Train Car by Jessica Szeto

Tuey Tai was the first Chinese woman to settle in Calgary, and her son, the first Chinese baby born in Calgary. She arrived in Calgary in 1905, 11 years after her husband, Louie Kheong. Louie (also known as “Luey”) had arrived in Calgary in 1894 and soon became Calgary’s first Chinese merchant. During the 1890s, the back of his store functioned as a fong, a community room that gave Chinese immigrants, who originated from the same geographic locality in China, support and a place to socialize with their peers. Along with George Ho Lem, he was one of the businessmen who initiated the building of the third, and current Chinatown.  At his funeral in 1939, over 600 people attended to pay their respects, and his funeral procession was four blocks long. 

Illustration by Jarett Sitter

Train Car by Jessica Szeto, read by the author

Tuey Tai hates being in this train car. Staring up at the immovable mountains outside her window, she wonders what it would be like to be so firmly planted on the ground. How wonderful it must be, that even a train must tiptoe around you, fearful of your wrath. 

 She’s grateful that Calgary is only a two-day train ride from Vancouver. Sitting in this cramped colonist train car, she’s surrounded by families speaking languages she’s never heard before. In this no-frills method of travelling, each passenger has to bring their own bedding and cook their own food. They’re all alone here together. 

 This hard, wooden train bench reminds her of the hard, wooden bunk bed where she spent most of her 648 hours aboard the RMS Empress of China. Back in April, she left her home in Taishan county of Guangdong province of China. Making her way to Hong Kong, she then sailed to Shanghai, Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohama, and finally to Vancouver. While 120 first-class passengers enjoyed the finest in luxury ocean liner travel, Tuey Tai and the other steerage-class folks scuttled beneath their feet. In the cargo hold, two decks below, they slept. 600 bunks in a single room. 

 In Vancouver, she paid $500 to the customs agent for a head tax levied only on the Chinese. In 1905, only seven other people were able to afford this exorbitant fee. For most men, earning only a dollar a day, their wives and children would forever be out of reach. But Tuey Tai’s husband was wealthy enough to start the first Chinese business in Calgary, and today he will be the first to bring his wife over from China. 

 As the train slows into the Calgary train station, she feels her stomach lurch. Her whole life, she has been headed towards this inevitable destination. First, she was someone’s daughter. Now, she is someone’s wife. Soon, she will become someone’s mother. 

 As she gingerly steps off the train, she easily spots her husband on the platform with a welcoming smile. Even though it has been years since she last saw him in China, he still looks exactly the same. He’s dressed in a traditional Chinese dark blue tunic and loose pants. A bowler hat atop his head, his long, braided queue hangs down his back. She’s exhausted and ready to rest, but she’s grateful to finally see his familiar face again. 

 They head to the train’s baggage area. Everything she owns in the world fits inside a Black-lacquered pig skin trunk with gold Chinese letters above the lock plate. Her husband grasps the two brass handles and lifts, a small grunt of exertion escapes his lips. 

 He waddles out of the station and she follows closely behind. Surrounded by a sea of gaping white faces, she feels a mass of contempt following her down the street. Soft and strange words drift towards her direction, a snake that slithers behind her every step. 

 She notices that most of the women here are corseted and wearing conservatively coloured dresses that drag on the ground. She feels overly conspicuous now in her loose, dark-green silk tunic with wide sleeves. Colourful cranes and clouds are embroidered all over the front and the sleeves. Her matching green skirt stops well above her ankles. Her fist-sized feet are adorned with arched robin-blue silk shoes and covered with embroidered phoenixes. 

 Suddenly, a rock flies past her face and hits her husband’s back. She turns and sees a giggling group of small children carrying fistfuls of stones. A crowd of gawkers stands nearby. She gathers enough strength to raise her eyes to meet theirs, but finds only disdain in their faces, no sign of a lifeline. 

 A barrage begins. Between the trunk and her bound feet, they’re unable to move quickly enough to escape. She keeps her eyes straight ahead of her, focused on the tightly-woven braid dangling in front of her and nothing else. Luckily, the stones are small and these bruises will heal. 

