Read Online Journey Across the Four Seas by Veronica Li - Free Book Online
Authors: Veronica Li
Tags: Historical, Asia, History, Biographies & Memoirs, china, Chinese, Ethnic & National, Women in History
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an ocean of students and parents to fish from. Through friends of friends she dug up an elderly scholar in a flowing robe. He’d been a mandarin of the Manchu Dynasty and could recite every word of the Four Books and Five Classics. He would prepare me for Part I: Chinese Literature. For Part II: Chinese history, Sam-Koo got me a colleague at her school, a man by the nickname of History Wong. He knew his subject so well he could discuss history in his sleep. For the final part, Translation, a journalist who was well versed in both Chinese and English was to be my coach. However, after three sessions he couldn’t fit me into his busy schedule. I would have to tackle Part III on my own.
The day of my Chinese exam arrived. The first two parts, literature and history, were smooth sailing. After all, my grounding in Chinese had deep roots in the classics. Even in Italian Convent, I continued to read Chinese novels and history books in my spare time. The third part, however, was brutal. The essay to be translated was a treatise on the Battle of Waterloo. Terminology in military strategy and guns and cannons with names that I’d never heard of filled the page. I winged it as best I could, but when I walked out of the hall, I was certain university was an impossible dream.
The results took me by surprise. My scores weren’t only passing—they were way up at the top, above those of thousands of other secondary school students. Hong Kong University accepted me! I’d never aimed to get this far in the education ladder. I was pulling so hard on my Chinese just to spite the French teacher, but now that the bird was in my hands, I didn’t know what to do with it. Mother was glad to see me finish secondary school, but she was afraid that going any further would make me unmarriageable. Only men with a university education would dare ask for my hand, and there was only a handful of them in the entire colony. Besides, tuition plus room and board were more than Mother could afford. Sam-Koo, however, thought I should grab the opportunity. After all, she’d gone to a lot of trouble to push me through. The final word came from Brother Kin in Bangkok . He was working as an intermediary for an American company and earning a good income. He promised to foot the bill for all my university expenses. Swayed by her favorite son, Mother gave her permission. And that was how I, a girl, became the first in my family to go to university.
Only six out of the thirteen in my class got in. Anna was one of them, but her father, who was a bookkeeper, couldn’t scrape together the money. She enrolled in a two-year teacher training college instead. Poor Evelyn didn’t make it. Her mother turned on her, calling her incompetent and openly favoring her brother, who got into Hong Kong University the next year. Evelyn eventually enrolled in a night college, but what with war and illness, she never lived to finish her schooling. She died of cancer soon after thirty. The cancer started as a watery mole on her side, then spread to her blood and became leukemia. I was living in Bangkok at the time. I tried to rush back to see her, but she died before I arrived.
3
My freshman year had all the ingredients of a romance novel—the warm cozy feelings that bubble into a smile on the heroine’s lips, the throbbing of the heart whenever her love is near, and the excitement of every new day. The only thing missing was the fellow. The man of my dreams was tall, fair, handsome, kind, intelligent, and mature. While some of my classmates met some of the criteria, none of them met the crucial one of maturity. In my eyes they were mere boys still reeking of curdled milk on their chins. They were eighteen or younger, while I was a grown woman at twenty. Unbeknownst to me, the remedial class at Italian Convent had added two years to my secondary school education.
No, there was no fellow in my romance. I was in love with myself, my classes, my social life, and the
The day of my Chinese exam arrived. The first two parts, literature and history, were smooth sailing. After all, my grounding in Chinese had deep roots in the classics. Even in Italian Convent, I continued to read Chinese novels and history books in my spare time. The third part, however, was brutal. The essay to be translated was a treatise on the Battle of Waterloo. Terminology in military strategy and guns and cannons with names that I’d never heard of filled the page. I winged it as best I could, but when I walked out of the hall, I was certain university was an impossible dream.
The results took me by surprise. My scores weren’t only passing—they were way up at the top, above those of thousands of other secondary school students. Hong Kong University accepted me! I’d never aimed to get this far in the education ladder. I was pulling so hard on my Chinese just to spite the French teacher, but now that the bird was in my hands, I didn’t know what to do with it. Mother was glad to see me finish secondary school, but she was afraid that going any further would make me unmarriageable. Only men with a university education would dare ask for my hand, and there was only a handful of them in the entire colony. Besides, tuition plus room and board were more than Mother could afford. Sam-Koo, however, thought I should grab the opportunity. After all, she’d gone to a lot of trouble to push me through. The final word came from Brother Kin in Bangkok . He was working as an intermediary for an American company and earning a good income. He promised to foot the bill for all my university expenses. Swayed by her favorite son, Mother gave her permission. And that was how I, a girl, became the first in my family to go to university.
Only six out of the thirteen in my class got in. Anna was one of them, but her father, who was a bookkeeper, couldn’t scrape together the money. She enrolled in a two-year teacher training college instead. Poor Evelyn didn’t make it. Her mother turned on her, calling her incompetent and openly favoring her brother, who got into Hong Kong University the next year. Evelyn eventually enrolled in a night college, but what with war and illness, she never lived to finish her schooling. She died of cancer soon after thirty. The cancer started as a watery mole on her side, then spread to her blood and became leukemia. I was living in Bangkok at the time. I tried to rush back to see her, but she died before I arrived.
3
My freshman year had all the ingredients of a romance novel—the warm cozy feelings that bubble into a smile on the heroine’s lips, the throbbing of the heart whenever her love is near, and the excitement of every new day. The only thing missing was the fellow. The man of my dreams was tall, fair, handsome, kind, intelligent, and mature. While some of my classmates met some of the criteria, none of them met the crucial one of maturity. In my eyes they were mere boys still reeking of curdled milk on their chins. They were eighteen or younger, while I was a grown woman at twenty. Unbeknownst to me, the remedial class at Italian Convent had added two years to my secondary school education.
No, there was no fellow in my romance. I was in love with myself, my classes, my social life, and the
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