Life in a City

“That’s the thing about this city. Even though it’s relatively big, it’s very busy and it can sometimes be a very lonely place to live, which by the way can describe most cities, our city also has a lot of positives , built up through the decades by good and caring people, some of which I’m going to talk about now.

When my mother came to this place as a ten year old girl, it seemed so vast and strange to her and very different from where she had come. She felt terrified, small and completely overwhelmed by the move to a big town.

She and her family had left a small farming village in the mountains of China to come here. The culture was so different from what they were used to that it scared them. Gone was the open space of the forest and the freedom. My grandma cried for weeks and all she could say was “I don’t want to die in the devil’s land’ and that was said in Chinese as she couldn’t speak a word of English.

My mother and her parents together with seven siblings lived in a two bedroom run down shack on the outskirts of what they called ‘the fancy part of town’. They lived in that shack for ten years until they had saved enough money to buy their own small house. It was to them luxurious, a two bedroomed house with an outside toilet. The girls all shared the second bedroom and the boys both slept on the floor in the dining/lounge/play/study/argue and eat room! Sometimes when the nights were very warm they would sleep outside on the tiniest of verandas on mats, but they didn’t seem to mind. My mother told me that the children got into so much trouble at the beginning of life in the ‘new’ house because of their fascination with water coming out of a tap; they were so used to filling up buckets for cooking, bathing and drinking from a large well down the back of the block. They would turn the tap on and just sit and watch it, until their mother or father came in and gave them a good clip across the ear. “Don’t waste God’s water – it is liquid gold” their father would yell in very broken English.

My Grandfather was a labourer down at the wharf and my Grandmother would take in washing and ironing for the wealthy people. She would scrub it all by hand leaning into the bath filled with soapy water, ringing it out as tight as she could to then hang it on the man-made washing line outside in the sunshine. On wet days the house turned into a laundry with washing hanging just about everywhere – even on string lines going from the door handles to the window frames where a nail had been banged in for one end of the line to hook onto. Her reputation was all that was needed for hers and the family’s lives to be full of washing and ironing for many years.

My mother and her sisters and brothers were enrolled at the local primary school. There were other Chinese children there so it helped with their shyness and timidity as they could communicate in their own language while trying to master English. It was a lot easier for the children to get the grasp of it, but for my poor grandparents it was, as my grandfather would say ‘harder that eating soup with chopsticks’!  

It was the era where racism went hand in hand with migrants settling into new countries and cities bringing different language, foods and culture in general. So of course they got the usual awful things said to them about the colour of their skin and the shape of their eyes by some but generally my Mother remembers mainly kind people when she was growing up, but she herself was always open minded and fair about everyone.

 I personally think it always help to integrate into a community when the emphasis is on food and eating AND sharing it with others. The number of times, my mother told me, that friends would come over after school just to eat some ‘funny ‘looking but tasty’ food – which turned out to be spring rolls and pork buns! Asian cooking odours would waft from the kitchen of the house all the way down the road if the wind was blowing in the right direction – or the wrong direction if like one of the grumpy old men who lived on the same street, you hated Asian food and the smell of it. He would march on up to the house, yelling and swearing about ‘stinkin’ Chinese food. He would tell them in no uncertain terms that they should all go back to China or wherever they came from and take their smell with them”! My Grandmother, who had a very clever way of appeasing people and getting around them, told him that she would do his washing and ironing for him once a week if he didn’t ever come up to the house again, unless it was to eat with them! He took up the offer of the laundry and lots of people remarked that ‘he had never looked so clean and tidy’. On one occasion for whatever reason, old Mr. Lindsay came up to the house deciding to try some of the ‘Chinese tucker’ as he so eloquently put it. My mother asked him sit down at the table to eat, and set out a plate of food for him, which to his utter amazement he enjoyed. Sadly ten days later Mr. Lindsay passed away from a heart attack. Years later my Grandfather still teased my Grandma abut poisoning poor old Mr. Lindsay!

There wasn’t always enough food to be able to cook extras and give them away. Sometimes the men working on the wharf would go on strike and that meant no money from my Grandad to buy the groceries leaving my Gran to somehow drum up extra business. My mother and her siblings were learning to read and write and Gran would get them to make a simple poster and stand down by the post office holding it up and proclaiming ‘BEST WASHING AND IONNING DONE ENYWERE. CAN BE DROP OFF AND PICK UP SAME DAY WHEN WETHER IS GOOD. It quite often did the trick and Mrs Chan had a couple more baskets to do.

