Hainan Dao

Book I Chapter 04

HAINAN DAO BOOK I

CHAPTER 04

What did I know about my father’s homeland? Almost nothing. Up to that point in my life, the only thing I knew about Hainan Island was the fact that my parents had been born there. That and a few other odd tidbits that I had picked up from an article that I had read out of the Medical Post, of all places. And I had only glanced through that issue accidentally, when I had nothing better to do that day at work.

Before leaving for the Island, I did what Abby had suggested in the restaurant. I called up the man on the napkin. That’s when the first problem started. The gentleman who came to the phone answered in Hainan, which was, of course, total Greek to me. I tried doing some Cantonese with him but that was out of the question. I paused and cursed on the inside.

Taking a deep breath, I tried switching over to my limited Putong and decided to give it two whole minutes before I would give up and try to think of something else. I know what I had said back in the restaurant to my sister. I had told her that my Putong was passable. Well, what I had meant was, passable in the sense that if I was ever mistakenly caught for drug trafficking back on the Mainland, I could probably manage to blurt out my Chinese name before they shot me.

To my surprise and relief, the man on the other end of the line gave a whoop of surprise and relief himself, when he finally began to understand what I was trying to say. Laughing, he switched to Putong too, and though we still had to struggle with it, we began to get our meanings across, if only slowly and with much pain.

After I explained my situation to him, and that I wanted to come back to the Island for a brief stay, he became ecstatic, and told me not to worry, leave it to him, he would arrange everything. I knew the people in the village had always held my father in high regard, and so I specifically requested that he not turn my minor visit back there into a huge community affair. They tended to do that whenever my father went back for business. The man assured me over the phone that he understood. It was going to be just a little side trip. A small vacation. Incognito, even.

***

The flight out to the Island took about an hour. I landed in Haikou International Airport amid hazy sunshine on the Friday afternoon, near the north end of the Island, along with two trains of thundering tourists from Hong Kong in loud, immutable beachwear.

Filtering past the final gates beyond customs, I squinted my eyes and hunted among the horde of faces in the reception area, for someone who might appear to know me, someone who might match the voice that I had heard over the telephone.

There. Just on the fringe of the waiting masses, was a young man holding up a sign that said, ‘Welcome, Mr. Ying Furen.’ But my last name was Chan. Well, I suppose the mistake was understandable.

Ying was my father’s original last name, the one that he had been born with. In fact, it was the last name of most of the people in his home village, Sanjia. This was not surprising, considering that the Ying’s in that area were all originally descended from one man, who had immigrated south from a town close to Beijing called, Habei, almost eight hundred years ago, some time within the Sung Dynasty. And so, my father was actually born Ying Yixi, and not Chan Shiying. For some strange reason that I never did find out about, he had adopted the new name when he first moved to Hong Kong those many years ago. I didn’t know what name he went by when he used to come back to Hainan on his visits, so maybe that’s why they got my last name mixed up now.

I approached the young man holding up the card. I frowned. Looking about my age, he appeared far too young to be the one I had spoken with over the phone.