The Harmony Silk Factory

Johnny still found time to visit the odd village as he had done before, but his old contacts knew that their boy was now a man, and now they would have to travel to him. A few times a year he organised lectures, which grew less clandestine and more well attended. At these events there was generous hospitality, free food and drink for everyone. There was less lecturing, more laughing. The people loved him. Like us all, they wanted someone to worship and adore, and so they poured their hopes and fears into this young man whom they did not, and never would, truly know.

It was at this point in his life, when he was just becoming a famous man, that Johnny met my mother.

7. Snow

MY MOTHER, SNOW SOONG, was the most beautiful woman in the Valley. Indeed, she was one of the most widely admired women in the country, capable of outshining any in Singapore or Penang or Kuala Lumpur. When she was born the midwives were astonished by the quality of her skin, the clarity and delicate translucence of it. They said that she reminded them of the finest Chinese porcelain. This remark was to be repeated many times throughout her too-brief life. People who met her — peasants and dignitaries alike — were struck by what they saw as a luminescent complexion. A visiting Chinese statesman once famously compared her appearance to a wine cup made for the Emperor Chenghua: flawless, unblemished, and capable of both capturing and radiating the very essence of light. As if to accentuate the qualities of her skin, her hair was a deep and fathomless black, always brushed carefully and, unusually for her time, allowed to grow long and lustrous.

In company she was said to be at once aloof and engaging. Some people felt she was magisterial and cold, others said that to be bathed in the warm wash of her attention was like being reborn into a new world.

She was magical, compelling, and full of love, and I have no memory of her.

She died on the day I was born, her body exhausted by the effort of giving me life. Her death certificate shows that she breathed her last breath a few hours after I breathed my first.

Johnny was not there to witness either of these events.

Her death was recorded simply, with little detail. “Internal haemorrhaging” is given as the official cause. Hospitals then were not run as they are today. Although many newspapers reported the passing of Snow Soong, wife of businessman Johnny Lim and daughter of scholar and tin magnate T. K. Soong, the reports are brief and unaccompanied by fanfare. They state only her age and place of death (twenty-two, Ipoh General Hospital) and the birth of an as yet unnamed son. For someone as prominent as she was, this lack of detail is surprising. The only notable story concerning my birth (or Snow’s death) was that a nurse was dismissed on that day merely for not knowing who my father was. As Father was absent at the time, the poor nurse responsible for filling in my birth certificate had the misfortune to ask (quite reasonably, in my opinion) who the child’s father was. The doctor roared with shock and disgust, amazed at the nurse’s ignorance and rudeness. He could not believe that the nurse did not know the story of Johnny Lim and Snow Soong.

Snow’s family was descended, on her father’s side, from a long line of scholars in the Imperial Chinese Court. Her grandfather came to these warm Southern lands in the 1880s, not as one of the many would-be coolies but as a traveller, an historian and observer of foreign cultures. He wanted to see for himself the building of these new lands, the establishment of great communities of Chinese peoples away from the Motherland. He wanted to record this phenomenon in his own words. But like his poorer compatriots, he too began to feel drawn to the sultry, fruit-scented heat of the Malayan countryside, and so he stayed, acquiring a house and — more importantly — a wife who was the daughter of one of the richest of the new merchant class of Straits Chinese. This proved to be an inspired move. His new wife was thrilled to be married to a true Chinese gentleman, the only one in the Federated Malay States, it was said. He in turn was fascinated by her, this young nonya. To him she was a delicate and mysterious toy; she wore beautifully coloured clothes, red and pink and black, and adorned her hair with beads and long pins. She spoke with a strange accent, the same words yet a different language altogether. This alliance between ancient scholarship and uneducated money was a great success from the start, especially for Grandfather Soong (as he came to be known), who was rapidly running out of funds.