A Chance Meeting

A week's vacation is a much shorter time period than it sounds. I spent three or four days of it doing little else but writing, but it wasn't the novel. It was mostly old testament stuff, and a game write-up. That's also worthwhile, but it's not the novel.

By chance, I bumped into three of my students the other day and one of them asked if I was working on my novel over break. She also asked if she could read the rough draft version. I doubt if she was serious, but I told her to ask again during the last week of school and then maybe. But the chance meeting did jog one important thought in my head...

I'm writing these descriptions of Hu Tien's childhood in China, but I've only been writing about what happened to her there. She needs to do something. There needs to be at least one decisive action that will help to define her character. A story along the lines of the barroom fight scene with Lily, perhaps. She might tell it herself, of her brother might, or even Lily. I'll decide that once I know what happened in the scene.

Her brother doesn't exist yet. I thought of giving her a brother just so we'd have another pair of eyes through which to see her, and I thought it might be helpful to have the perspective of someone who really doesn't like her. Here's what I wrote about her brother over Christmas break:

Hu Fan’s Sister

My sister is a piece of dung. A worthless girl child, a burden to her family, and shameful. A willful, greedy whore.

Father died when I was three and Tien was five. Mother had many suitors. Though a widow, she was still a young woman and very pretty. My uncles were anxious for her to remarry, and there was a neighbor, Yan Sing, who would have had her gladly. He did not like my sister, but he would have provided a fine home for mother and me and my brother. We could have found something to do with Tien. She could have been sold or married to someone. But mother was obstinate and did not want to let her go. And she wanted to keep father’s property for herself. If she married, we would go to live with Yan and father’s house would become my uncle’s. One day, do you know what she did? She took a knife from the kitchen and…it is too shameful to say. I heard her say that if she were ugly, then perhaps Yan would go away, would not want her any more. I shouted no, and I took the knife from her, and my uncle and his son beat her and took away our ox.

She would have married Yan, and Tien would have been sent away, but Yan was killed by bandits. There were many bandits after the last Ming emperor died and before the power of the Ch’ing spread to calm the countryside again. Things were bad for a while. You could not travel from one village to another unless you could hire many men with guns to escort you. One time, a group of bandits came through our village and looted everything. There was not much food, but they took what there was. Many were killed or beaten, and my brother died then. Afterwards we moved to another province, and then into Canton. My mother was not able to care for us, and I told her to sell Tien and then we could afford to eat. Instead, she took her to the monastery and left her to be a servant girl. She was useless, but my mother told the monks that she came from good farmer stock and would grow strong and work hard. But instead, Tien sat with the monks all day, and eventually they forgot she was there to work.

When I was old enough, I went to the merchants by Canton harbor and showed them that I could write. My letters were well-formed and elegant, and they made me a scribe. I worked hard, and when I had grown to be a young man, the English came and I learned to write English letters as well. I was working as a copyist and a translator when the rebellion came, and when the company ships left, I went with them. I knew that there were monks on several of the ships who had fled when the monastery was destroyed, but I did not know that Tien was one of them. When she found me among the passengers, I would not let her tell anyone she was my sister. She told anyway, because she is selfish and disobedient, but she is no sister to me, really.

Mr. MacPhereson, if you have any care for your reputation or for your purse, you would do well to stay well away from her. She is dung, and if you associate with her, you will come away smelling of dung, while she will go away laughing, with your coins in one pocket and your balls in another.