Writing letters for the illiterate (part 2)
a short piece of fiction born out of my desire to relive this part of history
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are purely products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Tin was born in Shanghai in 1922, and his family came to Hong Kong when he was three. Not in the fancy way the Shanghai elite came to Hong Kong, dancing at the Lido hotel1 on weeknights and dressing up for the races on the weekends, but in the thoroughly proletarian way of coming to find work to earn money. According to his mother, they came from money; his parents caught the tail end of it before it was squandered on the usual masculine vices, so wealth or status was not for his generation to enjoy.
They lived on the highest floor of a three-story terrace shoplot. The ground floor was a provisions shop run by Teochew immigrants, the second floor was where the shop owner and his family lived, and the third floor was where they stayed. He spent his childhood with his two sisters, happy enough in a rush of knobbly elbows and knees, stealing candy from the store downstairs and getting caught and spanked. He spent summers listening to murder mysteries on the radio, watching the occasional rat scurry from one hole to another in the walls, and ripping old store receipts into confetti to watch them waft down the street.
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In his twenties, he became a letter writer— helping people who were illiterate read and write letters, file tax returns, apply for business licences, fill in application forms and any other miscellaneous writing duties. He had a small tin shack set up on Shanghai street, a few blocks away from the Kowloon post office, so he or his customers could immediately post the letters after they were written. There were forty odd letter writing stalls in his district, but there was no real competition. Everyone had their own distinctive writing style and strong suit. The old man with the thick glasses and the hairy mole on his chin at the end of the street had a penchant for writing steamy love letters, and the well-dressed gentleman two stalls away from him did a lot of translating work between English and Chinese.
Tin had been at it for twenty years, and now was already forty-four. He liked his job, and people liked him because he was tidy, kept to himself and didn’t gossip about the secrets shared with him during the letter writing process. There was a plump woman who tried to set up shop across the street a few years ago. She was initially very popular with female customers, but she gossiped voraciously, and word got around eventually and her shop tanked. Tin always believed that, apart from the fact that women were less intelligent, even if they were educated, their loose mouths would make them unsuitable for the job.
He likened himself to a doctor, listening to people’s problems, or a priest in his confessional. On most days, the letters were banal and administrative. His friends sometimes asked him if he had ever encountered any salacious gossip or political coups plotted in the letters, but in actual fact, his letters weren’t that interesting. Even adulterous affairs were short and discreet, desire throbbing between the white sheets. I have x amount of money enclosed. Meet me at so-and-so hotel at this particular time and date. I look forward to it.
Sometimes he would have regular customers. One of them was Ah Yee, a girl from neighbouring city Shunde who had come to Hong Kong to work at a textiles factory, and was living here with her sister and brother-in-law. She would write to her parents from time to time.
When Ah Yee first came, she sat down and remained huffing and puffing in silence, trying to gain her composure.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he said.
“I— Mom and Dad, how are you? Are you eating well? I am eating well too. The food here isn’t too different from home. The working hours are long and tough. I– I don’t like my manager. I’m worried that he’s a perverted lecher. I saw him touch a girl’s face then squeeze both her shoulders in a really slow, nasty way when both her hands were occupied at the sewing machine. It’s disgusting. So I usually pour a layer of glue over my hands and face in the morning so when it dries it looks like I have a peeling skin condition. Wait, don’t write that— can I cut that out?”
“Sure, no problem.”
She looked up. His reply came too quick and easy, without feeling, as if editing out suffering was something he did on a daily basis (in fact it was). She cleared her throat and continued.
“The working hours are not too long and the working conditions are satisfactory. Sister sends her regards. She is now six months pregnant and I think doesn’t want me staying with her once the baby is born. She keeps saying there isn’t enough space, and she will need the room that I’m in once the baby is born. I’m not sure if she’s been talking to you about it. She keeps telling me to go back and find a husband— wait, don’t write that.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to go home just yet. I’ve already left you and dad to come and work here, and I want to make something of it before I actually return, or maybe I can make enough for you to come here if you want. But living in Hong Kong is expensive and cramped here, not like our place back home where we can grow choi sum and cabbage in the back garden— are they growing well? Did the water buffalo come around and chew at them recently? I really miss you, mom, you know—,”
She started tearing up and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Sorry",” she said. She continued.
