Our first fridge
They kept chickens on their rooftop balcony, inside cages. Grandpa bought gai yeung (chicken-seedlings) to start and at the height of their “business” they raised near a hundred hens and roosters at a time.
“Definitely not free-range,” says Uncle B. “They’d get sick and start nodding their heads, and we’d kill them to eat. What! It’s true. Gai wun… is real. (Chicken pandemic, maybe something like avian flu now or perhaps not as serious.) They say jung wun gai (nodding-pandemic-chicken, usually refers to a person who bumps into other people while walking, either due to carelessness or franticness). But we ate them, and look at us!” Secretly I can only think of his recent seizure, but he smirks like he meant it anyway.
Did you sell the surplus eggs? “Yes, and we slaughtered and ate or sold the ones that came of age.”
I asked about the story of my papa, as a kid, going up to the rooftop to fetch a chicken. He caught one (remarkable considering how feisty they can be, but if it’s a wun gai then it’s probably easier…), carried it down by the feet. By the time it got to grandma the chicken was dead from being hung upside down. Probably induced a stroke in the poor gal.
“Our first fridge, what d’you think we put in it? Only water! You open the fridge and it’s filled with rows of water bottles,” says Uncle B, his face red and taut with mirth.
“And Vitasoy,” adds my papa.
“Bottles and bottles of vitasoy. Back then, sold in glass bottles. In the summer, it’s the best. Oh! What did you think we put our water in?” For some reason the image in my head was Dasani, blue and cool, but Dasani didn’t exist then. I shake my head. “Johnny Walker bottles! The blocky square-square bottles were great for stacking…”
“I don’t know where they found them, they found so many,” says grandma.
“We could get cold Vitasoy from the store. The stores were so clever then. In the same icebox they serve cold Vitasoy in the summer, and warm soy in the winter…”
“Leh, like those glass fridges now…”
“Only with a block of ice inside! People back then were so clever…”
“We were so poor, but so happy,” says grandma. “We were poor but had everything we needed. Clothes were easy! Your grandpa gets a free uniform tailored for him every year. What would we do with that many uniforms! So every other year” — she points to dad and Uncle B — “their school uniforms got made instead. What a great employer! No such go zai cheung now.” (No little-song-to-sing; the whole phrase can be translated as “these [good] things don’t exist anymore” or sometimes “this is why we can’t have good things”.)
“It’s true, employers were nicer, more compassionate.” Uncle B gestures at Aunt M with his chopsticks. “Her father, working hard, working hard, so hard he had a stroke… they paid his salary for years and years, while he rested at home, until he said to them, ‘it’s OK, all my kids have gone to school now, there is no need…’”