Of course there were always that one group of people who didn’t welcome newcomers of any colour or creed and the town at the time was no exception. My mother told me that you just learned to stay away from those kinds of people but they seemed to seek you out though and stand on the street corner as you passed by, calling you names and telling you to ‘go back to wherever you came from. We don’t need you here’.

It always takes a long time to change people’s thoughts about difficult to tackle subjects and racism is one of those subjects. It isn’t until you get to know the people involved and their culture and history that you begin to understand and accept the difference. This is only one of the problems they had to deal with, and as the town that my ancestors came to gradually grew into a City, along with that came more problems. More migrants came and this meant with every job that became available, more people went for it. The unemployment rose and so did the crime rate, domestic violence, graffiti and more.

Leanne decided it was time to get down to the ‘Nitty Gritty’….

As you know I am putting my name forward for the position of the Mayor of this amazing city. I would like the people who don’t already know me and my family to ask questions at will tonight. This way I can be open and transparent with you” she took a large gulp of her water and a deep breath ready for the questions.

“What are your long term plans for this place?”

“What will you change?”

“How will you bring the crime rate down?”

Questions were yelled from the audience, making it hard to hear and difficult to listen to each person’s query.

“Excuse me” she said in a loud and commanding voice. “I shall attempt to answer each and every question when they are asked one by one. Thank you. I did hear a couple of questions. Firstly let me say that my top priority as the Mayor of our city would be to give everyone a voice. When my Grandparents first came here, you were only listened to if you were someone of importance, or at least perceived to be someone of importance. That wasn’t the way our family thought, back then or today. To me, everyone should be given the chance to say what’s on their mind, to talk about the future of this city. I will welcome that. I want us to support our youth, the young generation out of work, bored and without much hope. One of my future projects would be to build a sporting complex on the outside of our city, for everyone. When my mother first came here there was nothing for the children to do outside of their homes. Gradually small and amateur sporting clubs were formed, the basketball, the soccer to name a couple, run by the concerned parents. It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, had your own business or worked as a labourer, because everyone worked for a common cause, the children of the town”. She seemed to have the attention of the audience in front of her, so continued.

“My Grandparents established their business, which by the way started off in the tiny kitchen in their home, graduating to a slightly bigger kitchen some years later, and eventually to the two restaurants that many of you will have visited or are still visiting today. They are run by three of my brothers and a sister and countless young people have worked there while at High School, doing as I did back in the day, washing dishes and then washing more dishes! Although I eventually did graduate to waitress duties, and to be honest I actually wished I was back in the kitchen some nights!”.

“Anyway, part of my family’s contribution to this City, along with the Chinese community was to raise enough money to pay for the local swimming pool, which I’m sure a lot of you here, or at least your children enjoy. That’s what they wanted to do, not for the notoriety or for any other reason but because they felt like they all belonged here, and it was their honour to do it.”

I left this place, my home, after completing High School to move to a much larger city to study. I stayed on for a few years after getting my first job, but my heart has always been here. I love this city and the people here, many of whom are my dear friends. I have come back home to bring my children up here, and I want to help change some of the problem areas into clean, safe and friendly areas. But I need all of you people here to get behind me, vote me in, and do it with me. I have a vested interest in making this city of ours a city to be proud of – a place that people want to visit.

One elderly man stood up and raised his hand as if asking permission to begin. “My name is Alfred and I had the pleasure of knowing your Grandparents and now of course still know your parents. And I brought the inquisitive, helpful and hardworking Leanne into this world, but I won’t say how many years ago! It is true that when migrants started to come into town, some of us folk that had lived here all of our lives weren’t all friendly and welcoming. Some were extremely difficult, and made life hard for the likes of your family and others. Over time we began to see that it was a positive thing that they lived here and had brought with them different ideas, foods and knowledge, and we were more open to them. It’s true what you say about getting to know people. We got to know the migrant people and we learnt a lot from them. I ended up becoming a first rate cook of spring rolls and pork buns!” This brought a few chuckles from the other people listening and he continued. “I won’t be someone to get too much out of a new sporting complex at ninety two years of age, but if it comes to fruition then there will be an awful lot of others who will benefit from it. It will also create jobs, and goodness knows we need that” he looked at Leanne as he slowly spoke and finished with “You will surely get my vote my dear”. Applause erupted around the room, obviously in agreement with the words said by the man who had been the town doctor for over forty years.

Leanne was relieved. She hadn’t invited anyone specific to tonight’s meeting simply because she wanted to be heard for who she was, her family heritage and the difference they had already made here, and not because of who she knew.

 The fact that Doctor Jessup had turned up and spoken was a bonus!

She genuinely loved this place and knew that with the backing of a lot of the people who lived here, a difference could and would be made.