“Anyway, here is some money enclosed. Take care of your health. From your filial daughter Ah Yee.”
She looked up at him. “I don’t want to make them any more worried than they already are. Can you read the letter for me?”
He cleared his throat and read aloud—
Mom and Dad,
How are you? Are you eating well? I am eating well too. I am coping with work. Sister sends her regards. She is now six months pregnant and is looking forward to life as a mother. She hopes I can find a husband too, perhaps back home, but I hope to work for a while here first. Hope the choi sum and cabbages in the backyard are growing well. Take care of your health.
From, your filial daughter Ah Yee
“Yes, yes, that’s it, thank you,” she said, scrubbing her tears dry with her hands and smiling.
Sometimes she would bring a letter from her parents, ask him to read it, then draft a reply on the spot.
“Hang on, hang on!” she said, interrupting him whilst he was in the midst of reading one such letter. “You said mother— where is the word for it?” she asked him, scouring the mass of characters on the page as if her determination would make the character for ‘mother’ glow.
He pointed to the two Chinese characters for mother “母親” (mu3 qin1).
She made him circle it then continue reading.
The word “love” sidestepped direct declaration, but peeked through sentences like sunlight through wooden blinds. It showed up in phrases from her mother— “today I made the mince-meat rice you love eating so much, and I thought about you.” Ah Yee made him circle the word for love “愛” (ai4) in that sentence. Her thumb stroked the word over and over when the letter was returned to her. “I’m going to remember this word,“ she said.
He realised she learnt bits and pieces of Chinese characters this way. As she learnt a few words here and there, she would follow his finger when he read aloud her letters and would yell out the words she recognised when he got to them–
“I…. eat… you! Me!”
“Time…fat! No…no…good!”
“...love! I miss you! I miss you! Am I right?”
In her excitement, she leaned in and said it in close proximity, almost in his ear. His heart twisted in discomfort; he knew she wasn’t flirting, but it felt like she was, anyway.
One day she asked him to write a letter to her childhood friend in Shunde describing the sights in Hong Kong.
“The railway clock tower and station2 in Tsim Sha Tsui is a place where tourists and pigeons flock gracelessly, and where locals tend to avoid,” she said.
He looked up. “Your descriptions are pretty good,” he said, in spite of himself.
“I know!” she gushed. It was probably the first time anyone had told her something like that. “If only I could read and write everything would be— sorry, no offense— so much easier. There’s only one girl that knows how to read in the factory, and she’s already promoted to become a clerk. You know, if I did know how to write, I think I would be a great writer,” she said with conviction. "I’ve listened to every story telling in the park since I knew about them,” she said.
There was an old man who would read aloud newspaper serials in the park whenever they came out. Tin was dimly aware of it, having passed by a few times. It was usually exaggerated martial arts stories, and the audience were mostly retired men in stringy vests and one or two passersby. The quality of the stories were variable, to say the least, but the old man did do some passionate character impersonations with a martial arts move or two that amused the supportive crowd.
“I’ve always wanted to be a writer,” she said, her embarrassed smile getting to him and making the summer day a lot hotter than it was. “It’s stupid, isn’t it? That a factory girl who can’t read or write should say that,” she said good-naturedly, in the simple way the working class talk themselves down, without much thought.
“I think you can,” he said, quietly, his own conviction surprising the both of them.
She looked up, biting her lip. “Mister Tin, you’re the first person to say something like that to me,” she said.
It was a vulnerable place for her, and she let it unfurl, in the partially covered shack, both of them sweating and looking at each other in silence. The longer the seconds passed in silence, the closer they would be coming up against the gates of propriety. Tin relished standing against it for as long as he could, hands running across the smooth, cool wrought iron fence of decent behaviour. She was waiting for him to take the lead, he could see, but he couldn’t do it.