 Eventually, they pass an invisible boundary where she begins to see more faces that look like hers and signs she can actually read. The children can’t or don’t follow, and are absorbed back into the thinning crowd. She passes Chinese restaurants, laundries, a tailor, and a boarding house. 

 On the biggest and grandest building on the block, she spots her husband’s name in crisp white letters on a bay window, Kwong Man Yuen. 

 “You named the store after yourself?” she asks, somewhat unsurprised. 

 “Back then, I wanted everyone to know my name. But that’s not my name anymore. I’m Louie Kheong now,” he grins. 

 She stares at her husband’s dead name, written in both Chinese and English on the large overhead sign of this one-storey wooden building. She’s unable to read the slightly smaller words underneath, but someone will eventually tell her it says, “Silks, Chinese and Japanese Wares, Fancy Goods.” Small Chinese characters on the door read, “Groceries, Dry Goods, Produce.” 

 “Our living quarters are just behind here,” Louie says, opening the store’s front door. 

 Inside the store, every inch of sellable space is utilized. Shelves lined up against the walls are stacked high with pyramids of cans up towards the ceiling. Every countertop is piled with goods and there are even pots and pans hanging overhead. There’s tea, tobacco, bowls, chopsticks, shoes, clothes, bags of rice, noodles, cans and jars of various Chinese ingredients. 

 The back of the store has boxes filled with cabbage, turnips, bean curd, bamboo shoots, seaweed, mushrooms, and other vegetables. There are also barrels of bulk ingredients: dried oysters, salted fish, dried prunes, medicinal herbs, assorted nuts, and dried fruit. 

 Louie notices the look of amazement on her face and says, “As the only Chinese store in the 1890s, I had to stock everything. But now new stores are opening up in the second Chinatown, so I have to start attracting new customers. I’ve learned English down at the Chinese Mission and started carrying more suitable goods.” 

 He waves at a row of glass display cases containing fine China sets, brassware, silks, and teapots. A clerk stands behind the counters, manning a fresh pot of tea for potential customers. There’s no one else in the store right now, but the clerk still looks ready to pounce. 

 Louie walks through a door in the back of the store and she follows. Inside a large room, a dozen harried-looking men of all ages are smoking, reading newspapers, drinking tea, and playing cards. There’s a small kitchenette in the corner. The walls are covered with Chinese landscapes and announcements written on red paper. 

 Louie sets the heavy trunk down at his feet and gestures around, “This is the fong I started. A community gathering place that’s just for us, our fellow Taishanese brothers. Here, we can speak our native tongue, eat our own food in peace, share news and mail from back home, or just socialize with the only people who truly understand who you are and remember where you’re from.” 

 Tuey Tai feels her world shrinking, from an entire country, from an entire city, down to just this one room. 

 But as she stares at the drawn faces of these men, something glimmers in their eyes as they begin to notice her presence. There’s hope here. Maybe someday there will be more like her. Maybe someday they can work wherever they want. Maybe someday they can live outside of these four walls. 

 The men look ripe with words and she is a freshly sharpened blade, ready to peel away some of their monotony. 

 And for the first time, in a very long time, she stands very still. 

 All of them are trapped here in a train car. Noses pressing against the windows as the world blurs on by without them. They are stuck between two worlds, unable to be accepted into a land that will happily take their lives and cheap labor, but that will never allow them the luxury of a full life. 

 And every time they begin to settle in, alarms are raised and train whistles blare. “You are not welcome here. Leave and never come back,” the whistle screams. 

 A red thread tied around each of their hearts is pulling them back to the place they left behind, back towards the famine and violence they left behind. 

 But some will soldier on anyway. They will tie their destinies together in Chinatown, believing that a knot can withstand more than any individual thread. 

 Run-down and rickety, a train car was never meant to be a home. But they will turn it into one. They’ll light the dark interior with paper lanterns and fireworks. They’ll pass the monotonous hours with whiskey, games, and whispering well-worn stories into the night. They’ll drown out the clacking train wheels with the sounds of tiny feet pitter-pattering. 

 And in those places, they lived. She lived. 

Illustration by Jarett Sitter