LIVING IN BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, A Memoir - PART 2

Part 2: The Migration from China to Australia

When I was around five years old, my uncle Wenhua, mum’s older brother, had moved to Australia. At that time, Australia did not have the tough immigration restrictions it has today. When my uncle heard about the severity of my eye condition, he looked for a way to help my mum and I migrate to Australia, so that my prospects of education and employment would be improved.

At the start of 1990, my uncle introduced mum to a colleague of his from the factory he was working at. His name was Gordon. Gordon and mum started getting to know each other over the phone, which Soon after led to him flying to Shanghai to meet mum. Although mum’s English back then wasn’t great, it was enough to get by and to engage in simple conversations. Their relationship blossomed quickly and soon afterwards they decided to get married.

Looking back, I believe mum’s decision to get married and move to a foreign country wasn’t driven by love, or more precisely wasn’t driven by love towards Gordon. Her decision was primarily for me, to provide me with a future. I am forever thankful for my mum’s sacrificial love, for her sacrifice in laying aside her own interests to provide me with opportunities in Australia that would not have existed if I remained in China.

New life in Australia

On December 1st, 1990, my mum and I boarded a one-way flight to Perth Australia to start our new lives. This was the first time in my life going overseas and flying in a plane. The flight was quite a miserable journey, not because I missed home, but rather because I suffered motion sickness for most of the flight, which climaxed with my throwing up just as we were about to land. When we stepped off the plane however, my senses kicked in. The first thing I noticed was the incredibly bright sunlight which blinded my eyes. I had never ever seen skies this blue back home in China! I remember taking a few deep breaths and marvelling at how fresh the air was. What a contrast to the familiar settings back home in Shanghai.

I don’t remember how we got to our new home. I guess my new step-dad probably picked us up from the airport. All I could remember was how different everything was. Instead of multi-storey apartments that filled up the skyline, and streets populated by people, Perth was full of spacious terrane covered by the beauty of nature, with people and houses occasionally appearing here and there. There was an eerie silence about the place. Not that there wasn’t any background noise, but the constant bombardment of noise everywhere I went back in Shanghai was no longer present.

Over the next few days I was introduced to life in this foreign place. I enjoyed the laid back lifestyle of this new home and the beauty of the natural scenery; the beaches, parks, and sand dunes. However, the inability to understand a word of what anyone was saying frustrated me. Every time Gordon spoke to my mum, I would ask her, “Mum, mum, what did he say?” I’m sure this irritated Gordon immensely. After all, he had just acquired a new step-son. This friction gradually started to impact my mum too. The way Gordon treated me as an outsider bothered her. On top of that, she couldn’t cope with his stingy use of money.

I remember on one occasion, we went out for lunch and he bought a plate of eight fried dumplings. Usually this would at the most feed one person or maybe not even that. However, Gordon had bought this plate to share between the three of us. He assigned three dumplings to himself, three to mum, and two to me. As a child, I didn’t know any better. I started complaining to my mum about how hungry I was. The two dumplings assigned to me couldn’t give me any relief from my hunger. To this day, mum still remembers that incident, and from that day she vowed to herself that she would make money and not allow herself to be in that position of dependence upon someone else’s money again.

This tension between mum and Gordon continued until one day I found my mum locked in the bathroom with Gordon. I called to mum and there was no response. I called a few more times and still no response. All I remember hearing was Gordon shouting at my mum, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I became increasingly anxious and began to slam my fist against the door. I felt frustrated and powerless. What was Gordon doing to my mum! I cried out to mum, but no response.

This went on for a long, long time. And after what seemed like an eternity, mum finally emerged from the bathroom, emotional and exhausted. I only found out later that this traumatic event had taken place all because Gordon was displeased at the amount of water my mum was using.

Finally, mum reached a point where she couldn’t stand it any longer. She couldn’t cope with Gordon’s stingy attitude towards money, and above all the way he was cold towards me. So after one month, mum decided to separate from Gordon and move away from Perth, to Melbourne, where her brother and sister in-law was.

To be continued.

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If you missed Part 1, you can read it here.

You can read Part 3 of my memoir here.

Jimmy