He sighed to diffuse the tension. “But it’s thanks to people who don’t read or write that I still have my job. You also have a skill set I don’t,” he said, nodding at a patch of embroidered flowers she’d embroidered over a hole in her cloth bag. “Now shall we finish this letter up?”
One thing he didn’t know before doing this job was that he wanted to know their stories. Every so often he would think about so-and-so and wondered if they got the job, or if this other customer really ended up marrying that ‘horrible stingy man’, or if the business deal went through, or if missing cousins were found, or if dad had managed to pull through surgery.
Most of the time these stories were lost threads. Migrant workers went back to their hometowns, or birthed kids who went to school and could write for them, hence not needing his services. Sometimes they just never came back. And when they did, he didn’t feel right about asking them about their personal life, the living done between letters. He was purely a medium in which written communication was enabled.
So in this haphazard way, he had bits and pieces of updates about Ah Yee’s life— to his relief, she’d moved to work at another factory, this one making fake plastic plants and flowers, and she would spend her free time helping take care of her sister’s baby.
When it rained, he moved his workspace to a corner of the provisions shop (downstairs where he lived) with the proprietor’s approval. Business wasn’t as good on rainy days, but his regular customers knew where to find him.
That day it was the sort of rain where letters stained and turned to mush. The drains, caked with dirt and dormant on sunny days, overflowed, tumescent, and with it rose unbidden the smells of the sewer.
Ah Yee came in from the downpour, and put her dripping umbrella in the rusted canister at the door.
There was hardly anyone in the shop. The shopkeeper had walked under the pendulum of the hanging clock and gone into the back storeroom, whistling. Apart from the two of them, the only other customer in the shop was standing at the open doorway, waiting for rain to let up a bit.
She sat at his desk and drafted a letter to her parents with the usual greetings.
“I am coming back for the Lunar New Year. Mother-.” she hesitated and stopped, fidgeting with the handkerchief that she’d brought to wipe herself dry from the rain.
Tin realised with a trickling sense of dread what she was about to say and suddenly felt very much aware of himself, sitting here, clock ticking, the rain outside soundproofing a quiet humidity indoors that made his skin prickle.
“Mother, I have met the boy Chee Fai from our village that you told me to look for here and we are getting along well. We are both coming back together.”
He pushed through a thick mental wall and tried to keep his tone light. “New boyfriend, eh?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she mumbled, distractedly.
They sat for a while in an awkward silence.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come to you for this,” she suddenly blurted.
He felt an irrational rush of anger flare and die down. “Why not?” he said eventually, with some difficulty. “I only wish you the utmost happiness that it goes well,” he said with a smile.
After the letter was written and sealed, he stood by the door to see her out, looking at her shielding her bag from the rain. He felt vaguely disappointed and embarrassed that she’d indirectly acknowledged his feelings for her; he’d taken care to keep his emotions in check and his demeanour professional over the two years that they’d known each other, as best as he could. He thought she was one with her heart on her sleeve. She was the obvious one, not him.
He didn’t hear from her for a while. He’d assumed that she had gotten married with the man she’d mentioned in his letter. But another one of his customers, a fat fellow who seemed to know everything, told him that Ah Yee’s wedding was called off.
“You know that pretty factory girl that used to come here?” he said in a conspiratorial whisper as he sat down at Tin’s desk.
“Ah Yee?” Tin asked, scratching the back of his neck to avoid looking at the man, so the man couldn’t see the effect of his words in Tin’s eyes.
“The wedding was called off! I was invited and all. They were supposed to host forty tables at the wedding banquet back in our hometown, you know.”
“Oh.”
”Turns out he wanted her to go back to take care of his in-laws but she didn’t want to! Wanted to stay out here and work. The audacity. I think too much of city living has messed with her head. These women nowadays are no good– they’ve forgotten what it means to be a good woman and a good wife.”
