scraps of red firecracker paper scattered on the ground.
The first, second, and third days of the new year were all holidays. I am certain “Uncle Opium” went nowhere else. He must have spent them in the opium den, breathing in smoke and living what seemed to him like the days of an immortal.
By then I was in middle school and had studied modern history. I knew that imperialism had defeated us with opium and that Chinese people had been called the “Sick Man of East Asia.”
I simply could not understand it.
Why did “Uncle Opium” smoke opium? He had a wife and children back in the village, yet paid them no attention, while he himself had become a sallow, emaciated “Sick Man of East Asia.”
After graduating from middle school, I returned to China to continue my studies. I never saw “Uncle Opium” again.
Later, I learned from a letter from my younger sister that “Uncle Opium” had once been arrested by the local government and put in jail. There, he was severely beaten by the local people whom Cantonese disparagingly called *wu gui*. Not long afterward, he died in prison.
The Lunar New Year has come again.
I sigh for one pitiful, wandering soul.