Goldfish Uncle and Gentle Gweilo
6. A childhood sexual trauma that unknowingly shaped the relationships the rest of my life
On a sweltering summer's day in 1983, I took the tram to school. I had been doing that since my mother decided that I was old enough to travel on my own a year earlier.
The tram was extremely crowded, as usual. A middle-aged man with bulging eyeballs, oily black hair and a bald spot on his skull elbowed his way toward me, and pressed his body against my back.
With a heavy school bag on my right shoulder, I tried to use that as a “shield” to fend off this man, one of the many sexual predators who took advantage of innocent school girls.
The school bag was rather useless. I felt that hard “thing” press against my right buttock.
I had my summer uniform on — a dress made with just a thin layer of white cotton. I felt the heat from the man’s breath and from a certain spot in his pants. My heart pounded and my forehead was drenched with sweat.
I tried to look away, focusing my vision at the crowded streets and unlit neon signs outside the windows of the tram. But even escaping with my vision was difficult. My fellow tram riders partially blocked my view. I closed my eyes, muted my scream, and prayed that the yuck would be over soon.
“Ding, ding, ding!” The horn of the hundred-year old vehicle passed through a busy intersection, dispersing pedestrians to a safety island. It was my stop. I waded through the crowd like a lungfish burrowed through mud, and jumped off the tram after depositing 20 cents into the fare slot.
Whew! I survived another unsavory attack from those “goldfish uncles”! They are so called because of their seemingly bulging eyeballs, protruding as they pursued their young preys.
Later that week, my school organized an outing to a watercolor exhibition at City Hall. The artist was British. His paintings depicted the rural areas of Hong Kong and nearby Canton Province — sceneries that I had never seen.
Could it be true that there was so much green and one-story houses in Hong Kong? All I had known, up until then, were high-risers like the Monster Building where I and my family lived, and forests made with concrete.
This artist used a soft, pastel palette and created such an idyllic world that combined a strong nostalgia for the past and a romantic vision for what could've been if modernization didn’t march on so relentlessly.
After walking around the exhibition hall, I took a good look at the painter, who was seated at a table with a stack of hardcover books filled with his art. Tall and lanky, he had sandy blond hair and blue eyes, and a pair of gold-brimmed glasses. I approached him gingerly, my heart pounding.
“How do you do, sir?” I was extremely formal, using the kind of greetings I learned at school and on British educational TV programs beamed to young students in colonial Hong Kong.
He was very friendly and broke out a smile — the kindest and gentlest smile I had ever seen in a man. “I’m fine, and you?”
I answered a few of his questions in stilted and broken English. But I noticed he didn't get irritated by that at all. He spoke with a soft voice that somehow felt very soothing to my nerves.
I had been on edge since the tram incident earlier in the week, hypervigilant about when the next attack might happen.
The artist asked for my name, what grade I was attending, and which subjects I preferred at school. I said: “Louisa. It came from my Chinese name, Lou. It’s a precious stone. My favorite subject is art. My father is an artist!”
He looked softly into my eyes and inquired about my father with enthusiasm. Feeling self-conscious, I thought he might have noticed my blushing.
This encounter with a white foreigner (or gweilo, which literally means “old ghost,” a colloquial term that can be derogatory but also endearing at the same time) left me feeling all fuzzy and warm inside. What a big contrast from the Chinese men I had encountered!
Talking with him made me feel that I was seen and heard by an invisible angelic force. It lightened my heart and cleansed the filthy stench I carried within. I felt as if I was delivered from the drudgery of a life I didn’t want or like.
From then on, I held onto the image of this handsome and gentle gweilo. I would conjure up his face whenever I got assaulted again by a goldfish uncle, or whenever my mother shut me up at my faintest attempt to share my angry, fearful or sad feelings.
A fantasy grew: When I became an adult, I would meet an intellectual, artistic “white old ghost.” He would deliver me from the hell that I was born into, and give me the unconditional love and attention I so yearned for and couldn’t get from my own family.
I would let my imagination run loose, and indulge in the fantasy that I was liberated from the entrapment of the traditional Chinese society, which I had come to hate. In this dream, I no longer had to wear the costume of the “perfect daughter,” one that was given to me since birth. I would fly away with this gweilo and never return to my callous home.
This is the 6th installment of my “Memoirish” series. Click here for the 5th installment, “Early Years in Monster Building.”
Sending a hug Louisa. ❤️
Glad you can get those stories out.
Bearing witness, sitting alongside and reading every word, dear Louisa. I see you, and respect the painful details you're walking through.xo