“I see,” he said. It was something that he would agree with before but now he only felt resentment, her resentment, at the man’s words. But he also felt a golden nest of a feeling inside of him, one that he wanted to nurture and feel in its entirety when he returned home and looked up at the ceiling, dreaming of possibilities and permutations, like the dream life in Shanghai that was never his.
The last time she saw him was at the store.
“I’m- I’m so glad that I can still find you here!” She said it like she’d been depending on it for days.
She was wearing a yellow and white striped sundress and a rattan straw hat, an outfit that should look ridiculous on a factory girl, but it didn’t. She looked infuriatingly good. And it made such an impression on him that it was all he could think of, hence it was the one thing he could not talk about with ease.
“How are you doing?” he said. “It’s been a while. Are you here to write a letter?”
"No.” She beamed. “I just wanted to tell you I learnt to read and write. I’m at around 500 Chinese characters now. I also learnt the English alphabet.” she said.
“That’s amazing. Who would have thought so!”
“I’m going to be a secretary. For our factory head, some guy called Li Ka Shing.3 Sometimes I can’t understand what he tells me because he has a really strong accent,” she said, laughing.
“That’s a great opportunity. I wish you all the best,” he said, meaning it.
She rummaged in her bag. “And– this is for you,” she gave him a small mirror. The back of the mirror had a couple of messily embroidered flowers sewn on a brown cloth background. He pocketed it quickly, knowing he would be poring over its every detail in the next few weeks and wanting to hide the fact in front of her as best as possible. “Thanks,” he said.
“I just wanted to say– thank you. For everything. I want to— it’s been so— you’ve been so— it means so much, thank you.” she looked flushed as he inadvertently stood up to see her to the doorway. Her pauses sounded to him like sunlight through gaps in wooden blinds, and that, to him, was enough.
He nodded. “It was my pleasure too. Though you won’t need my services any more, come and say hello sometime. See you around,” he said and waved.
She waved and turned around to walk away under the columns of the terrace shop lots. She walked through the sunny colonnade in that ridiculous sundress through alternating sunlight and shadow like a fish swimming through dappled waters, until she turned the corner, out of sight.
He fingered the small mirror she gave him in his pocket, smiled, and went back inside the shop to return to work.
A big big thank you to
, and for believing in this story and nudging it forwards~🧹🪣 Some housekeeping: Please note that the Slow Burn Living Podcast will be on a break this month as one half of us is on holiday, but we will be back! Words will be out as usual every 1-2 weeks.
Lido Hotel - https://gwulo.com/lido#17~22.23573~114.19807~Map_by_GovHK-Markers~100 Also mentioned occasionally in Eileen Chang’s novels.
The train station was demolished in 1978, now only leaving a clock tower by the Tsim Sha Tsui harbour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_railway_station_(KCR)
![Kowloon Railway Station. Kowloon Railway Station.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4274af76-66ea-4efb-9abf-e258772aa563_640x368.jpeg)
Li Ka Shing, a rich tycoon in Hong Kong, started off his empire by making plastic flowers and turning it into a business before branching out into other industries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ka-shing#Plastics_manufacturing
Part two finally!!! 🥺 I loved every bit of this! It's romantic in a clumsy sort of way--not your writing which is fabulous, their interactions! The tension between them as they were cramped in Tin's store is palpable, and the bit where Ah Yee visits on a rainy day was so heartbreaking! I felt like I was punched in the gut!!!
Please, please, please write a follow up piece! Maybe Tin's life/business as HK changes + more people become literate?
It's definitely left plenty of food for thought, mainly:
- that letter writers weren't just parrots and all had a niche! I like to think that my niche would have been savage break up letters (but more likely would be the woman who gossips too much and loses all her business!)
- how they were also therapists/agony aunts of sorts for lonely migrant workers who desperately wanted to share their sadness
- how astute letter writers had to be to 'sanitise' what was being said to them
Made me feel strangely melancholic. Loved reading this.